Disturbing level of election fraud

In these transitional times, we must protect the institutions and traditions cherished by all Montanans, regardless of partisan affiliation. The sanctity of our election process has long been respected by Democrats and Republicans alike, which is why I am so disappointed by the recent revelations that the Montana Republican Party secretly funded a signature gathering effort to qualify the Green Party for the 2020 ballot.

I was alarmed when I heard that out-of-state signature gatherers employed by the same organization hired to qualify the Green Party for the ballot in 2018 were once again collecting signatures for the Green Party, despite the Montana Green Party’s unequivocal public condemnation of the effort.

Up until this week, no group had come forward to admit their financial support for this operation — aside from an out-of-state dark money group that abandoned its operation in its infancy — despite a state law requiring groups to register as a minor party qualification committee within five days of raising or spending more than $500 on signature gathering. On March 6, the Secretary of State certified the Green Party to be on the ballot, despite the funding source behind the campaign being a mystery and the funder having clearly violated state law in the course of acquiring the certification.

On Tuesday, the mystery of the Green Party signatures was finally solved when it was reported that the Montana GOP had been bankrolling the covert operation all along, spending $100,000 to finance the signature gathering effort. Republicans led the deception that put petition gatherers in the parking lots of grocery stores and post offices wearing buttons and insignia that implied they were Green Party Members.

This fraudulent conduct — intentionally designed to deceive Montana voters and meddle in our democratic process — is beneath Montana, and the MTGOP knows it. Rather than mount their operation in public, the Montana Republican Party launched their plan under the auspices of a shell group named to sound like a Green Party affiliated organization. The MTGOP used this organization to funnel money to the petitioners firm, obscuring the relationship between the party and the signature gathering campaign. To boot, the Republicans conveniently misfiled their shell group with the Office of Political Practices, an obviously deliberate attempt to avoid detection. For months, story after story raised the question of who was illegally conducting a minor party qualification campaign — and “Montanans for Conservation” didn’t exactly come running to the COPP to explain that they had misfiled their paperwork.

During my tenure as Secretary of State from 2009-2017, I worked to uphold the integrity of our elections. The fact that the MTGOP has engaged in this effort is a new and disturbing level of election fraud. The Green Party should never have been certified as long as the funder failed to comply with Montana law. Now that the Green Party ballot certification process has been revealed as a MTGOP conspiracy to tamper with votes and election outcomes, Secretary of State Stapleton must act swiftly to disqualify the effort, condemned by the Montana Green Party as “Republican and conservative efforts” to put forward “false” candidates.

Democratic and Republican voters lose when political parties embrace such brazen political subterfuge. Our democracy depends on free and fair elections, an ideal that is actively undermined by this behavior. This style of politics is unacceptable in Montana, no matter your party affiliation or political views.

Linda McCulloch served as Montana Secretary of State from 2009 to 2017.