“I'd love to see us exceed last election's total so we can start establishing an upward trend,” Secretary of State Brad Johnson said.
Johnson, a Republican going through his first primary election as secretary of state, declined to guess what the turnout would be, saying there are just too many variables.
Several counties, including Cascade and Beaverhead, have consolidated their polling places. Johnson said he doesn't know how that will affect voter participation.
In the 1960 primary election, 70 percent of registered Montana voters went to the polls, and 71 percent voted in the 1972 primary. Since then, turnout has plunged.
Primary election turnout is always higher in presidential and gubernatorial election years, hitting 52 percent in 1992, 41 percent in 1996, 33 percent in 2000 and 37 percent in 2004.
But turnoff drops considerably during primaries of off-year elections like this one. It was 29 percent in 2002 and 27 percent in 1998.
A total of 513,811 people are registered to vote in Montana, plus an additional 114,020 are designated as inactive voters, for a total of 627,831 potential voters, Johnson said.
People who skip voting in a federal election now receive two written notices. If they don't respond to either, they are moved to inactive status. However, inactive voters can be activated instantly and vote if they show up at their polling places Tuesday with a identification card, Johnson said.
If voters are on the inactive list and miss two federal general elections, their names are purged from the voting list. However, they can always re-register to vote in the next election.
At the end of the day Friday, 26,282 Montanans already had requested absentee ballots. That is expected to be more than 10 percent of the voter turnout. The Legislature has changed the law to make it easier for people to cast absentee ballots. Voters no longer have to provide a reason to vote absentee.
Still, Johnson said he worries about the overall turnout, saying the primary seems “flat” overall.
“You would think a party primary for the U.S. Senate in a year when some people perceive the incumbent to be vulnerable would generate a lot of excitement, and it just doesn't seem to have done it,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he also worries that the negative campaign tone in the Senate race overall will drive down turnout.
“We've got so much negative stuff going on out there,” he said. “This is purely anecdotal, but there's almost a backlash to it.”
Still, Johnson said he believes there will be pockets of high voter turnout. Hotly contested county and legislative primaries often increase the number of voters, he said.
Montana's two major political parties are taking different approaches in the campaign to get out the vote.
The Montana Republican Party, which is backing Burns even though he faces three primary challengers, is working with the senator's campaign on a get-out-the-vote drive, said the party's executive director, Chuck Denowh. That drive kicked off Saturday with phone banks to call likely Republican voters and door-to-door efforts.
As for voter turnout, Denowh said, “We don't expect it to be outside of the norm. It might be a little higher this time from absentee votes.”
Meanwhile, the Montana Democratic Party, which has remained neutral in the Senate primary, is not engaging in get-out-the-vote efforts, executive director Jim Farrell said, but will do so in the fall. The Morrison and Tester campaigns have both mounted get-out-the-vote drives, he said.
“The focus of our efforts for Tuesday here at the party is to collect signatures for the clean-government, lobbying-reform initiative,” Farrell said, referring to Gov. Brian Schweitzer's measure.
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