By a 6-2 vote, the State Administration and Veterans Affairs Interim Committee passed a motion by Rep. Pat Ingraham, R-Thompson Falls, to have a bill drafted for a mail balloting experiment. The measure would still face review by the committee before going to the 2009 Legislature.
Voting for Ingraham's motion were Reps. Gary MacLaren, R-Victor, Franke Wilmer, D-Bozeman, and Sens. Kelly Gebhardt, R-Roundup, Verdell Jackson, R-Kalispell, and Carolyn Squires, D-Missoula.
Ingraham, a former Sanders County clerk and recorder, said she wants to see the trial mail balloting take place in 12 to 15 of Montana's 56 counties - urban and rural and in all geographic areas. Voters in those counties would receive ballots by mail and then send them back rather than going to a polling place.
At the urging of some members, Ingraham also asked that the pilot project include some counties with precincts with predominantly American Indian voters because of concern that mail ballots might work to their disadvantage.
If her proposal passes, legislators and local and state election officials would have plenty of data through which to analyze how it worked to help them decide whether to adopt by-mail elections statewide.
Jackson suggested that the bill include an unspecified appropriation to help counties cover the costs.
Legislative researcher Sue O'Connell told the committee that Oregon voters in 1998 approved a vote-by-mail initiative for all elections, while Colorado and Arizona voters have rejected similar ballot measures.
In 2005, Washington state gave county election officials the choice of whether to hold all of their elections by mail.
Eighty Montana cities and towns conducted their November elections this year by mail ballot only. Voter turnout in Billings, Bozeman, Helena and Missoula “far exceeded past municipal elections,” O'Connell said.
Speakers outlined some of the pros and cons of mail balloting.
An enthusiastic proponent was Vickie Zeier, Missoula County clerk and recorder, who said most voters approved of mail balloting. So do most election administrators, she said, because it increases turnout and reduces the need for election judges, which are increasingly harder to find.
“It's time to provide this successful, well-received, time-proven method of voting for federal elections,” Zeier said.
Janice Hoppes, Pondera County clerk and recorder, outlined some statistics on mail balloting this year on some of Montana's Indian reservations. Turnout in some towns was greater than in past years because of mail balloting, she said.
However, Indian legislators and others were skeptical, citing barriers such as the cost of postage stamps to mail back the ballots.
“Native Americans just got the right to vote in 1924,” Small-Eastman said. “In the 2003 (legislative) redistricting, our Native American communities were finally represented with equality. We struggled for years. I know the popular thing is to have a mail ballot, but I don't want it to push us back in time.”
Also questioning vote-by-mail was Sen. Carol Juneau, D-Browning, who raised a number of concerns.
Sara Busey of Missoula, representing the League of Women Voters of Montana, presented a detailed analysis of some of the experience in other states.
“Turnout evidence is mixed,” she concluded. “More data is needed for Montana.”
Theresa Keaveny, representing the Montana Conservation Voters Education Fund, raised a dozen questions about mail balloting. One was determining its impact on people from Montana's “more transitional populations” - such as low-income people, minorities, young people and others.
“Every vote counts,” she said. “Too much is at stake to switch to mailed ballots for all elections unless these questions are answered.”
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