The bills, all sponsored by Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, would have banned machine-counting of ballots, required votes be counted at the county precincts they were cast in and moved Montana to closed primary elections.

As a crucial legislative deadline nears, the bills to drastically change the way elections are conducted in Montana surfaced in the midst of a procedural bottleneck. The approaching transmittal deadline prompted the Senate State Administration Committee to hold an unusual Saturday meeting to consider them alongside a half-dozen other bills.

The committee chair, Sen. Mike Cuffe, R-Eureka, acknowledged the time crunch, caused in part by a bill-drafting process that has stretched longer into the session than it typically does.

“We worked hard to keep this committee on schedule as we were moving along,” Cuffe said at one point. “And all of a sudden, right at the end … we wound up with a number of last-second bills.”

General policy bills must clear the chamber they originated in by March 3.

Hand-counting ballots

The committee heard about an hour of testimony on Senate Bill 435, which would have eliminated the use of tabulators in Montana, and would require all counties to hand-count every selection on every ballot. Arguments to return to hand-counting have gained popularity in right-wing circles across the country, with many who dispute the results of the 2020 presidential election suggesting the ballot-counting machines were hacked.

But studies have repeatedly found that hand-counting produces less accurate results, and election experts note that partisan shenanigans, from outright fraud to mass disqualification of ballots, were far more prevalent in the days before machines came into play for the purpose of counting ballots.

Manzella and people who testified in support of her bill referred to high-profile hacking incidents to suggest the machines are vulnerable, including the 2015 breach of the federal Office of Personnel Management and the 2020 cyber-attack conducted through Solar Winds software.

“I’m concerned that we are not going to be able to stay in front of technology,” Manzella said. “As we move forward at this amazingly rapid rate of speed with which technology is coming online, we now have concerns about artificial intelligence injected into our elections.”

While some IT experts acknowledge the potential for security vulnerabilities in ballot-counting machines, they also argue that random-sample audits of the results are the best guarantee against manipulation. Montana requires audits for all federal elections that use tabulators to count votes.

Several opponents also noted that state law already allows each county to determine whether it will use tabulators or hand-count ballots. Currently 10 of Montana’s less populated counties still hand-count their ballots, and counties can opt out of using tabulators if they choose.

Proponents of eliminating tabulators have never identified an instance of the machines misidentifying a vote in an election, aside from mistakes that were due to human error. Despite two years of investigations around the country, no evidence has emerged of a ballot-counting machine being hacked during an election.

Likewise, no evidence has emerged of votes being switched, nor has evidence emerged of any of the other suggestions of large-scale coordinated voter fraud.

After fellow Republicans on the panel indicated they would not support the measure, Manzella made a motion to table the bill. The motion passed unanimously.

Counting ballots at precincts

Senate Bill 433, also introduced by Manzella, would require ballots to be counted at the precinct where they were cast, prior to being transported to the county’s centralized location for counting ballots.

Under current practice, election officials count the number of ballots at each precinct polling place — but not the intensive process of tallying up each vote on each ballot — before sealing them up and transporting them to the central location. Two election officials must accompany the ballots any time they’re moved, part of Montana’s “chain-of-custody” requirements.

Manzella said her bill would expand that to require all of the votes on those ballots to be counted in the place they were cast.

“If there was a count that could be documented and posted, then at least we would have something to refer back to, for the purpose of confirming that there was nothing nefarious that happened between when the ballots left the polling place and when they arrived at the central counting place,” Manzella told the committee.

But county officials opposed the bill, saying existing security measures already ensure the ballots aren’t tampered with. And the proposal could be expensive, potentially requiring the purchase of new tabulators for every precinct in order to count up the ballots. The alternative would be to hand-count them, a time-intensive process more prone to inaccuracies.

The bill would also require video and audio recording off all vote-counting activities. Those processes are already required to be open to the public, but “election integrity” groups in Montana have alleged foul play in the absence of recorded evidence to the contrary.

“That is a huge ask of the counties,” said Regina Plettenberg, with the Montana Association of Clerk and Recorders. “… Installing, maintaining and affording this equipment would be very difficult.”

The bill failed to pass on a 3-7 bipartisan vote.

Closed primaries

Another bill offered by Manzella would have required Montanans to declare a party affiliation in order to vote in the state’s primary elections. That would be a switch from Montana’s current “open primary” system, in which voters don’t register with a party and are free to vote in a party primary of their choosing. Unaffiliated voters wouldn’t be able to vote in any primary races.

Manzella framed her proposal in the parlance of the state’s top two college sports teams.

“Should the Bobcats be able to choose the quarterback for the Grizzlies?” she asked.

Ravalli County resident Alan Lackey testified in support of the bill, saying the current system doesn’t work.

“That means the other side can affect and influence what happens in our party,” said Lackey, who lost a 2022 primary race for a legislative seat.

Opponents argued that since the state foots the bill for primary elections, locking independent voters out of those primaries would amount to a denial of their voting rights.

The last vote of the day, Manzella offered a motion to table her bill before any debate began in the committee. It was tabled unanimously.

Cast vote records

Lawmakers also discussed a pair of measures that emerged from the Legislature’s special Joint Select Committee on Election Integrity. That committee, dominated by Republican lawmakers, was formed at the beginning of the session after right-wing legislators spent more than a year demanding the body investigate Montana’s election security.

Senate Bill 481 would require each county that uses machine tabulators to count ballots to generate a “cast vote record,” essentially a digital summary of each ballot scanned by the tabulator.

Cast vote records were central to a wave of public-record requests submitted to election officials in Montana last summer. Across the country, the requests appeared to spike after Mike Lindell, a nationally prominent election conspiracy theorist, instructed his followers to request the records from the local election administrators.

Clerk and recorders across Montana were subsequently barraged with duplicative requests, despite few, if any, counties in the state having the ability to generate those reports.

Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, chairs the special election committee and sponsored the bill. He said in order to get bipartisan support to advance the bill to a regular committee, he opted to make cast vote records non-public. Like official ballots, they would be retained by the county but could only be accessed by obtaining a judge’s order.

Several proponents testified in support of the bill, but suggested the reports should be readily accessible to the public.

Eric Bryson, speaking on behalf of the Montana Association of Counties, opposed the legislation on the grounds that it would require hundreds of thousands of dollars in technology expenses to comply. The software needed to generate those reports would incur a $5,000 per year cost to each county using tabulators, Bryson said. And at least 17 counties that use tabulators but don’t already have “hardened laptops” with special security protocols would need to pay about $10,000 apiece for those, he added, urging the committee to appropriate money to cover the costs.

“If you’re going to improve processes or redefine the way we’re doing elections in Montana from the state, pay for it,” Bryson said.

The proposal was endorsed by Missoula County, despite the added cost.

“If adding this requirement, however, increases the confidence in our election process, then we’re pleased to support,” Jennifer Hensley, a lobbyist representing the county, told the committee.

Hash validation tests

Senate Bill 482 would require counties to run a “hash validation test” during their post-election audits. A hash is a code generated by an algorithm, and can be used to check whether the source code of a tabulator or other election system has been altered.

The bill would require counties with election systems capable of generating the hash to check it against the “trusted hash” generated by the Election Assistance Commission when the system was initially certified for use. If no tampering has occurred, the hashes should be identical.

Glimm said it was an example of best practices recommended by Election Systems & Software, the sole company that manufacturers tabulators used in Montana.

Bryson said his organization doesn’t object to the process, but again opposes the bill for cost reasons. The hash test would require two high-security laptops to perform, he said, so each county that already has one would need to purchase another, and the others would have to buy two. He estimated counties would need another 66 of the laptops, at a cost of $10,000 apiece.

Committee votes on SB 482 and SB 481 were pushed back to the following week.