Stand with Montana counties! 

Whew! The election’s over. And Hooray!  We don’t have to watch thousands of political ads or respond to the all too numerous requests for donations from various candidates running for office... until the next election cycle, which starts in less than a year.

We all feel this way.  We’re all glad it’s done, whether we’re Republicans, Democrats, independents, Greens, or Libertarians.

We have something else in common. We’re trying to stop the flood of money and ads.

Do you know that, in 2012, all of our 56 Montana counties passed Citizens Initiative I-166?  We called on Congress to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to: 

“... establish that there should be a level playing field in campaign spending, ... prohibiting corporate campaign contributions and expenditures and ... limiting political spending in elections” and “establishing that corporations are not human beings entitled to constitutional rights.” 

We now have House Resolution 3 in the Montana House that asks our legislators to stand with our counties’ voters and repeat our call for Congress to pass the constitutional amendment.

This is important since Congress needs to know that the states are ready to ratify the amendment once Congress passes it.   

Montana can help lead this effort, especially since the support in our counties is bipartisan. It’s not unusual for voters who have supported Republicans to call for this amendment. In 2020, three towns in Ohio and Wisconsin, who supported Republican slates, also passed the call for the amendment, with 74 percent to 84 eprcent majorities. In 2012, our statewide citizens initiative passed with 74.9 percent.

Montanans remember that their grandparents responded the same way, in 1912, when they passed their own citizens initiative and gave us the Montana Corrupt Practices Act. Those campaign finance laws stood us well until the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decided the Citizens United case.

The only thing that changed in the 100 years was the Supreme Court itself! The 1912 Supreme Court agreed with Montana voters that we have to carve out space for our elections in order to protect them from undue influence.  But the 2010 Supreme Court itself had been influenced by the very money and corporate challenges that they were warned about in 1912.

So it’s up to us to reassert what was obvious to Montana voters: we need to tell the Supreme Court to protect our ability to self-govern.

Please call 406-444-4800 now and tell the Montana House State Administration Committee and your legislator to vote yes on House Resolution 3 which calls on Congress to pass that constitutional amendment!

You can also:

Send a message https://www.leg.mt.gov/session/have-your-say/

Find House legislators  https://leg.mt.gov/legislator-lookup/

Learn more!  montana@movetoamend

It’s been nine long years and our counties need to stand together again!

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Sue Kirchmyer is Chair of Montanans Move to Amend which educates Montanans about the constitutional amendment to restore the ability to control the roles of money and corporations in our elections and political life.