A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
More information on net metering in Montana is now available. The legislature’s interim committee on energy and telecommunications is studying net metering in Montana, and may draft model legislation for the 2017 legislative session. Earlier this year, the committee sent a questionnaire to Montana’s electric utilities. The completed questionnaires are available on the committee’s website.
Now the committee, which will meet in Helena on 15 January (agenda, PDF), has posted (see SJ-12 materials) its staff’s analysis of the questionnaires as well as comments by the Public Service Commission and others. These are must reads for people interested in community solar and net metered rooftop solar.
Electric utility lobbyists will swarm the interim committee and its members, so it’s essential that proponents of wind, community and rooftop solar, and net metering, keep themselves fully informed and relentlessly birddog the committee, its members, and all those lobbyists and their employers.So-called independent voters and New Hampshire. There are few, perhaps one out of ten, truly independent voters — voters without any partisan leanings — and they tend to be low information voters who don’t always vote. But self-identified independents comprise a third or so of the electorate. Most self-identified independents actually are closet partisans, often weak partisans, who for various reasons want to keep their partisan leanings secret.
In New Hampshire, self-identified independents, formally known as undeclared voters, and who number 40 percent of registered voters, can vote in the primary of their choice. This morning’s New York Times reports that de facto crossover voting in the granite state could affect the fortunes of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. If Democratic leaning undeclareds take Republican ballots to vote against Trump, Hillary Clinton could benefit. But so far there’s no evidence that an organized crossover campaign exists.
The large number of undeclared voters is why the Democratic National Committee’s cutting off the Sanders’ campaign’s access to the party’s voter files was such a big deal. Through phone calls and the analysis of other data, political parties and candidates have a pretty good idea which way the undeclared voters lean. That’s vital information for efficient get out the vote efforts, targeted issue communications, and begging for money fundraising.
Declaring oneself a political independent provides plausible deniability about partisan affiliation, but it doesn’t hide one’s partisan leanings from a sophisticated campaign.