A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

30 March 2017

Blasting SB-305 & shooting the messenger

The debate over SB-305 is profoundly demoralizing. Sen. Fitzpatrick’s (R-Great Falls) bill to allow counties to conduct the 25 May special congressional election by only mail ballots was tabled in the MT House’s judiciary committee yesterday on a party-line vote. Democrats will try to blast the bill out of committee tomorrow. The odds they’ll succeed are vanishingly small.

The debate over SB-305 is demoralizing and exasperating because the bill’s opponents and advocates are advancing their positions with the intensity and certainty of medieval theologians arguing over faith based religious beliefs. Most Republicans, and apparently all Democrats, are basing their arguments against and for the bill on two premises they can’t prove are true: that conducting the election only by mail ballot will increase turnout, and that mail ballot elections favor Democrats.

The truth legislators should be addressing is that special congressional elections are rare, unpredictable, events — we expect members of Congress to serve their full terms, and most do — and thus have the same impact on government finances as natural disasters such as earthquakes and forest fires.

SB-305 tries to mitigate that impact by allowing Montana’s clerk and recorders to conduct the election by mail ballot only. That’s music to the ears of the C&Rs, who have long sought to condemn Montana to all-mail ballot elections.

But the special election’s impact on county budgets also could be mitigated by the legislature’s appropriating money to reimburse the counties, and paying for the appropriation with a one-year income tax surcharge. That approach makes the most sense to me. In fact, that’s public policy that should have been in place long ago.

Rob Quist’s friends are trying to defend him by shooting the messengers of bad news about his campaign. I’ve come under attack by highly partisan Democrats who accuse me of sticking a knife in Quist’s back, but who offer no factual counter to the questions raised by the Billing Gazette’s reports on Quist’s finances. Attacks on me do not help Quist. Coupled with the attackers’ failure to defend Quist with facts, these attacks hurt Quist because they make it appear that his situation is not defensible.

Meanwhile, a reminder to everyone. Flathead Memo is not a Democratic blog.