Judge made right decision

By the Helena IR - 09/14/06

The decision by a district court judge Wednesday to throw out three ballot measures helps protect the initiative process in Montana.

District Judge Dirk M. Sandefur of Great Falls said that the effort to gather signatures for the three measures ·Constitutional Initiative 97, Constitutional Initiative 98 and Initiative 154 ·wasn’t on the up and up.

“Permeated by a pervasive and general pattern and practice of fraud and procedural noncompliance” is how he put it.

Sandefur said records of a least one signature gatherer showed impossible amounts of signatures from different parts of the state at the same time.

Witnesses also said signature gatherers used “bait-and-switch” tactics to get people to sign petitions without realizing it.

Trevis Butcher, the executive director of Montanans in Action, the group that gave most of the money that was spent to support the initiatives, said he intends to appeal Sandefur’s decision to the Montana Supreme Court. He said the decision was based on “hearsay.”

If that’s so, we heard the same thing from a number of readers who said signature gatherers told them they needed to make three signatures to support one of the measures. Or that the measures were somehow related, and voters couldn’t sign one without signing all of them.

CI-97 would cap state spending; CI-98 allows the attempted recall of state judges for any reason; I-154 says property owners can demand and receive compensation from the government if they feel a government action has lessened their property value.

As Sandefur pointed out, the decision doesn’t mean supporters can’t still try to get the measures on the ballot.

It just requires that the signatures be gathered properly, which would mean going through another election cycle.

The initiative process is an important part of the state’s political environment. It has to be done in an above-the-board manner.

The other issue concerning these three ballot measures ·where the funding to back them has come from ·is also in dispute.

Montanans in Action has supplied virtually all of the more than $650,000 that has been spent on the campaign to pass the three measures, mostly to pay signature gatherers.

Opponents say MIA is operating as a ballot committee and should be subject to campaign-disclosure laws.

But Butcher contends that MIA doesn’t need to report its contributions because it is a nonprofit that also works on education efforts.

The dispute is now before the state political practices commissioner.

Regardless of how that argument is resolved, we would like to see election laws requiring meaningful disclosure of contributions toward ballot measures.

Maybe someone should start a petition.