Obscure new law leads to trashing of thousands of votes

Voters who did not follow a new Montana law requiring electors write their birth year on the envelope of an absentee ballot had the chance to fix the issue if they responded to a call, mailed notice or email from their local election department, but thousands of ballots still ended up in the rejected pile when all the counting was finalized.

According to the Secretary of State’s office, “only one percent” of ballots were rejected due to a missing or mismatched birth year. However, some counties had rejection rates significantly higher than one percent, and almost all large counties saw higher rates than previous elections.

The Secretary of State’s office did not provide any aggregate data showing the statewide rejection rate, and did not respond to several questions from the Daily Montanan about the new process, including specifics about cases of potential fraud the office said were prevented due the new law.

In a press release, the office celebrated a successful election across the state, and the new law which allowed “election officials to efficiently and securely verify each voter.”

In Yellowstone County, 31,563 ballots were accepted, and 1,400 total ballots were initially rejected, according to election administrator Dayna Causby, nearly 4.5%.

Of the rejected ballots, roughly 1,100 were rejected due to a missing or incorrect birth year.

While more than 800 ballots were resolved by voters notified about the error, the rejection rate after all resolutions was 2.03%.

During the last municipal election in 2023, that rate was 0.78%.

Billings had a mayoral race that was decided by less than 200 votes — while final rejected ballots that were not counted in the election were three times that margin.

“It was definitely a strain for voters whose ballot was rejected who had to come in and fix that,” Causby told the Daily Montanan. “We’re definitely already strategizing on how to mitigate this for future elections. Not just Yellowstone, but all the counties in the state.”

Outreach about the new law, House Bill 719, varied by county.

Lewis and Clark County had some of the highest outreach, due to holding a City of Helena primary election a few weeks before the general election. While HB 719 wasn’t officially in effect during that September election, county officials treated it as a way to educate voters on the new changes.

The work showed, as Lewis and Clark County had the lowest percent of rejected ballots among the most populous counties.

Just 0.9% of ballots in the county were rejected, according to the election office.

“Anytime you change the process for voters, even if it’s a minor change, you’re going to want to find a way to tell them about it,” Elections administrator Connor Fitzpatrick told the Daily Montanan leading up to election day.

Fitzpatrick said the trial run with the primary, combined with sending out mailers to registered voters seemed to do the trick.

“It looks like our outreach did connect with people,” he said.

In Gallatin County, three staff members were tasked with calling voters on Election Day to let them know their ballots had been rejected, but less than half of voters contacted resolved them.

“We certainly had many more rejections this election, so many more votes didn’t count compared to past municipal elections,” Gallatin County Election Administrator Eric Semerad told the Daily Montanan. “Some of those voters may be upset that their votes were not counted. You can see that 377 voters did resolve their ballots after we contacted them this election, suggesting that voters do value their votes, even in these smaller municipal elections.”

Gallatin County recorded 820 rejected ballots, 626 of which were rejected due to a missing or incorrect birth year. The county’s total rejection rate was 3.74%, and the rejection rate after ballots were resolved was 2.05%.

Semerad said ballots seemed to get better as the election progressed as voters learned about the new process, and he said he thinks elections in 2026 will be better.

Flathead County held its largest mail-in election ever, and ended up rejecting 663 total ballots, or 2.06%. The ballots rejected due to the birth year was 384.

After voters had the chance to resolve their ballot issues, the county ended up with a rejection rate of 1.23%. That’s close to double what was seen during the 2024 election, though the county election administrator noted that such a large turnout in a presidential year makes it an inexact comparison.

In Cascade County, elections were held for the cities of Great Falls and Belt.

In Great Falls, 166 ballots were missing a year of birth or incorrectly filled out the year of birth out of 309 total rejected ballots for a roughly 1.9% rejection rate.

The town of Belt saw 28 votes cast for alderman, and three ballots rejected for a missing birth year.

Cascade County elections specialist Heather Potter said that rejection rates were higher than normal, with data showing that previous years’ rejected ballot numbers were matched by this year’s birth year rejections alone.

In Ravalli County,the new law showed a limited impact on voters.

County election administrator Regina Plettenberg said that there were only 17 rejected ballots across three municipal elections, “no more than usual.”

“We didn’t do a lot of outreach before the election, but we did put a very simple notice in with the ballot and it was separate from the regular instructions,” Plettenberg said. “Of course this was a much smaller election in Ravalli County than in some other counties.”

The new law, carried in the Legislature by Columbia Falls Rep. Braxton Mitchell, a Republican, was intended to enhance election security by adding a second identification point for voters to provide in addition to a signature that must be matched to county records.

During the session, Mitchell said that the law is a “common-sense practice,” that aligns absentee voting with in-person requirements.

Montana has had just two known cases of election fraud since 1997, according to the Heritage Foundation’s election fraud tracker.

The Secretary of State’s office, in a press release, said the recent election was the first “during Secretary (Christi) Jacobsen’s two terms in which no voter had reported a violation of someone else voting on their behalf.”

However, the office did not provide any details about previous cases of fraud during Jacobsen’s previous term.