Tuesday is Election Day. Tuesday’s ballot represents a once in six-year vote on who citizens want as the next Montana U.S. senator and Flathead County commissioner. It’s a two-year vote on races like the U.S. and state House.
Republicans are looking at polls with reassurance that their party may again rule Congress.
Recently, Montana State University Billings released a small sample poll – as it has for past decades. The MSUB poll says Republicans are winning the federal statewide races.
The MSUB poll leans right. The 2012 poll indicated that Sen. Jon Tester would lose his reelection big time. Tester won by a large margin. Likewise the 2012 Mason-Dixon poll predicted a Tester loss. Both polls were proven wrong by voters. That hardly means that the polls will be wrong again.
A big obstacle to predicting voter results is voter turnout. When Tester won in 2012, over 72 percent of registered voters in Montana voted. That’s down from the nearly three-quarters of voters who went to the polls four years prior when Barack Obama campaigned in the state.
Tuesday is a midterm election. In the last midterm of 2010, a meager 56 percent of registered voters statewide cast a ballot. That Montana Legislature saw a historic number of vetoes from the governor.
Former Gov. Brian Schweitzer said their policy, “makes some of them look bat-crap crazy.” Former Republican Rep. Walter McNutt told his colleagues to, “quit scaring our constituents and quit letting us look like a bunch of buffoons.”
If many citizens choose not to vote Tuesday, expect some wacky bills to ensue. Bills to cut Medicare, call for state secession, pay in gold bullions, and mandate counseling for women seeking a divorce from a bad situation.
In 2011, more people voted in Whitefish than before. Years later, the slate of younger, more-progressive candidates still serves the municipality well. That’s the point; exercise our right to vote and the next politicians will serve for years.
The conservative MSUB poll held one promising result, opposition to ending Election Day voter registration. Republicans have been trying to repeal this law since Tester won the U.S. Senate race back in 2006, when lines of younger voters waited hours to cast a ballot.
The MSUB poll indicated 56 percent opposed LR-126. A meager 36 percent favored the Legislature’s referendum, or LR-126 on Tuesday’s ballot. Vote no on LR-126 – the policy targets veterans, seniors and renters. Voting should remain easy and secure. It’s wrongheaded to make it harder for some citizens to exercise their right to vote.
Polls indicate that Rep. Amanda Curtis may lose her bid to become the first Montana woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. But what polls are worse at gauging is how many people will vote. Curtis can win if turnout is large like 2004, 2008, 2012, or like 1992 when Bill Clinton carried the state.
But if Tuesday’s turnout is dismal like the last midterm in 2010 or near 2006, expect renewed firebrand politics across the state and nation. Policy like dismantling women’s healthcare or paying employees in gold bullions will be in the news.
There are oddly no western Montana Senate debates. Given Curtis’ impressive televised performance last week in Billings, she secured the votes of plenty of undecided Montanans. The MSUB poll, taken before the debate, held 20 percent undecided. Newer polls will differ.
Voting is easy, takes 10 minutes, and it’s up to a six-year choice. Voters may never again have a choice to send a young high school math teacher to fix the mess left by the boys of the 113th Congress. With enough votes on Tuesday, state Rep. Amanda Curtis will be alongside Sen. Jon Tester in the 114th Congress serving middle-class Montanans.