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Uncommon Ground

Vote for Freedom

Your votes decide which rights working Montanans like you and I get to keep come the new year

By Mike Jopek

It’s your turn. Voting started in Montana. You decide what kind of Montana we become. We know what we’ve been, the future is up to you. I’m going with the people who believe in privacy, dignity and the environment. Everyday issues like good-paying jobs, reproductive freedom, healthcare, public schools and public lands matter to working people.

Earlier this month I listened to Roger Sullivan and Rylee Sommers-Flanagan podcast with Ed Docter at the Montana Tap House about the Montana Constitution and why and how regular people, not politicians, wrote it 50 years ago.

People created our government, branches like the Legislature, the Governor and enabled them to work for us via the state Constitution. Our right to know is directly interwoven with our right to participate when protecting individual dignity, privacy, or clean and healthful environment.

The people never gave the Legislature nor the Governor any right to secrets. People cannot meaningfully participate in our state government if it’s riddled with secrets. What are state policymakers hiding anyway?

Our Constitution gives people rights, and responsibilities to the Legislature. We reserve rights for people, to protect people and keep the government out of our lives. People have rights to privacy, right to individual dignity, and a right to a clean and healthful environment.  

Our first right in the state constitution says that “All political power is vested in and derived from the people. All government of right originates with the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.”

Later that same week Docter hosted Nikki Eisinger, Jamie Gougen and Helen Weems for an hourlong FishTank podcast about how local citizens put the right to an abortion on the ballot, seeking to enact the liberty into the state Constitution.  

Montana’s interpretation of the state Constitution has long held that the right to privacy allows people self-determination to their bodies and keeps the long nose of the government out of our personal decisions.

The Legislature, led by the Governor, has repeatedly passed unconstitutional laws in an effort to repeal the many rights held by people. This is the first election where two top court justices, who for decades supported the right to privacy, right to dignity, and right to a clean and healthful environment, are not seeking reelection.

Who knows which new justices win after votes are counted and how the new court reinterprets us the people. I met Judge Katherine Bidegaray from Sidney earlier this year at the Northern in Whitefish. What a great person and the only woman’s rights candidate running for the top justice job in Montana. I’m voting for her. If you like your rights, vote for her, she’s just good.

I got a chance to chat with Senator Jon Tester at the equal rights rally at Baker Park in Whitefish. He looked good, confidently talked about what a great place the Flathead is, and how it was up to us to make sure it remains open for everyone to live, work and recreate.

As hundreds of people stood or sat on the lawn in the public park, Tester took the stage and spoke about freedom and women’s rights. The pro-choice, pro-freedom weekend of action drew wide attention to the right-to-abortion constitutional ballot initiative which voters now decide.

One fact remains unalienable, voting for Tester today ends national abortion bans from Congress next year.

Governor candidate Ryan Busse was in the park listening, taking with locals, and then on stage speaking to an energized crowd which clearly indicated they’d be casting votes up and down the ballot. You can vote anytime until Election Day, Nov 5.

The sooner you vote the better for everyone. Return your mail ballot swiftly or just go to the Kalispell election department and vote today. You have a constitutional right to participate in democracy.

Busse continues to campaign statewide holding hundreds of events and town halls in the small towns and cities of rural Montana. Busse always draws large crowds of locals to talk, many seeking a less expensive, more open Montana, where work, freedom and constitutional infrastructure like public lands and public schools matter.

I thought about what Sullivan and Sommers-Flanagan said earlier in the month at the Tap House about if Montana holds secrets, how can the people participate, particularly when the health consequences are as devastating as asbestos mining. I thought about how Eisinger, Gougen, and Weems emphasized the necessity to speak up, take action, and vote.

Right now, your friends and neighbors are voting for reproductive freedom in an election year where long-lasting outcomes are decided by handfuls of votes. History is being made today. Your votes decide which rights working Montanans like you and I get to keep come the new year. Vote for freedom. Do it today.