Nearly half of Montana voters elected to open Montana’s primary elections to all candidates and all voters. They almost made Montana the second state, after Alaska, to adopt this reform that gives voters more freedom to choose. Surprisingly, many of the same voters split their ballots on a companion election reform proposals for majority winners. Thus, Montanans pushed one proposal tantalizingly close to victory while rejecting the other by a wide margin.
The first proposal, Constitutional Initiative 126, would have implemented unified primary elections—that is, open to all voters and candidates, regardless of party—with the top four vote-getters advancing to the general election. Almost 49 percent of Montanans voted in favor of this primary system, a dramatically larger share than in neighboring Idaho and more than in Colorado or Nevada, other states that considered proposals for unified primaries.
The second, Constitutional Initiative 127, would have required Montana elections to honor a core tenet of democracy—the principle of majority rule: winners of state general elections would have to secure the support of a majority of voters for statewide and congressional offices. The legislature would determine the method of securing a majority vote. Some 40 percent of voters supported the majority-winner measure.
Open primaries and majority-winner elections deliver a bevy of benefits
The initiatives’ election methods together, proposed and supported by a single campaign, probably would have led to a system akin to Alaska’s, with open, all-candidate and -voter primaries and instant runoff elections. Alaska’s system has effected the following changes:
- Political parties used to make the rules for primary elections. Now, laws approved by voters govern the primaries.
- Candidates popular with general election voters no longer face the prospect of “getting primaried”—that is, losing in the primary to candidates who appeal to the smaller, often less representative pool of primary voters.
- Lawmakers have more freedom to work with colleagues of different political backgrounds on practical policy solutions without fear of electoral backlash.
- Independent candidates can now run for office under the same rules as candidates who belong to a political party rather than having to fulfill extra requirements to get on the ballot.
- Voters in the general election no longer must worry about “wasting” their vote on a “spoiler candidate.” That is, they don’t have to vote for a candidate they’re not excited about just to keep their least-favorite candidate from winning.
- Ranked choice general elections ensure winners have the support of a majority of voters, not just more voters than any other candidate.
In Montana, proponents hoped the measures would rise or fall together, but 9 percent of ballots (almost 54,000 voters) supported open primaries while opposing the majority-winner rule.
Status quo system limits voter choice and sometimes delivers winners without majority support
Under the status quo, Montanans must pick one party’s primary ballot and advance one candidate for each race, a system that narrows general election voters’ choices and doesn’t allow for cross-partisan voting. And in general elections, candidates can win with a plurality, rather than a majority, of voter support. (A plurality means more than other candidates, but less than 50 percent of the vote.)
How has this problem played out in Montana? From 2012 to 2022, in one gubernatorial election, one US Senate election, and two elections for US House, a majority of Montanans voted for losing candidates, meaning someone in each instance won election to a powerful office with less than majority support. Despite these recent high-profile plurality-winner elections, voters rejected CI-127, meaning that future elections are still at risk of unrepresentative results.
Had Montana adopted open primaries without a majority winner rule, the state’s general elections likely would have yielded more choice for voters, of all parties. It might have also yielded more plurality winners—with up to four candidates regardless of party advancing to any given election, voters would have more options, but also more opportunities to split the vote.
CI-127 would have tasked the legislature with implementing a majority-voter system, solving the vote-splitting problem. Sightline found that there are two tested, legally-sound options for elections where no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote: instant runoff voting, in which voters may choose to rank candidates in order of preference, or a second runoff election held some weeks after the general.
Opposition banked on unfamiliarity and low trust in the legislature
The campaign faced intense opposition from Montana’s political establishment in the final weeks of the election. Television and internet ads from opposition group Montanans for Fair Elections emphasized the proposals’ out-of-state backing and encouraged residents to “keep voting simple” and vote “no” on the measures.
The poorer performance of the majority-winner measure, compared with the open primary measure, may have stemmed from the uncertainty it created. It did not specify how majority winners were to be guaranteed, referring the question to the state legislature. Low trust in the legislature and confusion about what a majority-winner rule would entail may have accounted for its lagging vote total.
Vote was close, future is bright
Though reform measures failed at the ballot box this year, the door is not closed to fixing election pitfalls in Montana. The results for the two amendments indicate that nearly half of Montanans are seeking more choices and voices in primary and general elections. In future legislative sessions and election cycles, a 48 percent contingent of reform-minded constituents could have great sway in which ideas the Big Sky state considers next.
Sightline is monitoring other electoral reform ballot measures in Cascadia. See our reports on Alaska, Idaho, and Oregon.
