Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Updated. I-170, the Healthy Montana citizens initiative that would have expanded Medicaid to 70,000 low income Montanans, won’t be on the general election ballot in November. Its sponsors announced today that they failed to collect enough signatures. According to Matt Voltz of the Associated Press, an internal audit conducted by the organizers revealed that as many as 30 percent — almost one of three — of the signatures collected would be invalidated.
I’m not surprised. The approval of ballot language was delayed — see Montana Cowgirl for more details — and the signature gathering operation never struck me as particularly well organized, or as having a strategy for countering the impacts of voting by mail and low voter turnout in the primary election.
There’s also the possibility that I-170’s backers were using the initiative as a tool to get Medicaid expanded in a special legislative session. Commenting at Montana Cowgirl, sometimes controversial Democratic political operative Bob Brigham said:
But remember, the initiative was never a viable mechanism for change (the voters can’t appropriate money), the whole point of the initiative was to provide leverage for a Special Session.
So instead of collecting signatures last summer, organizers rallied for a Special Session. http://www.mtwomenslobby.org/2013/09/17/help-us-expand-medicaid-this-fall/
It was only after Bullock chickened out on calling a Special Session that anyone got serious about collecting signatures. A initiative wasn’t filed until Nov 21 (a whopping 149 days after campaign was launched). Then withdrawn and resubmitted on Dec 13 (that was the version Fox blocked).
Also commenting at Cowgirl, Jan Thomas observed:
Bob could have be right on one point – after all Schweitzer was able to get the lobbying ban by former legislators/ethics in government initiate qualified and passed in 2006. He had the Democratic Party hire organizers and required all MDP field staff to get the signature to get this on the ballot and raised the money for the democrats to get it done…
At this point, I’m inclined to think that the initiative’s organizers underestimated the difficulty of gathering signatures in an era of mail ballots and low turnout; many of I-170’s supporters also support voting by mail, and support it blindly and with great enthusiasm. But an obsolete signature gathering strategy is not incompatible with Brigham’s thesis. Using the Democratic Party’s excellent walking lists, signatures could have been collected door-to-door as well as in areas with high levels of foot traffic.
I-170’s failure to qualify for the ballot means it can’t be defeated in the general election. That’s the only silver in the lining of this debacle, which will demoralize supporters of expanded Medicaid and lower the odds that Medicaid will be expanded in Montana.