Incumbents running for re-election hate having their voting records misrepresented. Therefore, Montana has a law telling candidates running against incumbents how they must present the voting records of the incumbents.
SB-289 modifies that law in a way that will produce some bloated campaign literature:
(3) (a) Printed election material described in subsection (1) that includes information about another candidate's voting record must include the following:
Here’s the cleaned-up version of ii:
How they voted on SB-289 will be an issue for some incumbents seeking re-election in 2016. In the MT Senate, there were at most three votes: the vote in the state administration committee, and the second and third readings. But in the MT House, by my count, SB-289 was voted on 28 times. Here’s what SB-289’s status page looks like:
Because HB-289 was amended in the House, it’s been returned to the Senate for approval of the bill as amended. That probably will required blasting it out of committee again.