A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

1 April 2015

What one hopes is an unintended consequence of SB-289

Major votes on SB-289. Here are the votes on the second and third readings in the MT House and Senate as a spreadsheet or PDF.

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:

  1. a reference to the particular vote or votes upon which the information is based;

  2. a disclosure of contrasting all votes known to have been made by the candidate on the same issue if the contrasting votes were made in any of the previous 6 years legislative bill or enactment; and [SB-289 PDF, page 13, lines 3–4]

Here’s the cleaned-up version of ii:

  1. a disclosure of all votes by the candidate on the same legislative bill or enactment; and [PDF, page 13, lines 3–4]

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:

sb-289_vote_sheet

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.