10 December 2018 — 1049 mst

Cuffe leads GOP’s attack on election day voter registration

President Trump held a campaign rally in Bozeman on Saturday, 3 November 2018. Would he have held that rally had voter registration closed the day before? That’s a question Montana’s Republicans would be wise to ponder. Not being able to convert the enthusiasm of the rally into new registrations and votes would have diminished the value of his visit.

My impression is that after the provisional votes were counted, some Republicans gained votes relative to their Democratic opponents. Although Trump’s Tester bashing didn’t produce a victory for Rosendale, it may well have goosed Republican turnout and helped in downballot contests. Except for the U.S. Senate election, Republicans did very well in Montana on 6 November; better than many expected they would do.

That, of course, runs counter to standard Republican dogma, which holds that election day registration helps Democrats. Therefore, Sen. Mike Cuffe (R-Eureka, SD-1) has requested LC-2886, which has the short title of “Revise voter registration to end at 5 PM the Friday prior to the election.” Similar legislation has failed in every legislative session for at least a decade, and it will fail in the 2019 session, too. But that has not deterred Montana’s Republicans from their quest to deny their fellow citizens the opportunity to vote at the last minute.

They might want to reconsider their opposition to election day registration. There may be more Republicans among the procrastinators than the conventional wisdom supposes.