11 July 2018 — 1047 mdt

An electoral history of Montana’s university levy

On 6 November, voters will decide whether to extend Montana’s 6-mil university levy for another ten years. As Pete Talbot notes at The Montana Post, approval is not a slam dunk. There’s actually an active campaign against the levy. Should the levy fail, tuition may be increased.

The first 6-mil levy was put to, and approved by, the voters in 1948, but a statewide university levy was put to the voters in 1914, when only men could vote. In 1920, women voted and the university levy passed. So did all subsequent university levies.

See Charles Johnson’s story from 2008 to learn more about the dirty essay controversy in 1968. The incident is an amusing footnote today, but it was a major row 50 years ago, a row that exerted considerable influence on the drafting of Montana’s new constitution.

Note. On 17 July 2017, Flathead Memo published a limited history of the university levy.