5 April 2019 — 0622 mdt

Would Montanans have approved a single-subject
initiative repealing the sunset on expanded Medicaid?

We’ll never know: no such initiative has ever been on the ballot in Montana. In 2018, Initiative 185, which included repealing expanded Medicaid’s sunset, lost by 28,129 votes, a 47.1 to 52.9 percent — but I-185 was not a single-subject initiative. Instead, it raised tobacco taxes, dedicated the revenue to several programs, and repealed the sunset. Scroll down for a breakdown of the ballot measure’s many parts.

The importance of that distinction cannot be underscored heavily enough. The voters could not cast separate votes on each issue in I-185. They had to vote for a bundle, presenting the possibility of someone voting No because he disliked raising taxes more than he liked extending expanded Medicaid. It’s possible that voter, had he been presented with an initiative just raising tobacco taxes, and a initiative just removing the sunset, might have voted against raising taxes but for removing the sunset.

Therefore, the defeat of I-185 cannot be interpreted as proving beyond doubt that Montanans oppose extending expanded Medicaid. Opponents of extending expanded Medicaid who contend that I-185’s defeat proves that voters made a definitive judgment are not making a logical argument. The result was not irrefutably dispositive, and therefore the legislature can extend the program.

Another argument against extending expanded Medicaid was made during the second reading debate on Rep. Ed. Buttrey’s bill, HB-658, last week. Several legislators said they were voting against the bill because I-185 was defeated in their districts. Many politicians employ that form of argument to justify voting for or against an issue, but it’s an attempt to employ the Electoral College approach to an issue that’s decided by the popular vote of the state (or other political entity), not by district votes.

I-185’s ballot language. In the voter’s pamphlet, and on the ballot, the summary of the ballot measure is presented as a headline, a dense paragraph describing what the ballot measure’s authors want the voters to authorize, and a line for marking the Ayes and Nays. Below, I present the ballot language reorganized into paragraphs to make it easier see how many subject were covered. The bold magenta headlines are reading aids that I inserted.

Helpful resources. (1) spreadsheet comparing the 2004 and 2018 tobacco tax initiatives by counts, (2) a scatterplot displaying the level of support for I-149 and I-185 as a function of the number of registered voters in a county, Montana State University’s post election survey reporting how various demographic groups voted on I-185.