| The Attorney General has an obligation to protect the integrity of the election system by not allowing voters to be misled about a ballot initiative's true purpose, effects, and fiscal impact.
So why would he allow Rick Jore and Trevis Butcher to put forward another fraudulent ballot initiative (Yep, this same Butcher is on the board of this initiative campaign) --this time, an initiative to amend the constitution to strip away the privacy rights of all Montana women without tipping off the voters as to what this proposed initiative would really do and its exorbitant costs to Montana taxpayers?
First, there are some obvious problems with the latest Butcher/Jore amendment:
If passed, it would prevent a woman from getting an abortion - even if her life is in jeopardy - prevent treatments like in vitro fertilization, and allow legislators and the courts to dictate permissible activities and medical care for pregnant women.
I would think the AG would also be worried that the proposed initiative could seriously burden the court system by requiring court-appointed guardians to advocate for fertilized eggs and fetuses. Yet, the Attorney General didn't even bother request a fiscal impact statement on the potential costs to the state.
Maybe someone dropped the ball and this just fell through the cracks.
It couldn't have been a political decision--even arch religious conservative groups like the Montana Catholic Conference, Right to Life Montana and the Montana Family Foundation, have rejected this proposed initiative as too extreme.
It couldn't have been that he couldn't find substantive legal problems with the language. The Billings Gazette has already reported on some of the many legal problems with the language pointed out by Legislative Services Attorney David Niss such as
... the proposed ballot statements fail to make it clear that the three proposals apparently are intended to prohibit abortion.
You don't have to be an Attorney General to know that initiative language is supposed to tell voters what the initiative will actually do. It has some other wacky legal implications too. Implications that were pointed out for Bullock in this handy memo.
For example, the proposed initiative seeks to grant constitutional due process rights to all fertilized human eggs by amending the due process section of the Montana Constitution to define "person" as "from the beginning of the biological development." This definition is so broad that it could include unfertilized eggs and sperm, potentially impacting all sexual activity of men and women. Also, by requiring the Legislature to implement "this section by appropriate legislation," the initiative could remove every Montanans' current ability to pursue claims of due process violations. |
