Yesterday Matt brought up the money the RNC is planning to dump onto the state airwaves. In that post, Matt speculates why they're bothering to spend money in the state. After all, Montana's worth only 3 Electoral College votes, a Montana win for Obama pretty much means McCain's lost everywhere else already, and the money could probably be put to better use elsewhere.
Well, today's report by Matt Gouras on Obama's efforts in the state led me to wonder, why in the h*ll did Obama spend so much money and effort in the state? I mean, based on the details -- 19 offices, 14,000 volunteers, developing subtle and sophisticated Western-based policy -- this wasn't just a feint to draw McCain's resources to the state. Obama sincerely wants to win Montana.
Remember late in the 2006 campaign when all the state's newspapers started endorsing Jon Tester? I'm getting that feeling again...with all the usual caveats about how endorsements don't swing elections.
At this extremely challenging time, America needs a uniter, not a divider. In this economic turmoil, America needs a thoughtful, cool-headed optimist who envisions a bright future for all citizens. After several years in which worldwide respect for America has been diminished, our great nation needs a new leader who can inspire confidence at home and abroad.
Obama is that leader. As Gen. Colin Powell said last week, Obama is the president America needs now "because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities. ... He has both style and substance."
I'm inclined to agree with Ed Kemmick. What's up with accusing someone of defending criminals...when they were a defense attorney? Er, isn't that his job?
Seriously, if you're going to go negative...try using something that's genuinely repulsive, like the fact the man advocates deregulation of, and big tax cuts for, big corporations. After all, we're in an economic crisis, right?
By the way, that MSU-B poll contains a number of goodies. Unmentioned in my post last night about the gubernatorial race are the poll results for the Land Board races, and, according to MSU-B, Democrats are sittin' pretty:
The poll also had Democrats leading in three of the four remaining top statewide races, with no polling data available for the superintendent of Public Instruction race.
The MSU-Billings poll shows Linda McCulloch leading incumbent Republican Secretary of State Brad Johnson by 40.6 percent to 34.6 percent, with 21 percent undecided. Democrat Monica Lindeen leads Republican Duane Grimes in the race for state auditor by a margin of 41.1 percent to 34.6 percent, with 24.3 percent undecided. Democrat Steve Bullock leads Republican Tim Fox in the race for attorney general by a margin of 45.1 to 37.6 percent, with 17.3 percent undecided.
The polls also showed that 42.6% of respondents planned to vote Democratic for their local state House representative -- up from 34% in 2006 -- and two points higher than those planning to vote Republican.
That's good news, but there's a lot of uncertainty to this poll. For one, the margin of error is pretty high because of the sample size, and there's a lot of undecided voters out there. And a majority of Montanans could still vote Democratic for legislative races, and we'd still see a Republican majority if the wrong races turn out the wrong way.
If anything, this should be a big red flag for anyone out there espousing progressive values; if we relax now and don't work our tails off to get the word and the vote out, we could wake up to a nasty surprise next Wedneday morning.
Unfortunately data on the Superintendent's race isn't available. (There was a sampling error.) That's a shame, largely because I can't think of a more lopsided race as far as experience, ability and intelligence are concerned, and, frankly, the future of Montana's schools are at stake. Needless to say, Pogie feels the same way. Of course Don's a teacher, so he actually cares about this race.
Juneau's credentials are impressive, starting with degrees from Montana State University, Harvard's Graduate School of Education and the University of Montana School of Law.
She's been a classroom teacher, a law clerk at the state Supreme Court and most recently Director of Indian Education at OPI.
She is familiar with the department's operations, and she has a good grasp of its role.
The Republican nominee for the office, Elaine Sollie Herman, says she has four perspectives on education in Montana: first as a student in tiny Broadview and in Billings; as a teacher with a degree from MSU; as a "customer" with a daughter who was educated in Helena; and as a taxpayer.
Heh. Oh, and Herman hasn't worked as a teacher since...when? The mid-1980s?
Anyway. Things are looking up, but we still need to do our final push to get the vote out before next week. So...what are you waiting for?
The last gubernatorial debate was held last night in Great Falls, and there was all kinds of sparring between Schweitzer and Brown. Ho hum.
Ho hum? Yup, ho hum, what with the MSU-B poll showing Schweitzer with a 33-point lead and less than two weeks before the election.
All right, you know the drill, let's crunch those numbers! First, the trends among the latest polls:
10/24 - MSU-B: Schweitzer 60, Brown 27
10/19 - Research 2000: Schweitzer 57 (62/33), Brown 40 (41/51)
10/2 - Rasmussen: Schweitzer 56 (65/35), Brown 41 (45/48)
9/22 - Mellman Group: Schweitzer 63, Brown 24
7/31 - Rassmussen: Schweitzer 56 (64/27), Brown 32 (37/41)
Sadly, the MSU-B poll doesn't record favoribility ratings, but those polled did say Brown ran the "most negative" campaign, 30.1% to 12.8%.
And, really, there's not much to say about this poll, other than it feels like an outlier, especially when measuring Roy Brown's base of support. Still, it makes that Mellman report look a little better, doesn't it?
One note, the other day when I scrutinized the MSU-B poll for the presidential election, I wondered if they got the youth vote right, and that explained the positive results for Obama. Well, today I noticed this little line under "Statistically Significant Relationships":
Age was not related to vote intention.
Not sure what to make of that. Did the MSU-B poll get the youth vote wrong? Or are there too many polls showing the presidential candidates are in a dead heat among the young here in Montana? I'm betting the former, that polling in Montana has too stringent requirements for accurately counting young voters in the results.
Anyhow, outlier or not, it's apparent Schweitzer looks like a safe bet to win re-election, despite the best efforts of the GOP to manufacture controversey. In fact, so much so that Dan Testa is already speculating about how the current state budget surplus plays out politically in the next state legislature, a sort of tacit admittance that this election is over, and that the composition of the legislature is what we should be focusing on.
Which reminds me. I wrote up a "state of the elections" piece for the front page of the Daily Kos on Friday as part of a series called, "Listening Locally," in which state bloggers report on the important down-ballot doings in their respective states. Nothing new there, just an appeal to Kossaks to look over some of our local races.
With the election approaching, fast, it's time to remember what's at stake for the state in these legislative battles. The Capitol Blogger wrote up a couple of posts, one comparing the likely leadership teams of the two parties -- and if you love having middle-aged white guys calling all the shots, you'll love a Republican legislature -- and a peek into the Republican energy "policy."
Ugh. Double ugh.
So, are you ready for one last week of donating to candidates?
What with all the ugly aspects of this year's election -- the angry rhetoric, the voter suppression, the never-ending political horse race news -- it's hard to remember that the 2008 election was accompanied by a lot of creative, political-oriented endeavors. For a political junkie like me who feels that it's our obligation to pay attention to this stuff and then do something, the art, humor, video and pictures are wonderful and refreshing. Some of it inspires, some titillates, some angers. And some make you laugh, good cathartic belly-bustin' howls of laughter.
In the past week or so, there's been a slew of interesting videos. Check 'em out below the fold.
That's a cool 9-point swing from the last Research 2000 poll, and as Matt mentioned, it looks like they under-represented the state's youth vote. That, along with Paul's presence on the ballot, means anything goes here. I'd still list this thing as "leans McCain" in Montana, but it's probably closer to "tossup."
The gubernatorial race trends:
10/19 - Research 2000: Schweitzer 57 (62/33), Brown 40 (41/51)
10/2 - Rasmussen: Schweitzer 56 (65/35), Brown 41 (45/48)
9/22 - Mellman Group: Schweitzer 63, Brown 24
7/31 - Rassmussen: Schweitzer 56 (64/27), Brown 32 (37/41)
The Research 2000 poll confirms what the Rasmussen poll found earlier in the month: Brian Schweitzer is hanging on to support in the high 50s, which he's enjoyed all summer. His favorable ratings also hold steady, something that Roy Brown should envy, what with his unfavorable rating steadily mounting to a high of 51 percent in yesterday's poll.
You might find more volatile polling numbers with an incumbent that's polarizing -- with favorable/unfavorable ratings in the high 40s -- but Schweitzer is popular across the political spectrum, winning an 82 percent favorable rating from Democrats, a 66 rating with independents, and even a 42 percent rating with Republicans.
Brown, on the other hand, has a huge unfavorable rating to dig himself out of in just a few days. A fifty-one percent unfavorable rating? More than half the electorate dislikes the Republican candidate, including 56 percent of independents.
I harp on these ratings, because they show the potential of a candidate to move through the polls. Unfavorable ratings express voters' dislike; it's harder to win votes from people who dislike your candidate than it is from undecideds or from voters who like your candidate, but are voting for the other guy. In short, in order to win this race, Roy Brown not only has to win all of the remaining undecideds, he has to win votes from voters who actively dislike him. Schweitzer, on the other hand, has five or so percent of voters who view his administration favorably, but are either undecided or voting for Brown.
Given Obama's penchant for brining new and under-represented young voters into the fold, and given the favorability ratings of the gubernatorial candidates, if this race is going to move, it seems likely it'll move in Schweitzer's direction.
As for the Rehberg/Driscoll race, in which our Representative just cracked 50 (he's up 52-38) in a race in which his opponent has endorsed him...and after Rehberg cast his ballot against the bailout bill...well, the less said, the better. This was a golden opportunity for a populist progressive to really put a dent into Rehberg, if not unseat him. Imagine what might have happened if Driscoll actually campaigned.
'Nuff ced.
Update (by Matt) -- Just to clarify something and make an observation. First, I don't think R2K undersamples the youth vote, I think it understates how pro-Obama the youth vote in Montana will be. National numbers regarding the white youth vote are more favorable than the Montana numbers in this poll. That is surprising since white Montanans tend to vote more Democratic than white Americans as a whole and given that 10-12% of the youth in Montana aren't white.
Second, it is now pretty clear that the Mellman poll that cause so much furor in this state was an outlier. This isn't to say that Mellman is a bad pollster. Even good pollsters produce weird polls relatively often. It's SCIENCE! But it validates the conservative complaints about it a bit. That said, it is still pretty clear that Schweitzer is looking at a blowout unless something significant changes.
I understand that it's a rough year to be a Republican. I understand that it's rough having conservative ideals, and watching them fail, spectacularly. Conservative foreign policy gave us Iraq. Conservative governance gave us the prosecutor purge, deficeits, collapsing bridges, torture, and the banking crisis. I also understand it's human nature to retract and get defensive rather than fess up and change your way.
Still, the rhetoric emanating from the right over the Obama campaign is, frankly, reprehensible.
Kevin Drum posted a compiliation of some recent examples a couple of weeks ago:
One: Bill Ayers really wrote Obama's book, Dreams From My Father. Two: Obama had an underage, gay affair with a pedophile. (That, by the way, is called "molestation," folks. -- Jay) Three: It's entirely possible that Obama was involved with bombing the South African rugby team while he was at Columbia in the 80s. Four: Obama, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright (via a chain of associations too Rube Goldbergesque to summarize) were engaged in a conspiracy to teach Pan-African "cultural nationalism" to Chicago schoolkids during the 90s. Five: Obama was having an affair with one of his fundraiser babes in 2004 until Michelle found out and banished the woman to a "little Caribbean island."
And then there was serious discussion about whether Obama is a Maoist or a Stalinist...and this was at the Corner, the blog for the National Review, a "reputable" magazine. This week's hooplah is that Obama was accused of altering a United States flag to put an "O" in the field of stars and standing it alongside US flags during a speech in Toledo. Turns out it was an Ohio state flag. To sum it up, apparently Obama is a "black Muslim, anti-Christian socialist plotting with an evil Jewish billionaire."
And let's not ignore the fact that a lot of this is encouraged, if not abetted by the McCain/Palin ticket. It's McCain and Palin, for example, who are pushing the Bill Ayers line of attack. It's McCain/Palin who are pushing the ACORN story. It's Sarah Palin who's identifying certain areas of the country as "pro-America."
FiveThirtyEight's Sean Quinn finally got around to profiling Montana in its "Road to 270" series, and it starts thusly:
The last, best place, Montana's vast blue skies and fierce independent streak make it one of the more fascinating political venues in the nation.
Amen.
The sections on what the candidates have going for them seem pretty accurate. McCain's got probably got a lot of folks afraid for their guns after their fears have been properly stoked by the NRA; Obama's got the ground game and the enthusiasm.
But where the post gets interesting is when Elliot ties Brian Schweitzer's national career ambitions to the outcome of this election's legislative races:
In truth, one of Brian's weaknesses in 2006 was recruiting across-the-board strong candidates to run for state legislature. Montana's house flipped blue-to-red in 2006, the only state legislative body to flip in that direction during the massive Democratic wave. If Dems face the same troubles this year (which is why the early flirting with the Clinton camp, having her at the top of the ticket in Montana, seemed especially crazy), Schweitzer will have trouble implementing many of his policy ideas, which in turn will leave him with a rougher resume for the future.
Thus, for those inside baseball political junkies who want to know if Schweitzer has national possibilities after his second term ends in 2012 (Energy Secretary, then 2016?), watch the local legislative races in Montana.
Interesting, eh? On one hand, Elliot seems to be saying these legislative elections are a test of Schweitzer's mettle -- whether he can, by force of will and personality, wedge in a Democratic majority into the legislature. On the other, Elliot thinks that, without a resume of accomplishments achieved with a legislative majority, we won't know what the Good Gov is capable of.
Either way, this is a challenge to the Governor. A lot of folks read FiveThirtyEight that don't follow Montana politics closely. And while you could argue that, say, the composition of the state senate is beyond Schweitzer's control, national party leaders might not be considering the subtleties when doling out cabinet seats or other national political perks in 2012 and beyond...
How did Obama do? David Ignatius: "What these debates have shown America is that Barack Obama, the skinny guy with the funny name, is a calm and coherent voice in a frightening time. He has been leaderly, reassuring, respectful of his opponent but tough in making his case. Let's just say it: In the three debates, he has sounded presidential."
My feeling is that what the Obama campaign was out to establish in these debates, that he has the demeanor and knowledge to be president. I'm not really sure what the McCain campaign set out to do, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't to showcase McCain's unease and temper.
I'm with Nate Silver. I thought McCain actually sounded pretty good at the opening of the debate (although his smile looked forced, eh?), but lost it when asked about negative campaigning: "McCain's implication that Obama was principally responsible for the negative tone of the campaign was simply not going to be credible to most voters. Certainly, the Obama campaign has been negative at times -- more often than either the Al Gore or John Kerry -- and on several occasions explictly misleading. But voters came into the debate thinking by 2:1 margins (pdf) that McCain was running a negative campaign and Obama a positive one. To try and fight against that tide was a significant mistake."
(By the way, it's worth noting that McCain blamed his negative campaigning on Obama's reluctance to engage with McCain in multiple town-hall debates. Disproportionate reaction, anyone?)
Then, after accusing Obama of running a negative campaign, McCain went negative, full-tilt, bringing up both ACORN and Ayers.
The negativity had a cost. Ezra Klein: "McCain scored the most points, and lost the debate. He was looking to land shots, and often succeeded. But the effort to find openings and vulnerabilities left him with little time to appear presidential. And if he connected with jabs, he never found his knockout blow. Worse, the attacks came at a cost: The angry energy showed on McCain's face as clearly as in his answers. CNN, at least, had the split screen, and McCain was grimacing, twitching, blinking, sighing, smirking, eye-rolling. Scores of YouTubers are, as we speak, constructing videos that will be nothing but a three minute collection of McCain's angry tics. They will make Gore's affectations in 2000 look mild. He looked like nothing so much as a man enduring acute gastrointestinal discomfort."
The IR liked the fact that the state economy grew under Schweitzer's first administration and liked the Good Guv's funding of education. ("It was Schweitzer who ended years of deteriorating state funding for public schools with a steep increase.") The paper thinks Brown's name-calling isn't working, and seems to think his "tax cut" platform is a little shallow. Interestingly, the IR editorial board specifically mentions the business equipment tax and says it prefers Schweitzer's plan to keep a tax on the top level of businesses, because, as Schweitzer put it, "the windfall for big corporations is likely to disappear beyond our borders without any benefit to our state." Amen.
But I especially liked the endorsement of Juneau:
Juneau sees big issues in education beyond funding and federal bureaucracy. Her priorities include addressing poverty's affect on students, the need for early childhood education, school outreach to business and labor, parent involvement and quality after-school and summer enrichment opportunities for students.
Juneau already supervises a division of state employees and is responsible for a multimillion-dollar budget. Stepping up to the superintendent's office would mean taking on a larger version of the job she's already doing. Articulate, intelligent and energetic, Juneau is the best candidate for the job of leading and advocating for Montana's K-12 schools.
That's absolutely spot on. As the regular readers know, I'm a big fan of Juneau's. She's absolutely, and without question, the right candidate for this job.
But also notice the positive qualities attributed to Juneau -- she has experience, she's "articulate, intelligent, and energetic" -- that win her the endorsement. One also wonders if what's unspoken is that these qualities are what seperate her from her opponent...
In an unusual move three weeks before the election and after a failed attempt to challenge registration of voters in some Democratic strongholds, the Montana Republican Party said Tuesday night it was changing executive directors.
Former state Rep. Larry Grinde of Lewistown was named the party's executive director after Jake Eaton resigned "to pursue other interests," the press release said.
Eaton said he quit three weeks before the election because he has an "opportunity" in Madison, Wisconsin. If you're not familiar with Madison, let's just say it's a kind of political Siberia for someone like Eaton. It's a lovely town, though, and I hope Eaton finds solace in the myriad, liberal cafes, using public, all-access wireless, and enjoying the background banter of omnipresent Obama supporters. Heh heh.
That said, Eaton's obviously the fall guy here. There's no way Eaton, a recent college grad, challenges the voting eligibility of 6,000 Montanans on his own. The methods too closely resemble voter suppression efforts elsewhere to be coincidence. Take, for example, the voter suppression effort in Michigan, which was smaller in scale ("only" 1,500 voters), but had a similar outcome. There, the federal judge ruled that the Michigan Secretary of State's office -- run by a Republican -- violated federal law in its efforts to purge the rolls of voters because voter cards were returned as "undeliverable" or because voters applied for a driver's license in another state. And, as if on cue, John McCain, using ACORN as a causus belli, is calling for an "immediate investigation" of "voter fraud" in battleground states. (By the way, the LA Times story has a succinct explanation of how ACORN operates, and what kind of fraud is actually taking place. I've exerpted the relevant passages below the fold.)
No, the one who's responsible must be Erik Iverson, the chairman of the state GOP and Dennis Rehberg's chief of staff.
Here are some good questions for Iverson:
Who came up with the idea to challenge Montana voters registration?
Did you approve the plan?
Did you approve the use of state party funds and employee time to generate the list of challenged voters?
Was there pressure from the McCain campaign or the national party to challenge voters in known Democratic communities?
Just yesterday I pointed out the rosy picture of the Senate; Democrats are poised to win as many as eight seats, and a supra-majority -- 60 seats -- isn't out of reach.
There are other recent signs of the coming political apocalypse for the Republican party.
For one, the lastest CBS poll shows a national 14-point lead for Obama in the presidential race. While Nate Silver explains CBS tends to be an outlier favoring the Democrats, there are at least seven polls showing Obama with a double-digit lead. Silver also points to the early voting results that show a massive lead for Obama; that the Democratic candidate leads in early voting is atypical in recent presidential races. Both in 2000 and 2004 Bush led the early voting by a modest amount.
This gloomy picture of the presidential race has the RNC diverting its new money to Senate races rather than to McCain's lackluster campaign:
The Republican National Committee, growing nervous over the prospect of Democrats' winning a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, is considering tapping into a $5 million line of credit this week to aid an increasing number of vulnerable incumbents, top Republicans say.
With party strategists fearing a bloodbath at the polls, GOP officials are shifting to triage mode, determining who can be saved and where to best spend their money.
"Bloodbath." "Triage mode." Nice.
Lest I forget the House, there, too, Democrats are expecting to make some serious gains. And there, too, Republicans are having difficulty funding races. News just broke that the House Republican election group -- the RSCC -- can no longer fund challengers and is concentrating its resources on protecting incumbents. Which means that Democrats are free to concentrate on their challengers.
Now that's not to say we should be overly confident. That's not to say that there's not a lot of work to do, especially locally for county and state races. But on a national level, the outlook is good.
Nate Silver's post on this election's outlook on the Senate races reminds me I've been writing a lot about the presidential and local elections, and not much about Congressional elections across the country.
In short, things are lookin' mighty good for Democtrats. Silver's projections show that Democrats are favored to pick up eight Senate seats, in Alaska, Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, and Minnesota. Count 'em up. If they do win all eight seats, that would give Democrats 59 seats -- counting Lieberman -- or one shy of a "supramajority" needed to avoid Republican filibusters, the bane of good, progressive legislation this session.
Additionally, Democrats are playing strong in three other Senate races, in Kentucky, Georgia, and Mississippi, all of whose Republican candidates are enjoying slim single-digit leads. Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, especially, has seen his lead plummet from double digits as the electorate responds to his cheerleading of the bailout bill.
Finally the bill is coming due for years of Republican misconduct and incompetence.
Well, this is cool! Ed Tinsley has a couple of commercials running! You can check 'em out below the fold.
I love this stuff, especially for down-ballot races. Yeah, the commercials aren't as polished. But they're more authentic somehow.
Anyhow. You might remember Ed Tinsley as the guy who was the first superdelegate in Montana to move to Barack Obama. Or you might remember Ed from his days blogging at the DNC.
Or you might know Ed as your county commissioner.
Check out his website. As with any candidate for office, donations and volunteers are surely needed...
"The Sidewalk to Nowhere, McCain Supporters in Bethlehem, PA"
This is how far the election has degraded. This is the fruit of years of Republicans playing the culture war. This anger is what John McCain is deliberately whipping up in the last, desperate days of his campaign.
So...what's CI 44? It would allow public funds to be invested in private stock. I guess you could argue what banks need right now is an injection of capital...but...you know...well, I'll let the Gazette say it.
Gazette:
The option of investing public trust monies in stocks holds little appeal in this uncertain financial climate. In the fall of 2008, it's good to be reassured that Montana trust funds are conservatively invested. CA-44 deserves the defeat it is certain to meet at the ballot box.
The latest poll results are in for the presidential election, this time from the American Research Group. The results? A five-point edge for McCain. They've got McCain up, 50-45.
We've already discusssed the Research 2000 results, and found that it's likely the poll, showing McCain winning the youth vote by 5, probably erred on the side of McCain. How much was anyone's guess. The subsequent Rasmussen poll seemed to confirm that suspicion, as they pegged McCain's lead to be only 8 points.
So...the ARG poll certainly paints a rosier picture. And it pegs Obama's support among 18 - 49 year olds to be Obama +5, which suggests they got the youth vote right.
A couple of thoughts. First, trying to track progression based on four different polls from four different pollsters is a fool's game. What looks like a general trend towards Obama could be the result of differing methodologies. And even if there is progress in this race, McCain has reached 50 percent in three of the four polls. I'm with Matt: it's close, but I suspect McCain will carry the day in Montana.
That said, we're making progress. If Obama finishes with 45 percent, that's still the best a Democratic candidate has done in Montana since the Johnson administration. And after the '06 and '08 elections, Democrats have a large and well-organized grassroots presence in the state. If Obama is going to be as good a president I think he is, I'm betting he'll win the state outright in 2012. But then I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, aren't I?
Update (by Matt) -- Good to see a poll showing the race tightening -- which we would expect given national trends. McCain should still be favored to win the state, but we'll see what happens with the ground game and also what Americans think of John McCain's amazing imploding campaign. If national polls keep their trends going, Montana could move into Obama's column.
John Mudd's solid and well written complaint made it clear that Eaton lacked the proper evidence to purge the voter rolls of Democratic counties; I suspect the GOP retreated in part to avoid a decision issued by Justice Molloy. Why set a precedent and possibly be forced to ditch one of your best election tricks, when there might come a better time and a friendlier judge to legitimize voter suppression?
Obviously the public outcry had something to do with Eaton's retreat. That much is made obvious by Eaton's public fallback onto his military record. Like John McCain, Eaton seems to view his service as some "get out of jail free" card for all subsequent malicious behavior.
Attention, Jake Eaton: we thank you and admire you for your service, but you're still an *sshole.
Mike Dennison's got a report on the Democratic challenge against the GOP's voter suppression attempt in today's papers -- but check out Bob Gentry's post from last night for an analysis and to read the complaint yourself. Also check out Helena IR editorial from Sharid and Katherine Haque-Hausrath explaining succinctly why Jake Eaton's challenge fails to meet sufficient standards as defined by Montana law to challenge voters' right to vote.
But the big splash in the newspapers this morning is the Billings Gazette editorial. It labeled the GOP's challenge a "partisan political maneuver" and decried the effort.
In short, the Gazette's editorial board minced no words and called like it is. An attempt to swing elections in favor of the Republican party.
I've reprinted the Gazette editorial in its entirety below the fold.
As we've said before (Missoulian editorial, "Governor's remarks an insult to state," Sept. 14) we're no fans of Schweitzer's speech, but neither do we appreciate anything that makes it harder for people - of any political stripe - to exercise their right to vote. Nor do we want to see the already-busy elections office saddled with unnecessary work less than a month before a general election that has them bracing for record voter turnout.
Uh...great. Er, this is the paper that's serving the very community whose votes are challenged. Your readers' ability to have a say in the political process is being attacked...couldn't we see some old-fashioned outrage, like what was doled out in today's Gazette?
