Security footage of a man touching a ballot box in Browning sparked a brief viral firestorm last week with Republicans Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen claiming in a statement released by her 2024 re-election campaign that the video showed “undeniable” evidence of election rigging by a political operative.

“The actions caught on camera reveal how desperate Democrats have become in Montana,” Jacobsen said in a statement, referring to claims that the man was a member of the Democratic Party. “Ballot tampering is a criminal offense and those responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Jacobsen’s allegation of tampering mirrored language used by Glacier County Elections Administrator Crystal Cole in an Oct. 21 email alerting Jacobsen’s office to the incident, and the framing quickly made headlines in conservative media outlets , inclusive Fox News. Glacier County officials later dismissed the claims as unfounded, noting that the person in the video — a former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee staffer — was questioned by the Glacier County Sheriff’s Office and released without criminal charges.

Glacier County Attorney Terryl Matt did not respond to emails from the Montana Free Press, but KRTV Great Falls said last week“The behavior captured in the video does not constitute a legitimate attempt to manipulate the ballot box or the electoral process.” DSCC also did not respond to an MTFP email seeking comment.

The rhetoric inspired by the episode evoked a larger trend in Montana elections in recent years, one characterized by increased skepticism about the security of infrastructure and systems used to organize those elections. Concerned citizens have filed many public records requests with local electoral offices, leveled allegations of misconduct from county election officials and sometimes took it upon themselves watchdog suspected suspicious activity. For Geraldine Custer, a former Republican state representative and 36-year veteran of the Rosebud County elections office, the growing public distrust of the election process has sparked a personal fear that some Montanans may stop participating.

“I felt like people weren’t going to vote,” Custer told MTFP. “They weren’t going to trust the system. They would think, “Why bother?”

Custer is one of a handful of former state and local officials who have put their concerns about apostasy into action in Montana elections this year, partnering with the nonprofit Carter Center in Georgia and the University of Montana’s Mansfield Center to impartially observe the status of November. 5 choices. Called the Montana Election Observation Initiative, the group has spent the past few months recruiting and training 175 volunteers from 15 counties tasked with monitoring various local election proceedings. According to coordinator Daniel Bruce, the initiative will include Montana’s five largest municipalities and a sample of smaller, rural counties.

“In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen a lot of traction and positive engagement,” Bruce recently told MTFP. “We’re still looking to add a few people here and there in each of those rural communities to increase that level of coverage … But overall, we’re in a really good place and we’re really excited about the level of engagement. and emotion that we saw from the communities.”

The Carter Center led a similar initiative in Georgia during the 2022 midterm elections and is conducting observation efforts with local leaders in New Mexico again this year.

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Former COPP Jeff Mangan and former Republican Rep. Geraldine Custer have launched an effort to observe the 2024 Montana election in an attempt to counter election misinformation. The Montana Election Observation Initiative is supported by the global nonprofit Carter Center.

Bruce added that volunteers will act as nonpartisan observers of local Election Day operations, working on a checklist that sequentially follows the steps outlined in state law for processing ballots and tabulating votes. The observers’ collective observations will then be used to generate a post-election report of the initiative’s findings, including a description of each step of the process and notes on any significant concerns or observed deviations from established procedure. Bruce added that volunteers will be subject to a strict code of conduct that emphasizes professionalism and non-intervention in the operations they observe, and have been trained to prioritize their own safety and withdraw if any situation at polling stations and at the electoral offices it becomes threatening. .

Initiative leaders followed the same pattern during a pilot June mayor observation in Missoula Countywhich reported no systematic concerns or outage incidents and concluded that the election was “well organized, peaceful, orderly” and conducted in accordance with state laws and guidelines.

Separate from the Carter Center-led Montana Election Observation Initiative, two international election observers arrived in Montana earlier this month as part of a national monitoring effort by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The organization – made up of 57 member countries, including the United States – has conducted more than 430 election observation efforts around the globe as part of its mission to promote free and fair elections. This year marks the 11th time in the past two decades that the OSCE has carried out such a mission to a US election at the invitation of the federal government.

The two OSCE monitors assigned to Montana and Wyoming are part of a team of 64 monitors spread across the lower 48 states who collect not only technical information on America’s electoral procedures, but also information on voter rights, the sociopolitical environment surrounding the campaigns federal and the challenges facing reporters. covering federal elections. In a May 2024 needs assessment In recommending the monitoring mission for this year’s general elections, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights noted the potential importance of international observation “given the highly polarized environment and discourse that breeds distrust in the integrity of the elections”.

The review also concluded that most of the issues identified in previous OSCE observation missions to the US remain “unaddressed” and that only some of the organization’s recommendations have been implemented. A interim report on the 2024 general election, published last week, said early monitoring activity indicated “a highly contested electoral environment with a high expectation for large-scale post-election litigation”. The OSCE plans to release its preliminary findings and conclusions at a press conference in Washington, DC on 6 November.

If election day observer information is sufficient to improve confidence in the integrity of Montana’s elections, which Secretary of State Jacobsen has repeatedly called the “gold standard”, it seems unlikely that the politicization of electoral administration will disappear overnight. Bruce said the Montana Election Observation Initiative intentionally kept its focus on administration and the legal process, in a tacit acknowledgment that “it’s not easy to talk about elections without talking about politics.” Initiative leaders recognize that the volunteers they’ve trained have their own political beliefs, Bruce added, but the hope is that a diverse group’s collective commitment to an attitude of impartiality can serve as a message in itself.

“I think people are eager to participate in activities and dialogue that allows them to put aside some of the partisan elements that tend to divide us,” Bruce said.

Former Montana Political Practices Commissioner Jeff Mangan, who co-chairs the initiative with Custer, believes there is positive momentum in simply shining a light on the election process. Electoral officials in some counties have has already taken similar measureshe said, and have increasingly engaged in conversations about their work in an attempt to gain transparency and trust.

“I don’t know how we get there, but there needs to be a more connected effort from county to county, official to official, to talk about these things and avoid politics,” Mangan said of questions and concerns about election procedures. “I don’t know if it’s possible, but it’s only talked about, unfortunately, when something political happens.”