September 4, 2026
Five questions sit below the candidates on your November ballot. Three are statewide. Two are local, and together they are the most expensive thing you will vote on this year.
A constitutional initiative, labeled CI, changes the Montana Constitution, and only another statewide vote can undo it. A statutory initiative, labeled I, writes ordinary law, which a future Legislature can amend or repeal like any other statute. All three statewide measures qualified on August 17, when the Secretary of State certified enough valid signatures to put them on the ballot.
Montana judges already run without party labels next to their names. CI-132 writes that practice into the constitution, which would stop a future Legislature from switching to partisan judicial races by ordinary statute.
Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts is running the campaign, arguing that judges should decide cases on the law rather than on party. The Montana Republican Party opposes it and argues that party labels give voters useful information about who they are electing.
The Montana Democratic Party platform opposes laws and policies that could compromise the independence of the judiciary, and calls for restoring the merit-based Judicial Nominating Commission that operated from 1974 until 2021.
The Montana Democrats platform supports the principles in this initiative, though the Yellowstone County Democratic Central Committee has not voted to take a position on this measure.
Yellowstone Democrats support CI-133. Precinct committee representatives voted to support this initiative in the August central committee meeting.
In August, Yellowstone County told commissioners that the local data center ballot initiative was already dead. The signature deadline had passed on July 13, three weeks before the date the county’s own elections office had given petitioners. Six weeks of volunteer work ended on a calendar technicality that nobody at the courthouse chose and nobody caught in time.
Montana’s constitution gives citizens the power to initiate or refer legislation by petition. It says almost nothing about how that process has to run, which leaves the mechanics to statute, to officials, and to whatever a court decides after the fact.
CI-133 adds a new section to the Declaration of Rights. It makes initiative and referendum a fundamental right, so government can restrict it only with a compelling interest pursued by the least restrictive means available. It also writes the mechanics in:
Montanans Decide is running the campaign. Republican Rep. Braxton Mitchell has argued the measure would open the door to endless litigation by limiting how much discretion judges have over initiative deadlines.
Every one of those provisions is a deadline or a standard that the data center petition needed and did not have.
I-194 is a statutory initiative that bars what it calls artificial persons, meaning corporations, nonprofits, trade associations, and trusts, from making political contributions or spending on ballot measures. Individual people could still give. Enforcement runs through the corporate charter itself: an entity that keeps spending politically forfeits the privileges the state grants it.
Jeff Mangan, a former Montana Commissioner of Political Practices, is running the campaign under the name The Montana Plan. Former governors Marc Racicot, a Republican, and Steve Bullock, a Democrat, have both backed it. Todd O’Hair of the Montana Chamber of Commerce opposes it and argues it would prevent businesses from defending themselves in public debate.
The Montana Democrats platform supports the principles in this initiative, though the Yellowstone County Democratic Central Committee has not voted to take a position on this measure.
Yellowstone County is asking for both, and both have to pass for the jail expansion to happen.
The difference between them matters more than the size of either. A bond is borrowed money, repaid with interest over a fixed term, and it ends when the debt is paid. This one runs 20 years. A levy is an annual property tax, and it lasts as long as the ballot language says. This one has no end date written into it.
For the owner of a $300,000 home, the two together run about $178 a year. Roughly $70 of that is the bond, which stops after 20 years. The rest is the levy, which does not.
The jail was built for 434 people. It held 646 on September 4, which the county puts at about 50 percent over capacity. The expansion would add roughly 320 beds up front, built with what the county calls shelf space, meaning structure designed so that up to 1,500 more beds could be added later on top of existing capacity.
Yellowstone Democrats have not voted to take a position on these two measures. Read the county’s own case at ycjailexpansion.com, and the jail needs assessment behind it, before you decide.
Paid for by the Yellowstone County Democratic Central Committee, PO Box 21131, Billings, MT 59104.
Except where this post states the Yellowstone County Democratic Central Committee’s support for CI-133, this message is information only and is not an endorsement of any candidate or position on any issue.
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