Montana’s Questionable Ballot History
While many establishment officials in our state continue to insist Montana elections have always been above board, those who have run campaigns and held political office, like Randy Pinocci, say Montana has been dealing with voter fraud in our state for years:
Randy Pinocci won the election to the Montana Public Service Commission in November 2018 and took office in January 2019. He also represented House District 19 in the Montana House of Representatives from 2015 to 2017.
“While working on Conrad Burns’s campaigns, college towns like Bozeman and in particular, Missoula were a great concern to the campaign. College professors along with campus leadership promoted funding on a state and federal level to expand building project funding for in-state and out-of-state students. This decision helped increase student attendance numbers and also promoted increases in salaries for all positions within the campus. Professors were always complaining their salaries were too low in Montana. The message was clear — ‘Vote Democrat to ensure a financially fit future for colleges in Montana.’
Students openly admitted voting Democrat to support a more financially fit college, one that was able to invest money to offset college tuition from in-state and out-of-state students. Of course, our position as Republicans WAS and IS that you shouldn’t vote if you live out of state, especially if you are registered to vote out of state. We were told that students from out of state, who were registered to vote in their own state, were in fact voting in Montana to increase the tax funding directly to Montana colleges. We had meetings where we could show some students openly promoting all students to vote Democrat. The Democrat party seemed to promote it as an investment in our children for a greater future for Montana. Looking back on the whole situation I can’t find in my memory where we ever said this is voter fraud or a voter integrity problem in a press release or news release. If we did I don’t remember, if we did not we should have,” said Pinocci.
According to Pinocci, Republicans’ solution was to qualify and encourage registration of those voters who typically did not vote and hopefully get them to vote Republican to help offset this problem.
“I’m told today that perhaps in those days of Conrad Burns, the voter machines may have been rigged to increase votes. One thing for sure is during Conrad Burns’s campaigns, colleges had out-of-state students voting, we knew it, and it was an absolute problem, and we tried dealing with it,” said Pinocci.
The disparity in the votes between the Republican and Democrat candidates for the U.S. Senate and House in the 2006 election raises questions. That the Republican candidate for the House race received 42,841 or 22% more votes than the Republican candidate for the Senate race on the same ballot, does not seem credible, particularly given the circumstances of the count. The final count was delayed a day due to voting machine error.
Conrad Burns lost to Jon Tester by 3562 votes, just outside the margin of error that would have provided a recount paid by the state, and LESS THAN the Missoula signature envelope discrepancy discovered on January 4, 2021.
On July 14, 2008, Gov. Brian Schweitzer described to the Trial Lawyers Association annual convention in Philadelphia how he had rigged the release of one county’s election results (Butte-Silverbow) with the goal of avoiding a recount and how he prompted reservation police to “run off” Republican poll watchers to keep them from harassing Indian voters.
Christopher Kortlander's book, Arrow to the Heart
After years of enduring threats and persecution from corrupt government officials Christopher Kortlander, owner of the historic town of Garryowen, Montana, and Founding Director of the Custer Battlefield Museum, assembled a legal team that launched an aggressive defense against the federal government AND WON. Kortlander also had a front-row seat in a “suspicious” election on the Crow and other Indian reservations that put Jon Tester into the Senate.
In 2018, Kortlander released his book detailing his journey, titled: Arrow to the Heart: The Last Battle at the Little Big Horn.
According to a book review written by Elaine Willman, MPA:
“In Chapter 7, Kortlander also unearths damning information concerning the election of Montana Senator Jon Tester. The author details voter fraud that took place in 2006 when Jon Tester was first elected the 51st Democrat to the United States Senate, shifting the political power of the Senate.
Because state election laws do not apply at polling precincts on some Montana Indian Reservations, several reservation ballot boxes were left unsecured, allowing voter fraud to occur, which pushed Tester to a narrow win in Montana and gave Democrats control of the U.S. Senate by a tiny 0.87% margin of the official vote. Kortlander's book contains documentation proving that the DNC and Tester's campaign wrote checks to influence individual tribal voters at the ballot station. This stunning information continues to have national implications as Tester seeks reelection in 2018.”
According to a 2020 Montana Daily Gazette article, “Jon Tester knew he was going to be in for the fight of his life when he ran against Burns. Burns had won his three previous elections, even prevailing against Brian Schweitzer, Montana’s well-funded future Governor, in 2000. How did Jon Tester’s team plan on ensuring a victory in his race against Burns? Well, they did what every crook throughout history has done and they gamed the system. In this case, Tester’s team paid Crow Tribal members $40 for each vote.”
Copies of the checks the Montana DNC made out to voters on the reservation — $80.00 per individual or $160.00 a couple — to secure votes for Jon Tester in his 2006 Senate race.
2003 Missoula Municipal General Ballot
Missoula County citizens have raised questions for years about elections and relatively unknown candidates being elected to public offices, bonds passing late at night after losing early in the evening on election night, tabulation stopping for various reasons, or odd relationships in election results between candidate races. On November 4, 2003, Missoula’s Municipal election raised new and old questions — on that ballot was a proposition to increase property taxes generating funds to replace an aged swimming pool with several new aquatic facilities, throughout the city, including a 50-meter swimming pool.
The bond also included the same language as the ballot. The proposition passed, but city officials then told the citizens they would have to raise the money to build the pool. The county attorney’s office explained that citizens would have to “sue the city” to get the pool built. Public outcry against this fraud eventually led the city to supplement what the citizens had raised and the city finally built the pool. Nearly twenty years later, Missoula government officials are suggesting to citizens that they should “sue the city” to resolve the question of 4,592 votes being counted without signature envelopes, indicating a chain of custody to an actual voter.
On that same 2003 ballot, there were 30 candidates running for seven seats on the City Local Government Study Commission. As it was a city-wide election, it was surprising to many that six of those eventually elected were from one Missoula zip code, in a city of perhaps eight zip codes at the time. At the bottom corner of the ballot was this image:
It appears that ES&S tabulating machines have been in Montana for some time, in the above image as early as 1981.