AG approves, rewrites another nonpartisan ballot initiative
Micah Drew
(Daily Montanan) Attorney General Austin Knudsen has approved a second ballot initiative seeking to enshrine nonpartisan judicial elections into the Montana Constitution but has rewritten the language of the initiative, despite a lawsuit challenging a similar rewrite just weeks ago.
Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts is one of two committees bringing ballot initiatives forward for the 2026 election related to judicial elections, submitting two propositions to voters.
Both groups seek to keep judicial races in the state nonpartisan, as they have been required by state law since 1935. During the 2025 Legislature, Republican lawmakers made multiple attempts to make the state’s judicial elections into a partisan affair, saying they believe courts are already politicized and they want judges to disclose any affiliations. However, those attempts saw bipartisan opposition on nearly every proposed bill, except one allowing political parties to donate to judicial campaigns.
Two initiatives, CI-132, by Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts, and CI-131, brought by Montanans for Fair and Impartial Judges, are close to identical, but MFIJ’s applies to district and state supreme court judges, while the MNC initiative broadly applies to all judicial races in the state, including future courts.
When MFIJ’s initiative was approved by the Attorney General’s office in late September, it was also rewritten.
The two groups filed a joint lawsuit with the Montana Supreme Court alleging that the rewritten statement is “misleading and prejudicial” and violates Montana statute.
Last week, Knudsen approved MNC’s petition as legally sufficient, but also rewrote the initiative to include the same language challenged in the lawsuit.
“The Attorney General rewrote a simple, straightforward ballot statement simply because he doesn’t like the policy, attempting to prevent Montanans from having a fair chance to weigh in on how they want their judges elected,” Caitie Butler, spokesperson for Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts, said when the first lawsuit was filed. “The rewritten statement is deceptive and misleading to voters and a dangerous precedent to set for the ballot measure process in Montana.”
Butler told the Daily Montanan the same sentiment applies here, as the altered initiatives contain the same language.
Representatives from Knudsen’s office did not respond to questions about the rewritten ballot initiatives on Tuesday.
The original ballot statement submitted by Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts states the following:
“(The initiative) amends the Montana constitution to require that judicial elections remain nonpartisan.”
The rewrite changes the wording and adds the following:
“(The initiative…) amends Article VII of the Montana Constitution to create a new Section 12 that mandates all judicial elections be nonpartisan. A nonpartisan election prohibits labeling candidates on the ballot according to the political party the candidate aligns with including labels like Independent.”
The line explaining a nonpartisan election was also inserted into CI-131, from the Fair and Impartial Judges committee.
“We felt that they flipped the language on its head,” Butler said. “Whereas our initiative exists to protect the status quo, the current state of nonpartisanship, which we feel is the most transparent and right way to run an election, the new language is making it seem like the initiative exists to conceal bias, which is not our intent.”
In the lawsuit, attorneys for both committees said that Knudsen’s office is intentionally meddling with the wording in order to create confusion among voters.
“The rewritten statement prejudicially and falsely tells voters to presume that judicial candidates are partisan actors aligned with a political party, and that voting for the initiative will have the effect of concealing this information,” the lawsuit said. “This is exactly the kind of argument — not description — that belongs in the ‘opponent arguments’ section of the Voter Information Pamphlet, not the ballot statement itself.”
The second initiative submitted by MNC, would require that judicial elections in Montana remain nonpartisan and includes additional language to extend that requirement to new courts created by the legislature. However, this proposal did not pass muster by Knudsen and was denied as legally insufficient last week.
Butler said that Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts will file lawsuits with the Supreme Court in both cases, challenging the ballot rewrite of CI-132, and the attorney general’s finding of legal insufficiency on the other proposed initiative.
Butler said there is a precedent for the latter suit.
Knudsen’s decision was based on a rule that ballot initiatives must involve a “single subject,” but Butler said extending a nonpartisan requirement in judicial elections to future courts falls within the single subject bounds.
“We’re confident both of our initiatives are constitutionally sound,” Butler said.