Should Illegals Be Allowed To Vote In Montana?

With our Southern border as porous as a sponge, do you feel that illegals should be allowed to vote in Montana? This past legislative session a bill, HB 402, was sponsored and/or voted on by four of your Ravalli County legislators that would have allowed people with “unverified citizenship” to vote in Montana.

The theory behind HB 402 was based on a court case out of Kansas where a young man moved from Texas to Kansas and wanted to register to vote there. When he was told he would need proof of citizenship to register, he sued the state. The court ruled that he didn’t need proof of citizenship to register to vote. He just needed to check the box on the form that confirmed he was a citizen under penalty of law.

HB 402 was designed to capture illegal voters because they lied on the form when they checked the box certifying that they were citizens. The flaw in HB 402 was that it was designed to let them vote before they were caught! A cast vote does not have any identification attached to it and cannot be retrieved! The same mechanism that you would use to catch them after they vote could easily be used to catch them after they REGISTER to vote and check that box certifying under penalty of law that they are citizens. They need to be caught before being added to the voter rolls not after they vote.

The bill also violated current Montana law which says that only citizens can vote and illegals are not allowed to vote here. It also violates the Constitution. The people responsible for HB 402 SHOULD know this. They took an oath to uphold the Constitutions and the law. One has to then ask, what was the real purpose of the bill?