Green Party of Montana

In 2002, Bob Kelleher ran for U.S. Senate as the Green Party nominee and received 2.3% of the vote.[1]

In Montana’s 2004 elections, the party attained ballot access for David Cobb, that year’s presidential nominee, as well as Kelleher, who that year was the party’s gubernatorial nominee. Cobb received under 1,000 votes, while Kelleher received more than 8,000, and placed third in the gubernatorial election.[2] Following that election, the state party became inactive and was not reaccredited by the GPUS until 2007.[3]

The MTGP held its 2008 convention in Missoula.[4] However, the party’s presidential nominee, Cynthia McKinney, did not get on Montana's ballot for the general election.

In 2016, the party filed more than three times the minimum required number of signatures to place party nominee Jill Stein on the ballot. Many of their supporters were former supporters of U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.[5]

The Green Party of Montana was considered a recognized party committee as of the 2016 election cycle.[6]

In 2020, the state Republican Party reportedly paid $100,000 to finance the effort to collect the petition signatures necessary to qualify the Green Party for ballot access in the state.[7] This fact wasn’t revealed until after the Greens had initially secured ballot access.[7] The Republican Party was also accused of violating campaign finance laws by failing to disclose the funding of the petition drive.[8] The Green Party of Montana acknowledged that it had not played a role in the signature collection.[8] Some commentators speculated that the presence of the Green Party on the ballot had the potential to hinder Democratic candidates, particularly in the elections for Senate and the at-large House seat, both of which are expected to be competitive races.[7][9][10]

Following the revelation that the Republican Party had funded the signature collection, more than 560 voters out of the 13,000 who had signed the petitions asked to have their signatures removed, as they hadn’t realized that the GOP was involved in the effort.[7] The communications manager of the national Green Party alleged that some of the voters asking to withdraw their signatures had been subjected to pressure to do so.[11]

Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton, a Republican, argued that the signers had missed a deadline to withdraw their names, and that there wasn’t an established procedure for withdrawing a petition signature.[7][11]

In response to Stapleton’s refusal to invalidate the signatures by voters who had changed their minds, four of the petition signers and the Democratic Party of Montana jointly filed a suit in court. James Reynolds, a US District Judge, ruled that no deadline like the one which Stapleton cited existed, and that with those signatures voided, the Party no longer qualified for the ballot.[7] The case marked the second time in two years that Reynolds had issued a ruling removing the Green Party from the Montana ballot: in 2018, he had ruled that the Party be removed from the ballot in response to discrepancies regarding petition signatures.[8]

Upon Reynolds’s ruling, two voters and two Green Party candidates (for state Senate and Attorney General) filed suit in a US District Court, arguing that their rights, and votes in the Green Party primary, were violated by his ruling.[9] However, judge Dana Christensen ruled against them, citing the fact that the parallel case was still in the courts.[9]

Stapleton appealed Reynolds’s ruling to the state Supreme Court. Reynolds’s judgment was upheld on August 19, 2020, in a 5-2 ruling.[7][8] The Court, in addition to Reynolds’s reasoning, noted that the general election ballot had to be certified by August 20.[11] Stapleton announced his intention to appeal the case to the United States Supreme Court.[8] On August 25, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to take up the case. Justice Elena Kagan declined on the court’s behalf; she issued the decision without a comment or dissent.[12] This made it unlikely that the party would appear on the ballot, since Montana law required absentee ballots to be sent to members of the military by September 15.[10] By September 18, ballots had been mailed to overseas voters, ensuring that the Green Party would not be on the ballot in the 2020 election.[12]