Stateline.org recently released a preliminary handicapping for state legislative elections, and they're predicting that Republicans will re-take control of the Montana Senate.  They have the House as a toss-up. 

Conventional wisdom would have it that an incumbent governor with a plus-50 approval rating would be able to build upon a legislative majority.  Could it be the say-everything-do-nothing brand of "leadership" Gov. Schweitzer has provided his Democratic Party is starting to catch up with him?

The editorial pages in Montana newspapers have been gushing with praise for the mail ballot elections run this week in some of Montana's largest municipalities.  Election administrators too have been quick with their praise of the experiment and virtually silent on the glaring problems inherent with a mail ballot election.

One of the "glitches" was in returned ballots.  According to the Billings Gazette, "More than 5,000 ballots - about 10 percent of the total - came back to the election office as undeliverable..."  And recall the previous circus in Missoula where 11,000 - 26% - ballots came back to the elections office as undeliverable.

Most people we know have about as much confidence in the US Postal Service delivering 100% of the mail correctly as we have in Mike Kramer running a drug treatment center, so if there are tens of thousands of incorrectly addressed ballots in just two counties, how many were incorrectly delivered?  In Lewis & Clark County - which had a mail ballot fiasco of it's own that has prompted a "re-do" in January (VBM is supposed to be cheaper, right?) - ballots were incorrectly forwarded by the Postal Service because the election administrator forgot to stamp "Do not Forward" on the envelopes.  Ballots in Gallatin County were also forwarded.

With tens of thousands of ballots floating around in the mail, VBM is a dream come true for election fraud perpetrators.  One of the tenets of the secure election system we have now is that ballots are always under the watchful eye of at least two election workers.  VBM throws that security out the window and places that responsibility in the hands of postal workers, most of whom work alone. 

Election administrators love VBM because it makes their jobs a lot easier.  The pundits in the Montana media love it because it increases voter turnout.  Those are both laudable goals, but they come at the price of election integrity, and with all the blunders in this year's elections, it's obvious that it's not a worthwhile tradeoff.

This Missoulian story is a week old, but it just came across our desk today.  According to the Missoula County elections office, of the 42,190 mail-in ballots sent to Missoula voters for last week's city council primary election, more than 11,000 were returned to the elections office as undeliverable.

According to elections deputy Debbe Merseal, the massive return of ballots "shouldn't be a cause for concern."  WHAT?!?

So if 11,000 were returned, how many were mistakenly delivered to addressees no longer living at the address on file in with the elections office?  At my residence, I routinely receive mail for two individuals who I've never even met.  The post office does a fairly good job at delivering the mail, but they're nowhere near 100% accurate.

The Missoula example just proves that the vote by mail scheme promoted by Democrats is rife for election fraud.  How many ballots in Missoula were incorrectly delivered to bad addresses and then voted by someone other than the intended recipient?  We have no way of knowing.

The legislature passed a study resolution last session to prepare a plan for vote-by-mail in statewide elections.  We hope they'll have the good sense to scrap this plan in favor of protecting the integrity of our elections.