One of the two campaigns to preserve Montana’s judicial races as nonpartisan contests has been greenlit for the signature gathering process.
State officials approved the proposed constitutional amendment, now known as CI-131, on Sept. 26, giving the campaign by Montanans for Fair and Impartial Courts a nine-month runway to gather roughly 60,000 signatures required to reach the November 2026 ballot.
“The great thing is we’ve got time on our side,” said J.D. “Pepper” Petersen, one of the main drivers of the campaign, in a phone call on Tuesday.
The public should soon expect to see signature gatherers, Petersen said, more commonly a sign of springtime in election year as campaigns race to gather 10% of voter signatures from 40 different house districts.
The ballot initiative proposes to add a line to the Montana Constitution section that governs the “selection” of judges to include: “Supreme Court justices and district court judges shall be elected in nonpartisan elections by the qualified electors as provided by law.”
The effort is one of two campaigns designed to carry out the same goal. Both follow recent attempts by Montana lawmakers to insert partisan labels into judicial campaigns. Republicans who hold all statewide offices and most of the legislative seats have seen some of their most controversial laws struck down or stalled out in the courts. In response, many of those GOP officials have then declared the nonpartisan courts as political opponents.
Republican lawmakers introduced no less than five bills with varying provisions to make judicial elections partisan, although each one failed to cross the finish line at the 2025 Legislature.
“There are powers that would prefer to consolidate all government under their hand, whether that be democrat, republican, independent,” Petersen said. “The fact is that right now the people have the power and we’re going to make sure that continues.”
To reach the signature gathering process, the language proposed by ballot initiative must go through a multi-layered review process administered by the Secretary of State. That includes an initial read for clarity by the Legislative Services Director. After any changes, the language then gets another look by the state budget office and the Montana Attorney General.
What follows the Montana Attorney General’s Review for legal muster is, at the moment, tied up in litigation. The 2023 Legislature passed a law requiring a legislative committee to hold a hearing on the topic, and then vote on whether to endorse the ballot initiative or not, a tally that would be included on each petition shown to potential voters before they sign on to advance the initiative to the ballot.
But last year, a district court judge ruled the Legislature had illegally inserted itself into the citizen initiative process and found the law unconstitutional. That ruling still stands while the state makes its appeal to the Montana Supreme Court, according to a spokesperson for the Montana Secretary of State, so this matter proceeded without the short-lived legislative stamp of approval or rebuke.
Petersen, meanwhile, said his office has spent little time pondering the review process following the Attorney General’s determination that it was legally sufficient, now turning their energy toward collecting signatures. He said the campaign will soon deploy both volunteer and paid signature gatherers around the state to meet the geographic requirements.
In the latest reporting period (May through June), Montanans for Fair and Impartial Judges reported nearly $21,000 in contributions, but over $61,000 in expenditures, putting their campaign about $40,000 in the hole heading into their signature gathering effort.
Nearly all of those expenditures went to Bolder Action Consulting ($37,500) and Coldwater Group ($24,000), the firms run by Ted Dick and Petersen, respectively.
This is not the pair’s first rodeo, so to speak. In 2020, Petersen and Dick headed up the ballot initiative campaign that ultimately legalized recreational marijuana in Montana. Constitutional initiatives require signatures from 10% of the total voters from the most recent gubernatorial election in order to reach the ballot. During the 2020 legalization effort, that meant about 51,000 signatures were required to advance to the ballot. This year the campaign will have to collect more than 60,000.
Language for the proposal from the other ballot initiative campaign, Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts, is still under review by the state budget office and the Montana Attorney General, according to its listing on the secretary of state’s website.
Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts submitted its ballot issue to the state in mid-August, giving Montanans for Fair and Impartial Judges just a two-week head start on the administrative process.
Seaborn Larson has worked for the Montana State News Bureau since 2020. His past work includes local crime and courts reporting at the Missoulian and Great Falls Tribune, and daily news reporting at the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell.
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Seaborn Larson
State Bureau Reporter
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