Vote NO on CI-133
We should oppose CI-133 because it is funded by out-of-state Washington, D.C., liberals and progressives trying to suppress the right of Republican legislators to cut down on the fraud by organizations promoting constitutional and statutory initiatives.
- No political party should be able to write rules that make it harder to check if its own process is fair. Fraud hides in small details: mismatched addresses, missing disclosures, gatherers who won’t say who pays them. Shielding those details doesn’t improve democracy; it removes the safeguards that catch abuse.
- CI-133 would place anti-fraud tools, such as verifying the residency of a Montana constituent’s signature, flagging late disclosures, and knowing who’s paying petition gatherers, behind a constitutional wall that’s hard to clear, blocking lawmakers from using real audit tools to combat paid, out-of-state fraud.
- When Democrats admit something, believe them the first time. As the Cascade County Democrats put it on Facebook: “This is the initiative that aims to add constitutional language designed to curtail the Republican political meddling in the initiative process that we’ve seen so much of from AG Knudsen, SoS Jacobsen, and various R legislators in recent years”.
- Most of CI-133’s funding comes from political groups outside Montana trying to stop Republican lawmakers from effectively fighting fraud in the petition and signature-gathering process. Only verified, legitimate initiatives should ever override decisions Montanans have made through their own elected representatives.
Sources:
The Montana Chronicles. “Montana Ballot Initiative Gets Over 99% of Funding from D.C. Left-Wing Groups.” Substack, March 13, 2026. https://themontanachronicles.substack.com/p/montana-ballot-initiative-gets-funding-left-wing-groups
Cascade County Democrats. (2026, August 20). CI-133 certified to be on the November ballot [Facebook post]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FUm4gF8gz/
