Trump Mentions Montana Election – Tschida has Protest Update

At a rally in Ohio last week, former President Donald Trump mentioned voting issues in Montana.

“In Montana over 6% of a certain county’s mail in ballots are missing,” said Trump. “Evidence to prove that if they were legitimate or not, they're missing all of this evidence. Think of it; Montana. You know, there were a lot of a lot of mail in ballots, and wherever you have the mail in ballots.”

State Representative Brad Tschida is still waiting for answers from Missoula County and the state over the November election.

“I believe what he (President Trump) was driving at is that there was a county in Montana that had over 6% of its ballots that didn't have affirmation envelopes, and that would have been Missoula County,” said Tschida. “So it does bring us back to where we're at. And we have been talking. There's a group of us who continue to look at what's going on.”

Tschida presented more problems with the recent election.

“We found out that 10,712 ballots went out to individuals who haven't voted in two election cycles,” he said. “They were sent mail in ballot for the 2020 election. And they should have been taken off the voter rolls as of the end of the 2018 election because if you missed two cycles, then you're automatically excluded. So the county did not do its job. The elections office did not do its job to remove those folks from the voter rolls who should have been taken off.”

Tschida said he has also reached out to Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen for clarification on the election questions, and KGVO asked if he has received a response.

“At this point in time we have not,” he said. “I've asked Secretary Jacobson to simply put forth something that says the following. ‘We understand there's a claim of irregularities. We don't know what happened. But we would encourage both the elections office and the citizens group has been looking into this matter, to work to resolve it, so we find out what caused it and what we can do to prevent it in the future.’

Following the election, a UM survey found that a majority of those polled trusted the mail-in ballot process.

KGVO has reached out to Missoula County Elections Administrator Bradley Seaman for his reaction.