HELENA — Authorities in Cascade County are continuing to investigate potentially fraudulent signatures on the petitions that qualified two independent congressional candidates for Montana’s November ballot. However, one of the other candidates in the state’s eastern U.S. House race isn’t waiting for the end of that investigation to challenge that qualification.
Brian Miller, the Democratic nominee in Montana’s 2nd Congressional District, filed a lawsuit in state court in Lewis and Clark County this week. He’s asking a judge to rule that independent candidate Michael Eisenhauer shouldn’t have been certified for the ballot.
“Prosecuting an individual for fraud is great, but that doesn't protect the system if a candidate who did not follow the election laws is allowed to get on the ballot,” he told MTN.
(Watch the video for more on Miller's lawsuit.)
To qualify for an election, independent candidates must collect signatures from enough registered voters to equal 4% of the votes for the winning candidate in the last election. Eisenhauer needed 7,274, while independent U.S. Senate candidate Seth Bodnar needed 13,327.
Last week, Cascade County Attorney Josh Racki confirmed his office was looking into about 810 potentially fraudulent signatures, submitted to election officials on petitions for Eisenhauer and Bodnar. Racki said the signatures in question were caught before verification was completed, and none of them were actually counted toward the candidates’ totals. He said both campaigns were cooperating fully with the investigation, and neither was suspected of wrongdoing.
Miller, an attorney from Helena, told MTN he got word of the investigation a few weeks ago and asked Racki for more information. Since then, he says he and others have begun going through the petitions themselves looking for questionable signatures. He says he has now started hearing from voters who claim their names were on the petitions but that they never signed.
Miller told MTN he hasn’t confirmed any of these signatures were actually counted toward Eisenhauer’s total. However, in his lawsuit, he argues any signature gatherer who submitted a petition that includes a fraudulent signature made a “false declaration” – and that the law in that case requires all the signatures on that petition be invalidated.
“If you can verify one, our view based on case law going back 80 years all over the country is that the whole batch gets thrown out,” said Miller.
He argues that would have removed enough signatures that Eisenhauer would have fallen short of the required threshold to qualify.
MTN asked Miller if that step would have thrown out valid signatures from voters who really wanted Eisenhauer on the ballot, and he said that was possible.
“It's unfortunate, but you can't violate the law,” he said.
It’s too late now to make changes to the state ballot, so Miller’s lawsuit asks the judge to order that any votes for Eisenhauer not be counted.
Campaign representatives for Eisenhauer, a cardiologist from Great Falls, told MTN they remain confident in the signature verification process that local election officials and the Montana Secretary of State’s Office went through. They repeated that law enforcement has told them they’re not accused of wrongdoing.
“We believe this lawsuit is frivolous, and represents a desperate move by Brian Miller,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “Our candidate’s name will appear on the general election ballot despite these efforts, so that the citizens of Montana’s 2nd US Congressional District have the responsible option to vote for the candidate of their choice.”
Miller said he wasn’t claiming Eisenhauer knew about the potential signature fraud, but he criticized him for not announcing the situation publicly. He also criticized Racki, saying his office should have released information about the case sooner.
In a news release Wednesday, Racki said law enforcement was still interviewing people whose names may have been signed without permission, as well as people involved with the signature-gathering process – including some who are outside Montana.
“This investigation reaches beyond Cascade County, and there are still many people detectives need to speak with,” he said. “That takes time, but the work is moving forward. We are committed to finding out exactly what happened and keeping the public informed whenever we can do so without compromising the investigation.”
As of Thursday afternoon, the judge had not yet set a timeline for Miller’s lawsuit to be heard.
Miller and Eisenhauer are running against incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Troy Downing. Libertarian candidate Patrick McCracken will also be on the ballot.
