Still Need to Register to Vote in Montana? Here’s What to Do.
By Blair Miller for the Daily Montanan
If you’re a Montanan hoping to vote in Tuesday’s election but aren’t yet registered to vote, or didn’t receive an absentee ballot in the mail, you’ll still have the chance to register and cast your ballot before polls close at 8 p.m., Tuesday.
Montana allows qualified citizens to register to vote up through Election Day and to reactivate their registration if they have been placed on the inactive voter list because they either didn’t participate in a prior general election or did not respond to mailers from the county election office.
People can check to see if they are registered to vote, or their current registration status, on the VoteMT website. If you’re a Montanan hoping to vote who is not registered, and you meet the qualifications of being a U.S. citizen who is at least 18 years old and who has been a Montana resident for 30 days, you can fill out a voter registration application and submit it to your county elections office.
Voters must sign a sworn affirmation they are not serving a felony conviction in a penal institute and have not been found by a court to be of an unsound mind.
The candidates, the ballot measures, and the tools you need to cast your vote.
Since the window for absentee ballots going out by mail has passed, new registrants who are qualified to vote will receive a ballot they can vote in person at the elections office. A list of county election offices and their address can be found here.
Voters who are registered but inactive can appear at the elections office or their polling place to either update their registration information in order to become active again, then may cast a ballot.
If you are an absentee voter who has not mailed your ballot back yet, it’s too late to do so; you’ll need to drop your ballot off at your county elections office or can vote in-person at a local polling location. Any ballot that is not received by elections officials by 8 p.m. Tuesday will not be counted, even if it is postmarked ahead of Election Day.
As of Sunday night, there were 791,455 registered voters in Montana, of which 662,596 were active voters. Another 127,550 were listed as inactive voters by the Secretary of State’s Office.
The Secretary of State mailed out 542,003 absentee ballots to voters – about 68% of all registered voters in Montana. As of Sunday night, about 73% of those ballots had already been returned.
Poll locations in Montana are required by law in most cases to be open from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., though smaller polling locations may be open from noon to 8:00 p.m.
For more on the election from the Daily Montanan, click here.