A ballot blunder, border bluster and a broken bibliography

A quickly corrected ballot error raises questions; A new ad questions Monica Tranel's stance on the border; Controversial South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem stumps for Tim Sheehy, who has no comment on evidence he plagiarized portions of his memoir.

Campaign Beat is MTPR's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Lee Newspapers State Bureau Chief Holly Michels and UM Political Science Professor and Mansfield Center Fellow Rob Saldin.  

Sally Mauk: Holly, we found out this week that online ballots sent out early from the Montana Secretary of State's office to Montanans living overseas omitted the name of the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris. And this error was quickly corrected. But Holly, questions remain about how and why it happened.

Holly Michels: Yeah, Sally, we don't have a ton of clarity about those two things, the how and the why. This error was through the electronic absentee system for overseas voters who are eligible to vote through this online portal. And that's under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act. That system opened up to voters at 8 a.m. on September 20th, and then shortly after that, a voter originally from the Flathead who's living out of the country right now, hopped online to go vote. And noticed, like you said, that Vice President Harris' name was not on that electronic ballot. That's according to reporting from the Daily Interlake.

From that point, election officials were informed of the issue, and that whole online voting portal was taken down. The vendor that the state uses to operate that, which is a company out of Saint Louis, then jumped in to fix the error. And in the meantime, county officials who hadn't yet sent out those electronic ballots were told to hold off while the correction was made. And then by that afternoon, everything was up and running again.

Obviously, Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, a Republican, has been adamant in saying that this was a short lived error and not intentional. And elections workers around the state have echoed that. Missoula's top election official told the website PolitiFact that this was not an intentional action. But like I said earlier, no one's really offered up an explanation of how this happened, and we don't know how many people were actually affected either. Jacobsen said that very few voters may have been initially affected, but it's not clear what that number is. And the office did say that the issue was corrected for anyone who got that problematic ballot. So they did have a correct one to vote from.

Sally Mauk: Well, Rob, Secretary of State Jacobsen has taken offense, said criticism over this mistake and she's implying it's been blown out of proportion and people shouldn't be getting their panties in a wad over it. But election integrity is a huge issue this campaign season. And it's like she isn't reading the room.

Rob Saldin: Yeah, right, Sally. It's hard to decide whether this episode is amusing or disconcerting. Maybe it's a little bit of both. It sure doesn't inspire very much confidence. I do agree that it's hard to imagine that this was intentional. It's just such a glaring and obvious problem that it would be ridiculous and ultimately pointless to try to do something like this on purpose. So I certainly assume it was a mistake. And yet, you know, there are a couple things that are notable here. You know, first is that it was an awfully big mistake. You do have to wonder, Holly, as you suggested, you know, how exactly does something like this happen, right? This is a major and highly visible screw up of something at the very core of the Secretary of State's job. And you'd think that maybe they'd want to get another set of eyes on that presidential ballot before sending it out. You know, a quick proofread? But that doesn't seem to have happened.

And then second to your point, Sally, the reaction from Jacobsen's office was just really off key. The basic attitude they projected was, you know, like, what's wrong with all you hysterical people? You know, how dare you suggest there is an issue here? This after years of Republicans, as you note, obsessing over election integrity in ways that are occasionally veer off into kind of tinfoil hat territory, right? I mean, this has been a big thing on the GOP side. And so, you know, you'd think that after such an embarrassing screw up that perhaps Jacobsen would offer an apology and maybe even look to reassure the public that her office isn’t totally incompetent, rather than taking that line. But I guess not.

Sally Mauk: Holly, immigration and the border continue to be big issues in this election, especially in the congressional races. And here's a new ad from Ryan Zinke about his opponent, Monica Tranel, in the Western District race.

[Zinke’s Campaign Ad] “Montana can't trust Monica Tranel. On TV she says she wants to secure the border. But behind closed doors. [Tranel clip] "Shutting down the border is not going to reduce the fentanyl crisis." [Second Tranel clip] "We need to not demonize and blame things that won't actually fix anything." [Narrator] Ryan Zinke he voted for the strongest border security bill ever, builds the wall and deports illegals.”

Sally Mauk: Holly, I'm not sure what "behind closed doors" means in this ad, because I moderated the very public candidates forum where Tranel made these remarks, and the ad implies what she said at that forum contradicts what she's saying now about the border.

Holly Michels: Yeah, Sally, this gets into a Tranel ad we talked about on a recent show where she's criticizing President Biden for not doing enough on the border and calling for a more secure southern border, more border agents and going after drug cartels. And that's a path we've seen Democrats need to take in this state to win in these statewide congressional offices. You know, we've seen similar discussions from Senator Jon Tester, but now this ad from Zinke is trying to counter that. And it is saying, like you said, behind closed doors, Tranel is somehow singing a different tune. And it is pulling comments from, like you said, this very public forum you moderated. I wrote a story about it. I remember that was actually when there was an exchange where Tranel actually grabbed the mic from Zinke at one point during that forum.

But what Tranel is saying in these clips is that closing the southern border is not going to reduce the fentanyl crisis. And I don't know if it really contradicts the recent statements on the border like Zinke is saying it does here. What Tranel is referencing is something we know from extensive reporting from multiple outlets, including NPR and CBS recently, that nearly all the fentanyl that comes into the U.S. from Mexico is actually coming through legal ports of entry and not being brought over by people who are either seeking asylum or crossing the border illegally. So unless it would also be closing those illegal entry points, shutting down the border wouldn't actually be targeted at what's the real path for fentanyl into this country and eventually into Montana. But like you said, Sally, the southern border, as we've seen in poll after poll, is a major issue for Montana voters in this election. And we can also look at this NPR poll from 2020 that found that about 39% of people and 60% of Republicans and 38% of independents do believe that fentanyl in the country is being smuggled from people crossing the border illegally. So I expect the Zinke ads are going to hit well with a decent amount of people in this Western District.

Sally Mauk: Well, Rob, in the Senate race, Republican challenger Tim Sheehy recently head South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem campaigning for him in Montana. And here's an excerpt of her message.

[Noem] All of you are going to save this country. I don't know if you realize how much people in other states are talking about Montana and the opportunity that you have. I came to talk to you today about the importance of your vote for the U.S. Senate, and what it means to have his back right now.

Sally Mauk: Noem has made headlines in her home state for killing a pet dog, and she's been barred from several Native American reservations there over her policies. But she is popular with MAGA folks.

Rob Saldin: Yeah, she sure is, Sally. And, you know, for Sheehy, why not do an event with Noem? He's already gone very far in that direction. He may as well do an event with her despite some of the baggage she carries. She's a star in that world. And I think part of the reason she's a star is because she does offend people on the other side of the political spectrum, right? I mean, that's a feature, not a bug, as they say. And I think all of this, from Sheehy’s perspective, comes out of a very clear theory of the case for his campaign. And maybe this is just a shrewd political calculation. Maybe it's consistent with and a reflection of who Tim Sheehy is as a person. Or maybe it's both of those things. But regardless, the key idea at work is that Trump is going to win Montana by a lot. It's going to be overwhelming, maybe as much as 20 points. So the only thing that he has to do is to get those people who are already voting for Trump to also vote for him, and he doesn't even need all of them. He can lose a substantial amount of them and he's still okay. So if that's your starting point, the bigger thing to worry about from that perspective is getting on the wrong side of the MAGA people. That's a bigger concern than losing independents or people who are horrified by Kristi Noem. And, you know, I think we've seen that, very consistently throughout the campaign, that Tim Sheehy is leaning into that and, you know, not too concerned about winning over independents to say nothing, obviously, of trying to reach out to Democrats.

Sally Mauk: Holly, Tim Sheehy, according to a review by The Daily Montanan, plagiarized parts of his memoir about aerial firefighting. What did they find?

Holly Michels: Yeah, Sally. So the Daily Montanan reported that it ran passages of his book, which is called "Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting" through software that's meant to detect plagiarism. And what it found is, it flagged four passages as possibly problematic. One is linked to a source listed in the book's bibliography, but others weren't. And it also notes that there are no citations throughout the book, which makes it difficult to tell what is and isn't from other sources or Sheehy's original work. Wikipedia is one of the sources that passages appeared to be from. So is the website "Wildfire Today". Another one called "Backseat Pilot", which is an aviation website, and that's the one that is cited in the book's source list. Neither Sheehy’s campaign nor the book's publisher returned the outlet's request for comment. Obviously, Democrats are running with this. We saw Tester's campaign very recently take out advertising on the websites of most newspapers in the state today to try to bring this to voters' attention.

Sally Mauk: Rob, the issue of plagiarism forced Democrat John Walsh to drop out of a Senate race 10 years ago when it was revealed he had plagiarized part of a college research paper. But this revelation about Sheehy doesn't seem to be having the same kind of consequence or traction.

Rob Saldin: Yeah, that's right, Sally, and it is a remarkable change that we've seen just in this decade, right? We went from a clear cut case of plagiarism forcing Walsh out of his Senate run, at a very late date, I might add — to a plagiarism case that doesn't even compel a response from Sheehy. He's just going to ignore it, apparently. In a way, I think, you can say that Walsh's plagiarism case was, at least in a sense, it was worse. For one thing, it was more extensive. For another, Walsh at the time was presenting himself to voters as a guy who fit into this kind of warrior, scholar model in which his graduate work at the Army War College really did loom large. Right? That was a big part of the rationale for his candidacy. By contrast, Sheehy's candidacy isn't predicated really on his book in the same way.

But that said, you know, Sheehy clearly plagiarized parts of his book, and that is fundamentally dishonest. And in that sense, there is no difference between the two cases. You know, if a college freshman, Sally, submitted work like Sheehy did in his book, it would be a major problem. And of course, we should hold people who want to be U.S. senators to a higher standard than we'd hold an 18 year old. What's changed between the two cases is that our standards for what we expect out of our politicians have just plummeted. Obviously, an enormous amount of that can be traced directly to Donald Trump and perhaps just as importantly, to elected Republicans who have for years and years now defended and enabled Trump's behavior. So that combination really has degraded the character of our whole system and can, as it has in this instance, transform something that 10 years ago was a humiliating career ender and make it into something that doesn't even necessitate a comment from Sheehy.

Sally Mauk: Well, the airwaves are flooded with ads and we have debates coming up, so these final campaign weeks are going to keep us really busy. Holly, Rob, thank you, and I'll talk to you again soon.

Campaign Beat is MTPR's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Lee Newspapers State Bureau Chief Holly Michels and UM Political Science Professor and Mansfield Center Fellow Rob Saldin. Tune in on-air Saturdays at 9:45 a.m. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.