The MT Lowdown is a weekly digest that showcases a more personal side of Montana Free Press’ high-quality reporting while keeping you up to speed on the biggest news impacting Montanans. Want to see the MT Lowdown in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here.When Election Day arrives this coming Tuesday, Nov. 5, it will close out one of the busiest (and most expensive) campaign seasons Montana has seen in quite some time. If you, like some of us in the Montana Free Press newsroom, are feeling a touch worn down by the barrage of news stories and political advertising that has buffeted the state over the past several months, that’d be understandable.As the 2024 election season comes to a close, though, it’s a vital time to do the civic work of paying attention through the homestretch. We’d like to let you know what to expect from MTFP over the next week as we try to help you understand Montana’s election results. On Tuesday afternoon we’ll launch an election-special homepage at montanafreepress.org featuring a dashboard of up-to-the-minute race results courtesy of our partners at the Associated Press. Those results will start rolling in after the polls close at 8 p.m., and we’ll update a central all-race-results story throughout the evening.We plan to have reporters on-site at candidates’ election-night parties in Whitefish, Missoula and Bozeman. We’ll also keep in touch with election monitors and local election administrators to track any irregularities or snafus as the process unfolds.We’ll publish stories detailing known winners and losers as vote counts allow late into Tuesday night. Then we’ll be back at our stations Wednesday morning to mop up any holdovers and provide status reports on any races that may remain too close to call. Throughout the remainder of the week, we’ll publish stories on how the balance of power in the 2025 state Legislature has stacked up, how this year’s election played out administratively, and exploring what the outcomes mean for Montana’s political identity. Additionally, on Thursday, our editors and reporters will host a free online Election 2024 Debrief from 5 to 6 p.m. (You can register to participate here.) It’s a lot, we know. But it’s going to be good. We hope you’ll join us. —Brad Tyer, EditorCloseup 📸Credit: Mara Silvers/MTFPA sampling of the political mailers that have flooded mailboxes across Montana, diligently hoarded by MTFP staff over the past several weeks. As we’ve reported elsewhere, top spenders include the Last Best Place PAC and Win Senate (groups backing Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester), More Jobs, Less Government and Senate Leadership Fund (backing Tester’s Republican challenger, Tim Sheehy), the committee behind Constitutional Initiative 128, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, and the backers of Constitutional Initiatives 126 and 127, Montanans for Election Reform. The Montana Republican State Central Committee and the Montana Democratic Party have also funded mailers and advertisements for candidates up and down the ballot.—Mara SilversSay What 🤔When monied interests decide to fuel and influence political campaigns, they have to make one choice before many others: what to call their political action committee.Some committee names are, honestly, pretty boring (looking at you, the trillion different variations on “Montanans for X”). More than once this election cycle, though, we stumbled across something in state or federal finance filings that made us say, “Um, what?”Here are a few of the PAC names that gave us a chuckle this year:Your Community PAC — A Delaware-registered super PAC that has spent more than $16 million this cycle for Democratic candidates across the country. Seed of Life Labs — At least one of our reporters thought this PAC, based on the name alone, might be working to oppose abortion access in Montana. In fact, it is a marijuana company. Save the American West — A Stevensville-registered PAC whose only apparent purpose was putting $1,000 toward a failed ballot initiative to make rodeo the official state sport of Montana. Bulldogs United — Listed as a “statewide” independent committee, this Whitefish group actually just seems interested in expanding a public school bond. (The bulldog is, of course, the Whitefish High School mascot.) Great Opportunity PAC, Inc. — A Virginia-based super PAC backing Republicans in major congressional races across the country, including Montana’s competitive Senate race. Reproductive Freedom for All Freedom Fund — In the words of MTFP political reporter Tom Lutey, “the doubling up on freedom just kind of has a ‘needs more cowbell’ feel to it.” This federal PAC is affiliated with Reproductive Freedom for All, a late arrival in Montana’s U.S. Senate race. —Mara SilversBy the Numbers  🔢Number of absentee ballots returned to county election offices as of midday Thursday, according to the Montana Secretary of State.Evan Wilson, a Montana elections analyst who works for Republican campaigns, told MTFP’s Capitolized political newsletter this week that absentee ballot returns should hit 498,000 accounting for absentee voters who haven’t yet returned ballots but have voted in every federal election since 2016. He said overall voter turnout for this year is on track to look something like the 2016 presidential election, down from the high-turnout 2020 election, when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the state to allow counties to issue postage-paid mail ballots and turnout hit 81%.State voter data shows 200,000 more absentee ballots were sent out in 2024 than in 2016.READ MORE: Predicting turnout.—Tom LuteyThe Way Things Work ⚙️How exactly do the physical ballots Montanans return, either by mail or at polling places, translate to the official results we see flashed on television and computer screens come election night? The answer is work that keeps local election workers busy well ahead of Election Day and well past it.For absentee (i.e., mail) ballots, the process has already begun in many counties, where ballots are being sorted into bundles, scanned into the state’s election system and verified using past examples of voters’ signatures. Small armies of county staff and volunteers are diligently removing those ballots from their envelopes and preparing them to be counted by electronic vote-tabulating machines next week. Each night those bundles get tucked away in sealed vaults, their every movement tracked on official sheets that follow them throughout the journey.Once polls close Tuesday at 8 p.m., the same diligence will be applied to voted ballots deposited by voters into polling place collection boxes. Election workers will check the number of ballots in those boxes and, depending on the county, transport the boxes directly to a central counting location. There, they’ll be sent through the same tabulating machines used to process absentee ballots, with the numbers in each batch verified once more. The votes tabulated by each machine will be pulled using a special thumb drive — supplied by Nebraska-based ES&S, the sole manufacturer of all Montana election equipment — and uploaded to a computer isolated from the internet. Throughout the night, results will be pulled from that computer and uploaded through a separate computer to the secretary of state’s election system. Voters will see those results reflected in updates to Montana’s online election dashboard. At the same time, poll-watchers and journalists at election offices across the state will be handed printed copies of local results, data that can sometimes let news outlets like the Associated Press report results faster than they appear on the official state dashboard.The system is complex enough to inspire curiosity, even skepticism, about how it all plays out. There are several checks and balances built into the system, however. Political parties have long tapped volunteers to act as poll watchers, and independent observation efforts are underway this year to report on the accuracy and efficacy of the process. Additionally, in the weeks after the election, county officials conduct randomized post-election audits and county-level canvasses that certify the local results — setting the stage for a final certification by Montana’s secretary of state. After all is said and done, ballots remain sealed and securely stored in their home counties for at least 22 months.—Alex SakariassenFrom the Editor 🖊️Regular readers will notice something new among the articles published by Montana Free Press this week: sponsored content. Sponsored content, if you’re not familiar with that piece of publishing industry jargon, is an article that is supplied by a third-party organization that has paid a news outlet like MTFP for its placement. As a result, while it may be written in the style of the publication, it is not impartial journalism, and MTFP did not participate in the article’s reporting or writing.  So why is MTFP publishing sponsored content? The big reason is revenue. MTFP’s growing editorial operations mean growing expenses (primarily on salaries for our growing staff of reporters). Making that growth sustainable for the long term requires the support of a diverse stable of revenue sources to supplement the philanthropic and reader support that continues to be our budgetary bread and butter. Increasingly, sponsored content is becoming part of the economic model at nonprofit news outlets nationwide, including at MTFP’s peer publications Mississippi Today, Signal Ohio and Spotlight Delaware.In line with MTFP’s dedication to transparency with readers, sponsored content will be clearly labeled when it appears on MTFP. And as with all of MTFP’s ever-evolving initiatives aimed at producing journalistic innovation and building organizational sustainability, we will continue to assess its value to MTFP’s readers. Because as we and our content sponsors well know, readers are MTFP’s most valuable resource, and serving the news needs of Montanans is our first and foremost goal. As always, we welcome your feedback on how we can continue to do that better.—Brad Tyer, EditorHighlights ☀️In other news this week —Montana could end up being the only state in the nation to shelve its expanded Medicaid health coverage program next year if the program isn’t renewed by the Legislature and governor. Kaiser Health News reporter Katheryn Houghton writes that conservative groups are laying the groundwork for an anti-renewal push.Constitutional Initiative 128 has been billed as a fairly simple ballot measure to enshrine existing abortion rights in the state Constitution. As Mara Silvers reports, though, there are plenty of smart questions to be asked — and answered — about how the initiative interfaces with Montana’s current legal precedent and medical practices.With the 2024 fire season winding down, the total area burned in Montana this year is about 443,000 acres, the third-most of the past decade after 2021 and 2017. Zeke Lloyd reports that ranking is in large part because a single southeastern Montana fire burned almost 200,000 acres.Marking the Occasion 🗓️A sampling of MTFP staffers’ Election Day traditions.Alex — Voting at the polls has been my brief respite from the all-day news-gathering chaos of Election Day for the past 20 years. And after submitting my ballot, I always swing by Missoula’s Bernice’s Bakery for one of their trademark “VOTE” sugar cookies. That way I get to cast my vote and eat it too.Brad — I mailed my ballot in weeks ago, so voting won’t be part of my Election Day routine this year. Expecting to work late, though, I’ll be sleeping in on Tuesday, and maybe taking a pre-decompressing morning soak in my inflatable hot tub before the recalled heater unit blows out. I also expect to gather a bag of leftover Halloween candy for fuel and take an overly long and purposefully slow stroll to MTFP’s downtown Helena HQ to settle in for one of our staff’s most satisfyingly enervating days of the year.  Jacob — On Election Day I make a point of spending time with my kids in the evening so I don’t get sucked into watching “horse race coverage” that tries to fill the airtime before we actually know the results of most national elections. Tom — I begin Election Day by writing boilerplate copy for my election results stories, a practice that makes it easier to finalize things quickly when results come in. I try to make sure the copy will withstand any surprise outcomes, particularly in tight races. I’ve known reporters who pre-wrote outcomes into Election Day stories, which scares the hell out of me. Reporters aren’t great predictors of outcomes. And, once returns start coming in, it’s all Motorhead, kind of like that time you turned your mom’s drier into a carnival ride. Zeke — My native state, Ohio, let me cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential primary as a 17-year-old because I was going to be 18 by that November. Feeling a bit sheepish about my age, I built my confidence by watching Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur star in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” I’ve rewatched the movie on every Election Day since, fueling me with the conviction that every American has a right to participate in our republic. Mara — After a dizzying couple of weeks leading up to E-Day, I typically aim to get some perspective on Tuesday morning by going for a hybrid hike/run up Mount Ascension, a local peak south of Helena that provides a fantastic view of the state Capitol. It’s a metaphorically apt way of catching my breath before starting the descent.Eric — Perhaps because I take outsized joy in making convoluted spreadsheets, I habitually end up with the job of organizing MTFP’s internal, cashless, thoroughly unscientific and typically humbling election-night office pool. (I don’t, however, habitually win it.) The post Abortion rights initiative draws grassroots resistance appeared first on Montana Free Press.