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Montana GOP advances bill to change the rules and make Sen. Jon Tester's reelection bid tougher [1]

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Date: 2023-04-05  

Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana.

Republicans in the Montana state Senate on Tuesday evening passed a bill to change the rules for the 2024 U.S. Senate election―and only the 2024 U.S. Senate election―in a move Democrats blasted as a "partisan power grab" aimed at weakening Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in a tough state. The proposed legislation would do away with partisan primaries and instead require all the candidates to compete on one ballot. The top-two vote-getters would be advancing to next year’s general election, and there’s little question that neither of them would be an independent or belong to a third party.

State Sen. Greg Hertz, a Republican who sponsored the legislation, insisted he was trying to put this top-two primary system, which is already in use in California and Washington state, in place because “​​[w]e want to make sure that the winning U.S. senator has more than 50% of the supporting people in Montana.” He also defended the decision to put this in place for just one race in just one year, saying that he was picking the U.S. Senate race for a top-two “test run” because of the power of the office and its six-year term.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/5/2162275/-Montana-GOP-advances-bill-to-change-the-rules-and-make-Sen-Jon-Tester-s-reelection-bid-tougher

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