(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Election integrity committee to start work on Thursday – Daily Montanan [1] ['Nicole Girten', 'More From Author', '- January'] Date: 2023-01-09 A special select committee on elections will meet for the first time this Thursday. Senate President Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, announced the formation of two special select committees, one on elections and the other on redistricting, on the Senate Floor on Monday. The Senate also passed the joint rules that govern how both chambers operate together. A handful of amendments were proposed but none passed. Two were from Sen. Brad Molnar, R-Laurel. One would have required a minimum of eight hours for public notice for conference committee meetings, held at the end of the session. Molnar spoke on the floor about massive changes to existing law that happened in the final hour of the 2021 session in those committees. “I’ve never seen a full conference committee bill come out on the last day of the session with zero warning that was good policy,” he said. “Just doing that is bad policy.” Another of Molnar’s amendments would have provided easier access to amendments associated with a bill. Sen. Mary Ann Dunwell, D-Helena, proposed an amendment that would have required a legal note be attached to a bill on the legislative website, instead of having it be at the request of the bill’s sponsor. Special redistricting committee The legislature formally received the legislative map proposal from the Districting and Apportionment Commission, dividing the state into 100 House districts and 50 Senate districts, and now it has 30 days to give feedback. The special select committee will be led by Sen. Mike Cuffe, R-Eureka, with Sen. Dan Bartel, R-Lewistown, and Sen Ryan Lynch, D-Butte, as members, Ellsworth said. Members in the House will be Rep. Bill Mercer, R-Billings, Rep. Jedediah Hinkle, R-Drummond, and House Minority Leader Kim Abbott, D-Helena, as announced on the House Floor. The redistricting commission continues to accept feedback from the public on the latest map proposal, which is available online. Special elections committee The select committee on elections, as reported in December, will be led by Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila. Among the committee’s members will be Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, and Sen. Shane Morigeau, D-Missoula, according to Ellsworth on Monday. The House voted in favor of the formation of the elections committee and appointed Rep. Jerry Schillinger, R-Circle, Rep. Ed Stafman, D-Bozeman, and Rep. Bob Phalen, R-Lindsay. The committee will be tasked with looking into Montana’s elections systems and processes to see if anything needs to be changed, lawmakers said in December. But some Republicans and Democrats have different visions of how effective it will be and what it will accomplish. “This committee will be a fact-finding and idea-proposing entity,” Ellsworth said in a December statement. “It will supplement and will be in addition to our usual legislative committees and lawmaking procedures, not a replacement of any of the legislature’s normal processes.” Abbott told the Daily Montanan in December she thinks spending too much time on potential changes to elections is unnecessary, and said her caucus would be more focused on economic issues. “We see ‘election integrity’ as a national effort to really undermine Montanans’ right to vote,” Abbott said. “I think we’ve seen over and over again, any accusations of fraud in our elections have been proven to be false. There’s simply no evidence for that.” Ellsworth said the elections committee will meet twice per week on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. The schedule for the redistricting committee was not available Monday. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2023/01/09/election-integrity-committee-to-start-work-on-thursday/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/