State GOP spent $100k to qualify Montana Green Party for the ballot
A mystery of the 2020 election was solved Tuesday as it became clear the Montana Republican Party paid for an effort to qualify the Montana Green Party for the ballot this election.
Earlier this year paid petitioners appeared in Montana's larger cities gathering signatures to qualify the Greens to run candidates this cycle, even though the Montana Green Party has made clear it did not do any work to qualify for the ballot this year and had not planned to run any candidates.
At that point, it appeared only one group, the political action committee Club for Growth Action, had filed with the state Commissioner of Political Practices to spend money to qualify a minor party. But in February that group said they told their vendor to stop any signature-gathering efforts and did not plan to submit any signatures.
By March 6, however, the secretary of state qualified the Greens for the ballot because the petitioners had submitted enough signatures to do so. At that point, it was still unknown who paid for the effort. That's even with a new state law passed by the 2019 Legislature requiring anyone spending more than $500 to qualify a minor party to register with the commissioner within five days of the expenditure.
Read more: https://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/state-gop-spent-k-to-qualify-montana-green-party-for/article_a7e262cd-d162-512c-bc1c-293f03ca8ad1.html
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