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On Wednesday, December 18th, MTEOI held a press conference to share initial findings from the 2024 Montana General Election Nonpartisan Observation effort and announce the 2024 Montana General Election Findings will be released the week of January 6, 2025. Jeff Mangan and Geraldine Custer, MTEOI Co-Chairs spoke, as well as Daniel Bruce, our Coordinator. David Carroll of The Carter Center and Katie Vaughn from the Maureen & Mike Mansfield Center also delivered remarks. You can find them below.
David Carroll’s Remarks – Successful Nonpartisan Observation
The Carter Center is proud of the Montana Election Observation Initiative and its successful introduction of nonpartisan election observation in this pivotal moment in Montana’s elections. With our beneficial partnership with the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, MTEOI
deployed a robust team of 135 local citizens across sixteen counties and seven critical processes that ensure Montana’s elections are secure, fair, and transparent. We could not have done this without the hard work of our staff and partners throughout the state, and especially without the dedicated volunteer observers who contributed hours of their time to this project. Citizen observation helps local communities across the world participate in their elections in an innovative way, and in the end, citizens come away with a better understanding of how their elections operate and, most importantly, trust in the process. The Carter Center is honored that the groundwork is now laid to make nonpartisan observation not just a Montana-wide recognized practice, but one day hopefully nationwide. Montana should be proud that its electoral landscape fosters a transparent process where nonpartisan actors can contribute to accountability, learning, and collaboration with hard-working election officials and local citizens. As the Center continues to grow its programming in the domestic election space, we are encouraged by the strong network of individuals dedicated to a healthier, more transparent democracy in one of the most contentious election cycles in our nation’s history.
Katie Vaughan’s Remarks – Montana’s Elections Now and In the Future
Early next month, MTEOI will provide Montana with a first-of-its-kind comprehensive understanding of its election process. As we’ve said from the beginning, our goal is to reinforce public confidence in elections and establish ourselves as a crucial, nonpartisan voice in the politically polarized environment for the 2024 general election, and now in future election cycles. MTEOI now holds clear data collected through MTEOI’s observations showing what happened at local election jurisdictions and polls between Logic & Accuracy Testing of election equipment to County Canvasses. In addition to reinforcing trust and understanding across the state in the 2024 election processes, we hope our data and reporting spur necessary electoral reforms and support efforts to create a more educated electorate. We look forward to utilizing this valuable information to communicate with state and local officials, political party representatives, and other influential stakeholders to advance our shared goals. We’d like to take a moment to express our gratitude to MTEOI’s Advisory Board, the project leads Daniel Bruce and Kelly Beadle, our partners at The Carter Center, and finally, the local community members who showed up as nonpartisan observers.
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