Last week, I attended a Republican candidate forum at Kleffner Ranch in East Helena. Candidates spoke to many issues, but Constitutional Initiative (CI) 126, which would dramatically change how primary elections work in the state of Montana, received special attention.
The consensus of the candidates in the room, echoing the state Republican Party, criticized CI-126 as an attempt to implement ranked choice voting — a system in which voters rank their preferences among a group of candidates, with the winner determined by the weights assigned to each rank.
CI-126, which is still in the petition stage, wouldn’t really do that, but it’s bad for other reasons. CI-126 would create open primaries. Open primaries are just that: open! All registered candidates are presented on a single ballot, regardless of party affiliation, and the four candidates who receive the most votes move on to the general election. No more party specific primaries would be held, but candidates would still have their party affiliations marked on primary ballots.
