Jane Lee Hamman’s latest column (Election Integrity: division dialogue and progress) is both sloppy and irresponsible. While touting pending state legislation as a way to bolster confidence in the electoral process, she undermines her stated goal by making assertions of voting irregularities that are unsupported and, in many cases, explicitly debunked.
Her opening salvo, that “nearly every citizen in the state…” is concerned with voting integrity is based on either partisan polling or debunked assertions (for instance, regarding unaccounted-for California ballots, see the Reuters article at https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-caliofrnia-unaccounted-ballots/fact-check-10-8-million-unaccounted-for-ballots-in-2022-midterm-in-california-not-an-indication-of-fraud-idUSL1N34C1V4). Perhaps in Hamman’s MAGA bubble “everyone” is concerned. In the rest of the state, perhaps not.
After describing pending legislation, Hamman ends her column with a lengthy quote from a member of the Montana Election Integrity Project, an organization whose previous assertions about voting irregularity have been shown to have no merit (see the Bozeman Daily Chronicle article at https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/editorials/editorial-voters-can-be-confident-in-montanas-elections/article_9229ccf2-7be3-5ee8-8d05-2c5d13e41ff6.html). The lengthy quote is a random litany of “questions” that, if the electoral system were an individual, could only be described as character assassination.
