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Clerks push timeline change after last‑minute petition dump; opponents warn of voter disenfranchisement
Summary
Senate Bill 226 would require petition pages to be delivered to the relevant county election administrator within four weeks of the earliest signature on the page; county election officials said the change aims to prevent last‑minute, large‑volume deliveries that overwhelmed offices in 2024.
Sen. Mike Cuff introduced Senate Bill 226 to establish a rolling deadline for petition turn‑ins: under the bill as drafted, a petition page must be delivered to the county election administrator within four weeks of the oldest signature on that page, or the county may reject the filing and stop processing it.
County election administrators told the committee they brought the bill after a 2024 signature‑gathering cycle produced large, last‑minute deliveries — thousands of pages delivered in a very short window — that overwhelmed local offices and threatened constitutional deadlines for certification. Regina Plettenberg, Ravalli County election administrator and past…
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