Citizens tell SABA committee voter rolls contain duplicates, deceased and other discrepancies; call for legislative subcommittee

Two citizen presenters told the SABA Committee on Friday that Montana’s publicly available voter-roll data are incomplete and contain enough anomalies that they enable known instances of improper voting and prevent public audits.

Dave Nims, a retired aerospace engineer who said he supports the Montana Election Integrity Project, told the committee that his group purchased a subscription to download the state voter-roll dataset and that his repeated analyses have identified “dozens” of instances that appear improper. "Election fraud in Montana," he said, adding, "Not a whole lot that I can confirm, but yes." Nims told senators he found mismatches between the number of ballots counted and the number of voters shown in the datasets, and he urged the committee to create a legislative subcommittee to examine the records.

Why it matters: Nims and another presenter, Mary Beveridge, said the problems prevent public or official reconciliation of ballots to voters and show systemic data gaps. They told senators those gaps have already prompted a recount in Silver Bow County and remain unresolved in multiple counties, which the presenters said risks public confidence in election outcomes.

Nims said the publicly sold dataset excludes some classes of data the state keeps, including records of provisional ballots, confidential voters and records of voters who are no longer registered; he said that omission creates large discrepancies in counties where…