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Montana bill would let online obituaries speed removal of deceased voters
Summary
Supporters told the House State Administration committee HB 248 would modernize statutes so funeral-home obituaries posted online can be used to cancel voter registrations more quickly, reducing the lag between a death and removal from voter rolls.
Representative Braxton Mitchell introduced House Bill 248 as a narrowly tailored update to Montana’s voter-cancellation law to reflect how families now publish obituaries. Proponents, including Austin James for Secretary of State Christy Jacobson and several Montana funeral directors, said the current statute ties a clerk’s ability to cancel a voter to either a death certificate or an obituary published in a newspaper, which increasingly is no longer the norm.
Austin James, elections director and counsel for the Secretary of State’s office, told the committee officials saw long delays between death and cancellation “in some counties, it was taking years and it was averaging months,” and that HB 248 would allow obituaries posted on funeral-home websites (and otherwise distributed online) to be attached to voter files so clerks can perform a hard match and cancel registrations more promptly. He said the state’s vital-statistics feed has improved the speed of government-provided death reporting from quarterly to weekly and that DPHHS plans a future system that could deliver daily updates.
Representatives of the Montana Funeral Directors Association testified they now host obituaries on their websites and use social media to notify families, and that requiring a newspaper publication is an anachronism that slows the voter-cancellation process. Chris Holt, a Helena funeral director, said funeral homes provide obituary pages and families use those postings to notify friends and relatives; Terry James and Brad Longcake urged a due pass to keep the rolls accurate and spare grieving families the distress of receiving ballots after a death.
Committee members asked whether funeral homes are required to report obituaries; witnesses said the statutory reporting alternative remains on the family and clerks can attach a family-submitted obituary or death certificate to a voter file. Austin James described the cancellation process as twofold: a government feed from DPHHS routed through vital-statistics and county distribution, and family-provided documents that election administrators match to records.
Sponsor Mitchell closed by characterizing the bill as a simple modernization of the code. If advanced, the bill would let clerks rely on obituaries posted online as a legitimate path to process cancellations instead of requiring printed newspaper notices.
The hearing on HB 248 closed with no opponents recorded in the room or online.
