After a week of legal scuffling, the campaign behind a constitutional amendment to explicitly protect abortion rights in Montana can begin collecting the tens of thousands of signatures it needs to put the proposal on the ballot this November.

Montanans are exercising their Constitutional right to amend the state Constitution through the initiative process in 2024. You may be approached by supporters of CI126 to sign a petition to put a proposed Constitutional amendment on the ballot for the general election in the fall of 2024 that would significantly alter our partisan election system.

Currently, Montana uses primary elections to nominate party candidates who advance to the general election. In a primary election, voters select one qualified political party’s ballot and choose from that party’s slate of candidates for various elected offices. Party winners are the party’s nominee for office. Sometimes a political party does not have any candidates running for a specific office; voters who choose that party’s ballot will not cast a “primary” vote for that elected office.
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Fifteen years after the plant was shuttered for good and eight years after it was added to the National Priorities List (also known as the Superfund list), the Environmental Protection Agency is in the final stages of determining how to address the contamination, and the owner of the land is eyeing a sale for future development..

But now, as the EPA is reportedly close to issuing its final Record of Decision, a grassroots group in Columbia Falls is urging the federal agency to slow down. The group, called the Coalition for a Clean CFAC, has said the EPA hasn’t been transparent enough and that the agency’s preferred solution, leaving most of the contamination in place by building a concrete wall around it, could negatively impact the community in the future.