The Cascade County Democratic Central Committee has received emails via the website and our Facebook page from people who say they think they should have received an email ballot but did not. This is a serious problem that should be addressed right away. It’s very unlikely those ballots are still on your way to you in the mail.
First step is to check your voter status because voters can be inactivated or purged between elections for a number of legitimate reasons. We have also heard some long term voters were apparently inactivated by the previous regime in the Elections Office for “missing ID”.
- Check your voter status at the Montana Secretary of State website at https://prodvoterportal.mt.gov/WhereToVote.aspx Enter your first and last name and date of birth. You’re checking the upper right of the Voter Registration Details page to see if you are an absentee voter and in Active status.
- If you are Active, then click the link on the left side of the page that says Track My Ballot. If a ballot has been issued for you there should be a Ballot Sent Date. If the ballot has been returned there should be a Ballot Returned Date and a Ballot Status.
If you are not found as a registered voter, or you are shown as inactive, or a ballot was supposedly sent but you never got it, or you did send in your ballot and it has a Returned Date but is not in Accepted state, or worst of all you never received and mailed your ballot but the SOS site says it has a Returned Date and has been Accepted, or whatever else, then you need to take action immediately if you want to be able to vote and have your vote count. There is still time to register or get yourself on active status or have the elections office issue you a replacement ballot or resolve other issues.
If you are not registered at all the Cascade County Elections office website has lots of voter information about late registration and early in-person voting. Late registration runs through Nov. 4 at the elections office 325 2nd Ave N. It must be done in person. There’s also registration on election day itself Nov. 5 at the fair grounds. Our suggestion is fill out the voter registration form under Documents and take that to the elections office in person.
If your voter status shows as inactive there are reactivation instructions also linked at the County website under Documents. In essence your must reregister. However there is not enough time to do it by mail at this point as late registration by mail is closed. You should visit the County elections office in person to reregister/reactivate.
If there are other issues such as you did not get a ballot you were supposed to get or your ballot was Returned but not Accepted or whatever other problems, you will need to contact the Elections Office and get a worker to resolve it. There is a Contact by Email form linked from the County’s web page in upper right but it doesn’t always produce a response. For more reliable email contact administrator Terry Thompson directly at tthompson@cascadecountymt.gov There’s a phone number listed on the web page too. For best results head on down to the elections office in person. You are hard to ignore in the flesh. They are very busy and there have been reports of emails and phone calls going unanswered.
Finally if you encountered any elections problems at all please also notify local Election Protection at ElectionProtection406@gmail.com with an explanation of your problem. They track issues each election.