Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen on HR 1

With HR 1 looming in Washington, D.C. last week, KGVO spoke to Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen for her thoughts about keeping Montana’s election process safe and secure.

“We what we have right now going on in Washington is extreme federal government overreach on the state, and with the Democrats holding the House and the Senate and the Presidency, we have a whole slew of harmful election policies that are trying to basically change the way our state conducts elections and we have to push back in a big way,” said Jacobsen.

Jacobsen pointed out some of the policies that the federal government is planning to impose on the states.

“Some of the most harmful policies that I've ever seen include online, automatic online voter registration, Election Day registration, automatic voter registration, all mail ballot, and no excuse absentee voting with an all mail ballot,” she said.

What Jacobsen was most wary of, however, was the attempt to wrest control of Montana’s own election process.

“Most importantly, they’re trying to take away the right for states to run our elections,” she said. “We had a highly successful election in 2020, and we did not have the disasters that we saw across the rest of the country. For the federal government to come in and tell us how we need to conduct our elections when we didn't have some of the issues that the other states had during the election, is deeply concerning. It's just that we have to push back.”

Jacobsen says she appealed to the state legislature to pass bills that would solidify Montana’s control over its own elections.

“We have our legislature right now working to pass some election integrity bills that I our office has requested, and we have several of the legislators that are carrying really good legislation that's going to hopefully pass, starting with voter ID,” she said. “That is something that I campaigned on.”

In HR 1, some of its key points are creating a national system for automatic voter registration, and putting in transparency requirements for political advertising.