There is a question on our ballot this November, and it deserves a straight answer.

Constitutional Initiative 132 says seven words: judicial elections shall remain nonpartisan. That is the whole thing. It takes the way Montana has chosen judges since 1936 and writes it into our constitution so that it stays that way.

I am voting yes, and I want to explain why in plain terms.

What this actually changes

Nothing. That is the point, and it is worth sitting with for a second.

Montana has run judicial elections on a nonpartisan ballot for ninety years. Judges and justices in this state have never carried a party letter next to their name on the ballot. When you vote for a district judge or a justice of the peace, you vote for a person.

The Legislature has taken up proposals to change that in each of the last three sessions. Those proposals did not pass. CI-132 asks the voters to settle the question ourselves and put the answer somewhere the Legislature cannot quietly revisit it every two years.

When our Attorney General rewrote the ballot language to suggest CI-132 would change the status quo, the Montana Supreme Court found the rewrite misleading, for the simple reason that judicial elections in Montana are already nonpartisan under state law. CI-132 preserves what we have.

Think about the last time you were in a courtroom

Most Montanans meet a judge in an ordinary moment. A custody hearing. A traffic ticket. A dispute with a neighbor over where the fence line runs. A water right that keeps an operation alive through August. A landlord matter. A will.

In that room, every one of us wants the same thing. We want a judge who reads the law, weighs the facts of our particular case, and rules.

Putting a party label on the ballot adds nothing to that. It tells the judge who to thank. It tells the lawyers standing in front of that judge who to write checks to next cycle. It tells every Montanan who walks into that courtroom to look at the label first and wonder whether the case was decided before anyone said a word.

And this reaches further than the Supreme Court. It reaches district courts, water courts, and courts of limited jurisdiction. There is no such thing as a Republican or a Democratic water right. There is no partisan way to rule on a speeding ticket in Yellowstone County. Our judges should answer to the constitution and to the people of Montana.

About the argument that our courts are partisan

The case against CI-132 rests on a claim that goes something like this: the Montana Supreme Court has struck down laws passed by the Legislature, and that proves the court is playing politics.

Courts reviewing the acts of a legislature is how this system was built. It is the whole reason we have three branches. A legislature passes a law, someone challenges it, and a court measures it against the constitution. Sometimes the law stands and sometimes it falls. That is not a malfunction. That is the machine running exactly as designed, and every one of us relies on it when the law in question is one we do not like.

Both parties have lost cases in front of Montana judges. Both parties will lose more. A court that never told the Legislature no would be a rubber stamp, and a rubber stamp protects nobody.

About the money

Let me be honest about something, because you deserve honesty from anyone asking for your vote.

There is real money behind the campaign for CI-132, including large contributions from national organizations. That is true. There is real money lining up against it, and there will be more of it between now and November. Every serious ballot fight in this state now runs into the millions on both sides. Anyone who tells you the money is only on one side is telling you half of a story.

So here is the measure I trust instead.

More than one hundred thousand Montanans signed a petition to put this question on the ballot. Those signatures qualified in 57 of our 100 legislative districts, well past the 40 that the constitution requires. Fifty-seven districts in a state that votes the way ours votes means red districts and blue districts, ranch country and city blocks, people who agree on very little else.

A hundred thousand neighbors picked up a pen. That is not a consultant. That is Montana.

Where I stand

I am running for the Legislature in the Heights because I believe government belongs to us, and we reclaim it when we show up. Showing up means knocking on doors, listening to people who will never vote for me, and being straight about what I think even when a topic is uncomfortable.

This one is easy. Keep the party bosses out of the courtroom. Keep our judges accountable to the constitution and to the Montanans standing in front of them.

I am voting yes on CI-132, and I hope you will too.