HELENA, Mont. — Independent U.S. Senate candidate Seth Bodnar appears on track to qualify for Montana’s November general election ballot after county election officials certified more than 18,000 signatures and forwarded them to the Secretary of State’s Office for final verification, according to an unofficial tally released Friday.
Bodnar’s campaign needed 13,327 valid signatures to secure a spot on the ballot. By Tuesday’s submission deadline, the campaign had delivered nearly 30,000 signatures gathered across the state in recent months. As of Friday, county officials had accepted 18,772 and rejected 7,812. The Secretary of State’s Office must still receive, review, tabulate, and certify the submissions before Bodnar’s independent candidacy becomes official.
The campaign expressed confidence the threshold would hold. “Tens of thousands of Montanans from every corner of our state have spoken: they are sick of the broken politics of Washington and are ready for an Independent on the ballot in November,” the campaign said in a statement.
Despite running as an independent, Bodnar’s campaign has drawn scrutiny for its Democratic ties. His campaign is being run by political consultants who previously worked for former Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, and the campaign has relied on ActBlue, the online fundraising platform used almost exclusively by Democratic candidates and causes, to process donations.
The Secretary of State’s review process can extend over a considerable period of time, and signature verification battles have derailed citizen-backed ballot efforts in recent election cycles.
Bodnar, the former president of the University of Montana, faces a competitive path to November. Republican Kurt Alme, a former U.S. Attorney hand-picked by Sen. Steve Daines, enters the general election as the presumptive favorite in a state that has trended sharply Republican in recent cycles. Whether Bodnar’s independent bid can draw enough crossover support to be competitive will likely depend on how many Montana voters are willing to look past his campaign’s deep Democratic operational ties.