Rachel Maddow on Montana....
Her intro tonight focused on Montana and Rep Ryan Zinke, who is nominated to be Interior Secretary. Basically, because of increased costs in November election, the state is facing problems if they have to have a special election to replace him after he is confirmed as Interior Secretary. Most of the cost is borne at the county level, where revenue streams are typically hardest to generate, especially in the rural counties that make up most of the state.
Well, the counties proposed cutting costs by having a mail-in election, which would be less expensive. A bill was proposed to do so in the State leg by a couple of Repubs. All is well and good, until the Chairman of the Repub party in Montana wrote a letter to the party that mail-in voting would increase participation, which would be an advantage for Democrats. Yes, he actually wrote it down and mailed it out. Now the bill is possibly in danger.
If you get a chance, take a look at this when the replays are up. Fascinating.
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I don't think the bill is in genuine danger at all. Our counties don't have the money for the special election and the (R)s will NOT be able to justify spending up to 1M in extra money to have the stand-in-line kind of election.
We are already well set up for ballot by mail voting. I do all of my voting by mail. You can track your ballot online, see when it is received, see when it is accepted.
LOVE IT.
This special election should be AWESOME. Democrats in this state are pissed and feisty as hell. 
I was hoping for some feedback from a Montanan. That sounds good to me. We have all vote by mail here in WA. I recommend it. Works great. We also have the online tracking feature, and we have dropboxes scattered around so you don't even have to spend for postage. 
Oh, and I loved that part of the segment where she showed the response to the Repub effort to sell off 3.3 million acres of public land, much of it in Montana. I think they were surprised by the depth and the breadth of the pushback on that. Repubs have been more and more open about their contempt for actual voters and citizens opinions.
