HELENA — Friday marked a key milestone in Montana’s 2024 primary election, as hundreds of thousands of mail ballots went out to voters across the state.
On Friday morning, a U-Haul truck arrived outside the City-County Building in Helena, as the Lewis and Clark County Elections Office packed and sent out their ballots.
Election officials went through envelopes to find voters who changed their addresses after ballots were printed. They then placed them in dozens of trays, loaded those trays into the back of the truck and took them to the post office to be mailed out.
In Lewis and Clark County, mail ballots went out to around 34,000 voters. That’s almost 82% of the 41,585 active registered voters in the county, and two-thirds of the 50,966 total registered voters.
A spokesperson for the Montana Secretary of State’s Office said, statewide, officials mailed ballots to more than 450,000 voters Friday – three-quarters of active registered voters.
In the 2022 general election, the Secretary of State’s Office reported 503,923 absentee ballots were mailed out. 376,731 of those were returned – meaning mail votes accounted for roughly 80% of the 468,326 votes cast in that election.
Voters should start seeing ballots in their mailboxes in the coming days. Lewis and Clark County leaders said, if you’re expecting a mail ballot and don’t get it by the end of next week, they encourage you to contact the elections office directly.
You can find contact information for your county elections office on the Secretary of State’s website.
In Montana’s primary, voters receive multiple parties’ ballots and must choose one – and only one – to vote on. All voters are going to get Republican, Democratic and Green Party ballots, and those in the state’s western congressional district will also get a Libertarian ballot.
Mail ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, June 4, in order to count.
