HELENA — The sponsors of a proposed ballot initiative that aims to keep corporations from spending money in Montana elections are now going to the state Supreme Court, after the attorney general ruled the measure didn’t qualify to go before voters.
The measure is currently called by the temporary name Ballot Issue #4. It’s intended to find a way around the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited money in elections as long as they don’t coordinate directly with candidates.
The Transparent Election Initiative, the group behind Ballot Issue #4, claim that states have the authority to limit what powers they grant corporations, so Montana could redefine those granted powers to exclude political spending. The measure would attempt to amend the state constitution to “retract all Artificial Persons’ powers” and regrant them without powers related to election spending.
Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s office is responsible for reviewing proposed ballot measures to see if they meet state requirements. In this case, they argued Ballot Issue #4 violated a rule that each substantive change to the Montana Constitution be voted on one at a time.
Knudsen’s office said the measure would have impacts on a huge range of constitutional provisions, by limiting specific enumerated rights to humans and not “artificial persons” and by changing corporate charters. They also argued the “retraction” and “regranting” of powers should be considered separate amendments.
The backers of Ballot Issue #4 argued the attorney general’s office was using an overly broad interpretation of the separate-vote requirement. They said any changes in the measure were all closely related, and that breaking them into separate amendments would make them “unintelligible” individually. They asked the Supreme Court to reverse the attorney general’s determination and allow them to move forward with gathering signatures.
This is now the fourth active legal case asking the Montana Supreme Court to overrule Knudsen’s office’s legal review of a proposed 2026 ballot initiative.
