S3E20: Piloting Domestic Election Observation with Montana’s Jeff Mangan

In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Jeff Mangan. He’s a former Commissioner of Political Practice in Montana, and one of co-chairs of the Montana Election Observation Initiative [MEOI], a Carter Center-supported nonpartisan election observation effort.

MEOI conducted their first pilot observation during Montana’s June 4th primary in Missoula. You can read the preliminary report – here 

They spoke about how these domestic election observations came about, how their first pilot went and about how nonpartisan election observation efforts could play a role in the future. 

High Turnout, Wide Margins Credits
Managing Editor: Rebecca Smith
Managing Producer: Aaron Hay
Associate Producer: Katie Quinn
Digital Producer: Mark Johnson

Transcription of the episode is as follows:

Jeff Mangan: We’re able to work with the Carter Center. They’re known for international election observation. This is their first large effort in the United States. I think they’ve done a couple of smaller things just in cities like in Georgia, Atlanta, Phoenix – some specific observations, but this is basically their first larger scope looking at a state process, nonpartisan election observation the United States

[High Turnout Wide Margins Introduction]

Eric Fey: Alright, everyone, welcome to another exciting episode of High Turnout Wide Margins. I’m Eric Fey, Director of Elections in St. Louis County, Missouri with my co-host –

Brianna Lennon: Brianna Lennon. I’m the County Clerk for Boone County, Missouri.

Eric Fey: And today, our guest is Jeff – if you’d go ahead and introduce yourself.

Jeff Mangan: You bet. Jeff Mangan from the great state of Montana.

Eric Fey: And Jeff, what’s your current role?

Jeff Mangan: Well, my current role, I do a couple of different things – I work for Microsoft, I do a little consulting on democracy and strategic planning, things like that, but the role I’m here to talk to you about is, I was asked to co-chair the Montana Election Observation initiative with the support of the Carter Center, and we just kicked that off, and excited to talk to you about that.

Brianna Lennon: So, the first question that we always ask any guests that we have on the show is how they got involved in elections in the first place. So, what was your pathway in how you ended up doing this pilot program?

Jeff Mangan: So, a little bit of background on myself. In the early 2000s, late 1999 to 2005, I served in the Montana legislature. I served as both a representative and a state senator, and in 2017, I was appointed Montana’s Commissioner of Political Practices, which is a one-term only role that lasts six years. So, basically, at the end of my last two years of my term, with all the election 2020, 2021, ‘22 stuff going on – as part of my role, we were responsible for election compliance. So, any, you know, election problems, issues, complaints – went through my office, and we worked with the Secretary of State on that. So, as you can imagine, there was a lot of election stuff going on in the end, though that period, and I just became an advocate talking about local election administrators, supporting what they do and how they do it, and when my term was up, I continued to work in support elections, and the Carter Center came calling and that’s kind of how I got here 

Eric Fey: Jeff, if you would, I think that this role – you mentioned the Commissioner of Political Practices, I think it was that – at least the title seems pretty unique. I bet a lot of folks listening would like to understand more about that, even if that’s not the thrust of this episode, necessarily. Could you explain what that all entails in Montana?

Jeff Mangan: You bet. The Commissioner of Political Practices is just one Commissioner. Some states have, may have a board or a panel of three to several commissioners – Montana is unique in that only has one Commissioner – appointed by the governor, confirmed by the Montana State Senate – and they’re responsible for enforcement of campaign finance laws, state ethics laws, and state lobbying laws.

So, as part of the campaign finance piece, within that section of code, lies a number of election laws, as well. So, enforcement of some election laws goes through the Commissioner of Political Practices’ office. So, it’s a very small agency in the state of Montana, very independent, and the governor appoints a commissioner for a six-year term, can only serve once, one term and it covers, clearly it would cover, you know, two different governors perhaps, which is a case of mine. Appointed by Governor Bullock and then Governor Gianforte was elected and I served the last two years of my term was under Governor Bullock – or excuse me, Governor Gianforte.

Brianna Lennon: So, kind of transitioning to the pilot that you are co-directing in Missoula, can you talk a little bit about – honestly, what piqued your interest in working on a domestic election observation?

Kind of, I guess you’d call it a mission? When it’s domestic, I think it’s hard to call it a mission, but internationally, I think there’s people that are used to, you know, “we go to places where democracy might not be working super great and that’s why you’re going to do these missions,” and why is it that you’re working on this? And why is it important that Missoula is engaging in this pilot?

Jeff Mangan: Yeah, that’s a great question, and just, it’s not just, it’s not Missoula – that just happens to be where we did the pilot – the initial observations of statewide efforts in the state of Montana. But in last year, in the spring of 2023, the Carter Center sent out a consultant to Montana and discussed with, or interviewed a number of different folks, including myself, about the possibility of doing nonpartisan election observation in the state of Montana, and I was glad that they called me, listened intently, reinforced the heck out of them selecting Montana as a potential state, if they were indeed going to do domestic nonpartisan election observation. And that happened in the spring, hadn’t heard anything, and then in January of this year, the Carter Center called me said they selected Montana as one of the states that they wanted to do nonpartisan election observation in, asked if I co-chair the committee and assist in organizing the effort, and I said, “yes,” and have been working on it ever since.

Brianna Lennon: So, can you talk a little bit about the specific election that just passed? I know that there’s been a preliminary report issued, and if you could talk a little bit about what election it was that the pilot covered for now.

Jeff Mangan: So, when we – we basically kicked off this effort in February. As the Carter Center was looking for staff, as I was looking for advisory board members, and taking a look when we could, you know, would this be just an effort we did in the primary and general or just the general, for example.

Once we started organizing, it was decided that the best, the best bet would be to kind of do a pilot – select one county in the state of Montana to do a pilot to basically test tools, test processes, make sure that the forms and the tools that we’re going to use would do what we wanted, would gather the data and the information that would be helpful to the citizens and the state – and then after that pilot, determine whether or not how we go forward into the general.

So, the initial – we’re just expected to have a couple of observers, have folks come out from the Carter Center, have a couple of the advisory board members join us and just literally just test tools. But when we put the word out that we want to do this in Missoula County – we selected Missoula County for a number of different reasons. One: We know it’s a well-run, it has the reputation to be a well-run election. They really run elections well. I knew the election administrator. They have a lot of information just about their own processes out. As well, it’s a college town – Missoula, Montana, so we figured there could be plenty of volunteers, hopefully. And so, that’s the reason we selected Missoula.

We ended up getting enough volunteers to observe in 19 of the 21 polling places across the county – between myself, advisory board members, Carter Center members and approximately 15, I think 15 to 18, community members. We were able to not only test our tools and test the processes, we were actually able to have enough data to submit for, you know, to analyze the data and submit a statement of findings. So, we were pretty, pretty excited about that.

Eric Fey: Yeah, the scope is definitely unique in that – even in states where this is allowed, there probably have not been very robust efforts to have, you know, a systematic, nonpartisan observation. Which gets to the heart of my question – a lot of folks that listen to this podcast are election administrators themselves, and they’re probably wondering, “If this effort comes to my jurisdiction, what does that mean?” Your folks that are at, you know, one of our polling locations and they see something, you know, do they report us to the election police? You know, what, in practical terms, what does this look like for an election administrator?

Jeff Mangan: When I was asked to co-chair and help organize, I wanted to do one thing – I wanted to make sure that everything that we do is transparent. We wanted to work, make sure we work with local election officials, and have good communication.

So, the first thing I did is reach out to a friend of mine, a colleague – Representative Geraldine Custer,  who served in the Montana legislature up until 2021, I believe. But she’s also, her previous background, she served over 30 years as a clerk and recorder in a small county in Montana, in Rosebud County. So, she was an election administrator for 30 some years. She agreed to co-chair with me this effort, and we’ve been working together ever since, and then I reached out to three other election administrators whom I’d worked with who are no longer election administrators in the state of Montana, for a number of reasons – primarily because of what happened in in 2020, 2021 – and who agreed to join our effort in an advisory capacity role.

So, we really focus on doing this from an election perspective, a process perspective, from, you know, from both sides, and not just going in and saying, “Well, we know what we’re doing,” you know, we’re gonna, we really want to make sure that it was handled correctly, that we understood the laws of the state of Montana, and that we could provide data at the end of this that would benefit everybody. Particularly since there has, you know, just the vitriol sometimes around elections lately, and election disinformation. It was important to us that we follow the rules, do everything correctly, and involve folks that know what the heck they’re doing in an election.

 So, it really is from an election administrator perspective that we organized this and set this up.

With that, we were able to work with the Carter Center under – like you said, they’re known for international election observation. This is their first large effort in the United States. I think they’ve done a couple of smaller things just in cities, like in Georgia, Atlanta, Phoenix – some specific observations, but this is basically their first larger scope, looking at a state process, nonpartisan election observation in the United States. 

[High Turnout Wide Margins Mid-break]

Brianna Lennon: I know with the goals being to increase public trust and voter confidence – especially in light of what happened in 2020, 2021 – there’s also these pushes, kind of nationally, to change the actual processes and policies that are happening in elections. And I am curious if any of the observation work that you’re doing, if there’s any sort of intention to kind of look at process improvement, as well as just observation, or if the goal at this point is really just to see, you know, “these are the benchmarks that they’re supposed to hit based on what the law says that they should be doing, here any of the kinds of issues that we had, whether they’re important issues or whether they, you know, were okay, they were just one off things.” Or if it really is, at some point, like, “Hey, we saw this in Missoula, but then when we were observing in New Mexico we saw this and maybe Missoula would want to implement some things we saw in New Mexico.” Do you see that on the horizon or as part of this conversation?

Jeff Mangan: We’re just going to provide what we observed, and we’re not going to, you know, we’re not necessarily going to make recommendations for changes in legislation. We all understand that human error occurs. We’re working with primarily, you know – election offices are working with primarily volunteers, you know, election judges, poll workers are a very important part of the process and, you know, things are going to happen.

And if, our job is – through our observation, if we report on things that an election administrator or a legislator or a local government official would see and read and say, “Oh, maybe that’s something we should take a look at in our training. Maybe that’s something we should spend more time on. Maybe that’s something we should take to the legislature this next year based on this data.”

So, I think, the more information we provide, that stuff’s just gonna happen organically. We don’t necessarily have to make a recommendation. The work that you guys do, you know, the election administrators, are, you know, you’re very savvy, very smart, you understand how the process works, and if you hear or see something that would be beneficial to how you do your job, or can make it better, we trust that you’re going to take that information and do something with it. There just hasn’t been, at least in Montana, a larger widespread effort to gather that data and present that information in a way that a county election office, an election administrator, a legislator, a citizen, a group could say, “Oh, this is the information we need to make our process better or more smooth or change this.”

Eric Fey: Jeff, can you talk about the scope of your activities? And what I mean by that is – you’ve explained your goal is to have folks at polling locations during voting times, but are you also trying to look at processes within election offices like how they, for instance, mail ballots? Or how they’re tabulating ballots or other things like that? And do you have visibility over those aspects? And do you hope to?

Jeff Mangan: Great great question. We intend to watch the entire process. So, in Missoula, in the pilot, for example – and we have tools for each one of those activities, so – we started with the pre-election process. Montana has, is an absentee ballot state. 80 – in Missoula County, they expected approximately 85% of the voting would take place absentee. I think, statewide, the last number I heard was close, you know, maybe 70, 75%. So, a majority of folks in Montana are voting absentee. And so, we want to ensure that we’re watching, you know, that pre-election process from reconciliation, tabulation, what they, you know, how they handle the ballots when they come into the election office, to the start of tabulation the day before the election, clearly, the polls – polls are still an important part of this process, and what’s happening at the polls, and then post-election audit, and then post-election canvass.

We intend or we are observing every step of that process that the county is doing. The report that we, the findings that we released, so far, the statement of findings are basically just from our observation on polling day, on the election day, but we will be releasing a larger report on all of those processes 

So, the whole, you know, the whole thing is important, the whole process is important. It’s you know, not only, you know – plus the other part of all this, I should have mentioned this at the beginning, the reason you guys do what you do with the podcast, I imagine – another benefit of this is just education. Can we assist in educating the public on how election offices work, how voting offices work, how the laws in the state of Montana are designed to provide trust and confidence in when citizens vote? So, we see education as a big part of what we do when we release a report and start talking about these issues.

Brianna Lennon: I actually was going to ask about public perception of this pilot because I noticed in the preliminary report that got put out there were some instances where voters were noted as being mildly disruptive – like not a lot to make a difference, but just notes like “a person was wearing a hat and was electioneering and was upset when told to take it off,” which was in compliance with the law so they did the right thing, but you know, they were upset.

Is there any – it’s great that, I think, people were so engaged and happy that you all were there – is there any plan that you know of, or do you know if the election administrator in Missoula is going to use it as like a community outreach education tool? Because I feel like if you read through a domestic observation report, like the preliminary report that came out – it shows all of the different things that election administrators know that happens all the time. It’s not unusual to see, “Oh, yeah, that voter got upset because of a hat and things like that,” and we try to communicate those things to the public, like, “this is a normal thing, these are things to expect,” but I feel like maybe in report format from a trusted nonpartisan source, it may sink in a little bit more. It might be a nice tool to use for community engagement. Do you foresee that happening?

Jeff Mangan: I think, I think if we do our jobs right – not only will we increase confidence in our election process, not only will we provide some level of education, but I think the county and the election offices could likely use it for recruitment of election judges and poll workers and “I’m wanting to learn more about how that process works” or just observe themselves in some capacity – whether it’s volunteering with us, or, you know, partisan election observers have always been part of the process, you know, there’s a reason that they’re there. And, you know, if they can learn something about how this works, even through the partisan lens, you know, that’s good, too.

So, in this particular election, Missoula is one of our larger counties – the only election observers, basically, that were there were us. There weren’t partisan election observers, there weren’t, you know, I think there was one public person, one public observer that came in one of the locations to observe. But so, for all of the rhetoric and chatter out there, they’re not, no one seems to want to come in and see it for themselves, for example, unless they’re, you know, election judges, poll workers, those types of things.

So yeah, absolutely this can help, you know, provide that data, that information to election administrators that they can consider, you know, go back to their community and say, “This is what a nonpartisan, independent election observer seeing this is how we do things and because of this report, this is what we’re going to change, or this is what we’re not going to do, you know, this is how we run elections, and we welcome you to come assist us in whatever capacity you can.”

Brianna Lennon: Was there anything that we didn’t ask that you want to make sure that we include. 

Jeff Mangan: Going into my last two years when all this stuff started happening, it’s like I couldn’t believe people were talking about election offices in certain ways. For years, Montana – everyone loved their election office, loved their election administrators, loved their poll workers and their election volunteers and judges – they were their neighbors, their co-workers, people they saw every day, some they voted for, some were appointed by the county, for example. Yeah, for 100 years, we loved that. And then, all of a sudden, in a period of less than a year – it just turned on its head. So, it didn’t matter what the party was, if there was an elected official, but because of a concern of a machine or a meme on Facebook somewhere or “we can’t trust what’s happening in this count” – things, I mean, things just drastically changed, and it just blow, just boggles my mind because the same, it’s the same thing as it was for those first 100 years – it’s our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, and people we’ve known for years in our community, people we recognize when we went into the poll locations and saw ‘em. We could say, “Hi, how you doing? How was church? How was this? How was that?”

And for us not to even look at it that way, with that same lens, is just – and continue that narrative when no doubt, no evidence of anything, of any wrongdoing, you know, is even there. But to continue that narrative, you know, I think it’s just really important that we get back to, “Here’s what’s happening. Here’s how these work. These are the facts. This is what we saw. We don’t have an axe to grind. This is still your friend, your co-worker, your neighbor, the person you go to church with that are coming together from all across the community to make sure that this works for you.” It hasn’t, you know, it’s the same as happened, you know, 100 years ago.

Eric Fey: You’ve been listening to High Turnout Wide Margins, a podcast that explores local election administration. I’m your host Eric Fey alongside Brianna Lennon. A big thanks to KBIA and the Election Center for making this podcast possible. Our Managing Editor is Rebecca Smith, Managing Producer is Aaron Hay. Our Associate Producer is Katie Quinn, and our Digital Producer is Mark Johnson. This has been High Turnout Wide Margins. Thanks for listening.