From The New West Blog

Montana GOP Abandons Voter Challenge

By Matthew Frank, 10-08-08

The Montana Republican Party on Tuesday night announced it was abandoning its challenge of the legitimacy of thousands of Montana voter registrations, reports Jennifer McKee of Lee Newspapers.

In a letter to Vicki Zeier of the Missoula County elections office, Jacob Eaton, executive director of the Montana Republican Party, wrote that the group no longer wished to challenge thousands of Missoula county voters or any other voters statewide.

The letter was released to Montana reporters Tuesday night.

Eaton wrote that the party launched the challenges in “good faith,” but media reports have since suggested the challenges were an effort to suppress voter turn-out.

“As a disabled combat veteran who has fought al-Qaida to defend this country and our democracy and who has voted absentee en route to a war zone, I regret that my actions have been perceived as such,” Eaton wrote.

Caleb Weaver, a spokesman for the Barack Obama campaign in Montana, said the party’s decision to withdraw proves the challenges were an act of “desperation by a party that has brought no new ideas to the table.”

Matt Singer of Forward Montana, which led the fight against the challenge, said in a statement:

This action is a vindication of the concerns raised by Forward Montana and other voting rights groups in Montana since day one: that these challenges impacted large numbers of properly and legally registered Montana voters and created unnecessary mass confusion.

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