The Montana Plan Heads to the Ballot

Last November I wrote about the Montana Plan, a bid to blunt Citizens United by taking away a corporation's power to spend in elections. In May, Hawaii turned the same idea into law. Now it's Montana's turn. On November 3rd, voters there will decide on Initiative 194.

Getting here wasn't easy. The plan was knocked back by the state's top court, rewritten, sued by business groups, and sent out for signatures on a tight deadline. It made the ballot anyway. Here's where things stand a month before the vote.

The Idea in One Sentence

States create corporations, so states decide what corporations are allowed to do. And a state can simply choose not to give them the power to spend money on elections.

That's the whole trick. Citizens United says corporations have a free-speech right to spend on politics. The Montana Plan doesn't fight that ruling head-on. It says: you can't use a right to do something you were never given the power to do in the first place.

A Bumpy Road to the Ballot

The first version was a change to Montana's constitution. On January 6th, the Montana Supreme Court rejected it unanimously. Montana's constitution says one amendment can make only one change. The court said this one made at least two.

The backers, led by former state elections chief Jeff Mangan and his group, the Transparent Election Initiative, didn't quit. They rewrote the constitutional version. They also filed a second version as a regular state law, called I-194. A regular law needs about 30,000 signatures to reach the ballot. A constitutional amendment needs about 60,000. In March, I-194 got the green light to start collecting names.

Business groups moved fast to stop it. The Montana Chamber of Commerce joined the Stockgrowers, Mining and Petroleum associations in a lawsuit to keep it off the ballot. On April 1st, the state Supreme Court threw the case out, again unanimously. The court said it doesn't rule on laws that voters haven't even passed yet.

Then more than 600 volunteers went to work. By the June 19th deadline they had turned in about 50,000 signatures, far more than needed. On August 17th, the Secretary of State officially qualified I-194 for the November ballot. (In June, the court also cleared the rewritten constitutional version. But that came too late for this year. I-194 is the one on the 2026 ballot.)

What I-194 Would Actually Do

Under I-194, "artificial persons" would have no legal power to spend money to support or oppose candidates, political parties, or ballot measures. That covers corporations, nonprofits, trade groups, trusts, and partnerships. A group that breaks the rule would lose all its privileges to do business in Montana, including the legal shield that protects owners from being personally on the hook for the company's debts. To get those privileges back, it would have to give back every dollar it spent.

It doesn't silence everyone. Individuals can still give. Newspapers and broadcasters can still endorse and editorialize. And money can still flow through registered political committees, which have to report their donors. That last part matters. The goal isn't to wipe out political spending. It's to drag it into the light.

A few honest limits are worth naming:

• It's a regular law, not a constitutional change. A future legislature could weaken or repeal it.
• Its reach into federal races is an open question. The text covers any candidate "in an election held in this state," which on paper includes Montana's U.S. Senate and House races. But federal election law usually overrides state law in federal races, so expect that to be fought over too.
• Super PACs and other registered political committees can keep spending. I-194 expressly leaves them alone. The difference is that they have to report their donors.
• It doesn't touch billionaires spending their own money. Loyola law professor Justin Levitt put it bluntly: "This wouldn't change a thing about Elon Musk's political spending."

Why Montanans Want It

Montana knows this story well. Over a century ago, copper companies bought the state's politics, and voters answered with the 1912 Corrupt Practices Act. That law stood for a hundred years until the Supreme Court struck it down in 2012.

What came next tells the story. Independent spending in Montana elections, meaning money spent by outside groups rather than candidates' own campaigns, rose from about $33,000 in 2008 to $162 million in 2024. That's according to figures from the Transparent Election Initiative, as reported by the Associated Press. Former Republican governor Marc Racicot, who also once chaired the Republican National Committee, says politics has turned "rancid." He describes money moving through "serpentine collections of entities" until no one can tell where it came from.

Racicot isn't alone on the right. An October 2025 YouGov poll for Issue One found 74 percent of Montanans backed the idea. That included 69 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of independents. Former Democratic senator Jon Tester supports it too. As Mangan says, "I haven't talked to a person yet that doesn't think that there's too much money in politics."

Who's Against It

The Montana Chamber of Commerce leads the opposition. Its president, Todd O'Hair, calls I-194 "plainly unconstitutional." He argues it silences businesses while "the millionaire and the billionaire class will not be affected whatsoever." The state Republican Party and the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity oppose it as well.

O'Hair has a point about billionaires. But his answer is to keep the door open for corporate money too. Mangan's answer is that small-business owners have always taken part in politics as citizens, writing checks from their own pockets, not their company's.

The opposing committee, Montanans for Free Speech, reported no donations as of August. It had spent about $45,000 on polling and about $9,000 on letters asking petition signers to take their names back. Expect that spending to climb before November.

Is This "Soft Secession"?

CleanTechnica's Steve Hanley frames the Montana Plan as "soft secession." That's writer Christopher Armitage's term for states quietly refusing to go along with federal policies they think hurt their people. Hanley points to Northern states that undercut the Fugitive Slave Act, and to states that legalized marijuana while federal law still banned it.

It's a striking frame, and I see the appeal. States have often been where people push back when Washington won't act. But I don't think it quite fits.

Montana isn't refusing to cooperate with any federal program. It's using one of the oldest powers a state has: deciding what a corporation is. And the plan doesn't dodge a fight with the Supreme Court. It's built to provoke one. Supporters are betting the rights-versus-powers argument can win in court, not that the courts can be ignored. "Secession" makes it sound like Montana is walking away from the Constitution. In fact, it's asking the courts a question Citizens United never answered.

The Legal Fight Ahead

If I-194 passes, a lawsuit is all but certain. The early signs are mixed.

Hawaii's law is already in court. In June, a conservative nonprofit, the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, sued in federal court. It says the law violates the First Amendment. A judge will hear arguments on October 13th. That's three weeks before Montana votes. How that goes will shape how people read Montana's chances.

The U.S. Supreme Court isn't giving reformers much reason for hope. In June, it ruled 6–3 in NRSC v. FEC to strike down limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with their candidates. UCLA's Rick Hasen calls the Montana Plan "an end run" that he expects this Court to reject. Levitt calls it "bold and unusual," but says it could force the justices to weigh Citizens United against the states' long-standing power over corporations.

What to Watch

Back in November, I wrote that if Montana succeeded, "other states might follow." Hawaii didn't wait. And similar efforts are now moving in about 32 states, according to the Center for American Progress.

Here's what I'll be watching over the next month:

• October 13th: the federal court hearing on Hawaii's law
• Opposition spending: whether corporate money pours in to defeat a measure about corporate money
• November 3rd: whether the 74 percent shows up at the polls

There's an irony here. If corporations spend millions to beat I-194, they'll prove the measure's point better than any ad could. Montanans will get to decide who their elections belong to. Soon after, the courts will decide whether they're allowed to.