Legislative committee continues to press secretary of state for info on mailer costs, voter files

Legislators on the State Administration and Veterans’ Affairs Interim Committee on Monday discussed subpoenaing information from Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen about the costs of mailing 467,000 postcards featuring an image of Jacobsen and President Donald Trump and Jacobsen’s response to a U.S. Department of Justice request for sensitive Montana voter information, among other issues.
“I have to express disappointment in the memo we received. I think at least four times last meeting I asked for a source of the funding and the quantity of funding to pay for the postcard mailer, and that is not in this document,” said Rep. Kelly Kortum, D-Bozeman. “And since then, we have learned more about doings in the SOS office, including previously unreported knowledge that our voter data have been sent to the feds at least once. We are the oversight committee for the secretary of state, and we hadn’t heard about that despite it happening for the last year. Why is that? Omitting something that important seems very mysterious, given what our relationship is supposed to be with an executive branch office.”
Members of the bipartisan committee also raised questions about 23 noncitizens Jacobsen’s staff reported finding on state voter rolls and how Montana voting machines are audited.
The meeting was the SAVA Committee’s first since Jacobsen, a Republican, filed her candidacy for Montana’s U.S. Western District House seat. The office of secretary of state usually has a representative at committee meetings to answer questions about elections, which were on the agenda Monday. No representative from Jacobsen’s office attended the meeting. SAVA Chair Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, told committee members that SOS was unable to attend Monday’s meeting, but didn’t elaborate. Jacobsen spokesperson Richie Melby said Jacobsen’s elections director had a family birth and couldn’t attend.
Jacobsen’s office submitted a memorandum to the committee touching on several subjects that have drawn lawmakers’ questions, but legislators on the 11-member bipartisan SAVA Committee didn’t consider it responsive to their questions. The oversight committee reviews eight state agencies, all of which report in person to the committee.
After the meeting, Melby said in an email to Montana Free Press that “any narrative that the agency didn’t respond to the committee’s inquiries is false.”
As initially reported by Montana Free Press, a public records request produced a months-long exchange between the U.S. Department of Justice and Montana’s secretary of state about the DOJ’s request for state voter information. DOJ requested the state’s full voter file, complete with driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of registered voters’ Social Security numbers. In a Dec. 9, 2025, email to the DOJ, Jacobsen’s office stated that it had “fully satisfied” the DOJ request.
After that report was published, Jacobsen posted a video on Facebook saying that her office didn’t share how individual Montanans voted, which elections officials wouldn’t know in any case, as ballots are unsigned. Jacobsen also said in the video that an unredacted version of the voter rolls wasn’t shared with the federal government. In the video and in subsequent requests for clarification, Jacobsen didn’t explain her office’s email to the DOJ stating that the federal request for unredacted voter files had been fully satisfied.
SAVA Chair Theresa Manzella told the committee she had received an explanation from Jacobsen’s elections director in February about what information was shared by the secretary of state with the DOJ. MTFP asked the secretary of state’s office to verify Manzella’s account, but Melby declined, stating that lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice against multiple states for refusing to provide unredacted voter information to the federal government prevented SOS from discussing the Montana matter.
“Given the ongoing federal litigation in 29 states and the District of Columbia to enforce federal law, the office cannot go on the record with additional comment on these matters, therefore no staff member has done nor will do so at this time,” Melby said.
Montana isn’t one of the states being sued by the Department of Justice for access to the voter information. Three of the 29 lawsuits have been dismissed in federal courts over concerns about privacy rights relative to the sharing of unredacted voter information.
The SAVA Committee’s attorney, Andria Hardin, told legislators they have the power to subpoena information from government agencies for oversight purposes. Information requested by subpoena cannot be obtainable through a public records request, and subpoenas cannot be broader than necessary.
Legislators said Monday that before subpoenaing Jacobsen’s office, they will ask one more time for answers to their questions. SAVA typically submits questions to agencies at the end of each meeting, and then discusses agency responses at meetings that follow.
“I would hope that we can request the SOS, to the office, to give us this information,” said Sen. Jacinda Morigeau, D-Arlee. “You know of these many sessions of questions, meetings of questions, that we’ve had, before we have to get to a subpoena.”
The SAVA Committee meets next in May.