Two groups that collected signatures from voters to qualify constitutional amendments on the Montana ballot, including an initiative protecting abortion rights, have sued the secretary’s office for changes to the rules regarding who can accept signatures after they were gathered while county election officials verified them.

A District Court Judge Mike Menahan set an hearing for Tuesday in Helena to hear a motion to block the proposed changes and to allow inactive voters’ signatures to count towards the required number of signatures to qualify issues on the November ballot.

By Friday, county election officials are required to verify signatures and send the totals of the votes cast to the Secretary of State’s Office.

The lawsuit claims that county election officials accepted petition signatures from “inactive” voters, defined as those who do not vote in general elections and have not responded to attempts to confirm their mailing addresses. The lawsuit alleges that county election officials accepted the petition signatures of “inactive voters,” defined as those who fail to vote in a general election and have not responded to efforts to confirm their mailing address.

If an inactive voter does not vote in the next two federal general elections, their registration can be cancelled.

By June 21, the signatures of the three constitutional amendments, including the one protecting the right to an abortion before viability and the other eliminating partisan primaries elections, had to be submitted to the counties.

The Republican Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen then told the counties to reject inactive voter signatures. On July 2, the state voter database was altered to prevent the verification of inactive voters’ signatures. The lawsuit claims that this is an unconstitutional change.

Montana’s constitution states that petitions can be signed by “qualified electors”, which are defined as citizens of the United States who are at least 18 and meet the residency and registration requirements.

Secretary of State argues inactive voters cannot be considered “qualified electors,” whose signatures can be accepted. Her office states that inactive voters are required to take certain steps to become active voters and “qualified electors,” such as voting, verifying their address, or requesting absentee ballots.

The Montana Republican Party is opposed to efforts that would protect abortion rights or hold open primaries.

Austin Knudsen, Republican Attorney General, issued an opinion stating that the proposed ballot language regarding the partisan primaries and abortion protection was insufficient.

Knudsen revised the abortion language, saying that the proposed amendment would, in part “allow post viability abortions until birth”, “eliminates State’s compelling interests in preserving prenatal lives” and “may increase taxpayer-funded abortions”.

The Montana Supreme Court approved the petition language after supporters appealed to it. The petition language was written by the justices for the abortion initiative.

In a press release, Kiersten Iwai said that extremists had attempted to sabotage the initiative. They have rewritten the language to mislead the voters, intimidated people to disrupt the signature collection, and interfered with the rights to sign the petition of Montana registered voters.

Austin James, chief legal counsel of the Secretary’s Office, warned in a letter to supporters of the initiative that a legal challenge would “likely frustrate the pace at which your clients petitions are processed within the statutory time allotted for counties to do this.”