Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen spoke to KGVO News on Thursday on a variety of subjects, starting with the first official day of filing season for the upcoming 2022 state and federal elections.

“It was an awesome day,” began Secretary Jacobsen. “We kicked off the candidate filing and the election cycle for 2022. We opened the doors at eight and Senator (Mike) Cuffe was the first in line and he's running for his second term. He also was a key lawmaker that we worked with last legislative session that passed some of our important election integrity bills. So it was just really an awesome morning.”

Jacobsen said she was glad that two Democratic senators are standing in the way of President Biden’s Election Reform bill.

“I think it's really powerful right now,” she said. “The biggest threat to elections in Montana is the federal takeover of our elections, which we actually have right now. One of our Democrats, Senator Jon Tester is in favor, and he thinks that elections should be run more like California or Colorado. It'll just be more powerful to have another voice at the federal level to push back against harmful legislation. This has been a third attempt at the federal level to take over our elections.”

There was controversy over the Missoula 2020 election, and Secretary Jacobsen said the situation still has not been resolved.

“If there is proof there, it's going to require a court order to basically tie into those ballots and to have any sort of a look back at those ballots,” she said. “So that would require a court order, which to my knowledge has not been issued at this point in time. And it's my understanding that there's also been a request for the legislature to create a select committee to look at that and that has not been done yet as well.”

Jacobsen said she was also proud to be a part of the Trusted Info 2022 Voter Education Effort.

“The trusted 2022 is just a national campaign just to ensure voters that they know where to go to find information that accurate and that they can count on,” she said. “It's basically driving voters to either our information at the Secretary of State's office or at the local levels.”

Get more information on that program here.

Jacobsen added that 81 candidates filed with her office on the first day of registration.

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Because the regulation of exotic animals is left to states, some organizations, including The Humane Society of the United States, advocate for federal, standardized legislation that would ban owning large cats, bears, primates, and large poisonous snakes as pets.

Read on to see which pets are banned in your home state, as well as across the nation.

 

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