‘Get it over with’: GOP legislator presses secretary of state for answers on mailers

After the Republican Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen came under fire for sending 467,000 postcards across Montana, a fellow Republican legislator is pushing for more information.

Rep. Jerry Schillinger, the Republican chairman of the Legislative Audit Committee, said in a letter to Jacobsen’s office on Friday that the mailers “raised concern among other committee members and their constituents.”

The postcards feature Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, the state’s top elections official, and President Donald Trump standing next to each other.

“Montana has made it clear: Only citizens should be allowed to vote,” the mailer reads. “Under Secretary Jacobsen’s leadership, non-citizen voting will not be tolerated.”

The secretary of state’s office said they are meant to inform Montanans that Jacobsen’s office is taking extra steps with the help of the federal government to ensure that noncitizens do not vote in the state’s elections. Existing law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in Montana and there are very few known examples of that happening in the state.

“It looks more political than just informative to a lot of people,” Schillinger said in a phone interview. “I think she should just address it more directly.”

Until now, Jacobsen’s office has repeatedly declined to disclose the cost of the mailers and the source of the funding, including in a public legislative meeting earlier this month. A records request filed by the Montana State News Bureau with the state print and mail shop (which is housed within a different state agency from the secretary of state) revealed that there were 466,638 postcards created at the cost of $196,829 for printing and postage.

Schillinger’s letter now makes the questions over the secretary of state’s mailers bipartisan. Earlier this month, Rep. Kelly Kortum, a Bozeman Democrat, asserted the design of the mailers resembled a “campaign ad,” and Rep. Mary Caferro, a Helena Democrat, filed a formal request of her own with the legislative auditor to ferret out the funding source.

In his letter, Schillinger, who is also a member of the Montana Freedom Caucus, asked for the source of the funding, both private and public; the total budget set for these mailers and any future ones; a citation of legal authority to spend money on these mailers; and how the postcards “serve the interest of the public,” among other inquiries.

Schillinger gave Jacobsen a deadline of Feb. 4 to respond with this information.

“People still have questions,” Schillinger said. “It would be good for the secretary’s office to get it over with.”

When questioned in a legislative meeting earlier this month, Austin James, the agency’s elections director, said that the cost of the mailers was less important than the fact that Jacobsen is taking extra steps to ensure that noncitizens do not vote in Montana.

“If you’re talking about cost, you’re missing the boat,” James said.

The secretary of state’s office does not get taxpayer funds in the traditional sense like other agencies do, and instead the agency is largely funded by the business services it provides. In recent years, Jacobsen has closed off one of those income streams. In a press release from last month, Jacobsen announced that for the third year in a row her office would waive the annual filing fee for businesses in the state, saving business owners a total of $21 million across 2026 and 2027.

Schillinger said that those cost saving measures have “raised some concerns” in the context of the postcards.

“In addition, the waiver of annual fees for annual business registrations while appreciated, has raised concerns by some about what other sources that your office has been able to utilize to fund operations that previously used funds generated by the waived fees,” he wrote in the letter.

Secretary of State spokesperson Richie Melby said that Schillinger was one of those business owners who had his fees waived.

“The good representative recently sat in this very office to file his annual report, free of charge, thanks to the Secretary, without so much as a mention of any questions or concerns about routine outreach from this office,” Melby wrote in an email. “I’ll let the praise and gratitude from the Montana businesses we serve address the representative and his colleagues’ “concerns” about reducing, waiving, and eliminating fees, while also reducing staff in half – something I imagine those same Montanans would love to see from other agencies and their legislature.”

In that email responding to request for comment, Melby did not address the cost or funding source of the mailers.

Earlier this month, a woman from Harlowton filed a complaint with the Commissioner of Political Practices over the possibility that the secretary’s office used public money to fund the postcards. The commissioner quickly dismissed that inquiry, saying the mailers are not a violation of the state’s code of ethics or any other campaign finance laws he has jurisdiction over.