Montana electronic ballot for overseas voters omitted Harris, but the glitch was fixed quickly

Some Montana voters living overseas got a surprise Sept. 20 when they tried to vote electronically for the 2024 election: Vice President Kamala Harris’ name wasn’t listed as a presidential candidate.

The Montana secretary of state’s office said it caught the glitch quickly and fixed it the same day. But some social media users attributed it to a more partisan and intentional motive by the office’s leader, Republican Christi Jacobsen.

"The Montana Secretary of State left Kamala Harris off the ballot. Not RFK, Jr., not Jill Stein. Kamala Harris," a Sept. 22 Instagram post said. "They should be forced to start over, and the secretary of state should be jailed."

Occupy Democrats, a liberal group, shared the words in an Instagram post that had more than 26,000 likes. It credited the statement to an X account that received 1.5 million views on the post.

We found other social media posts making the same claim. A Threads user wrote that Republicans were "using weaponized incompetence to steal the election."

The Instagram and Threads posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

Beyond the presidential race, Montana is drawing attention because of its contested U.S. Senate race.

The social media posts tell part of the story but leave out crucial details, misleadingly implying the glitch was intentional and affected many Montana voters. As the secretary of state’s office explained, the error affected a few overseas voters and was quickly fixed.

(Instagram screenshot)

Montana has an Electronic Absentee System that is limited to voters who are covered by the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act. Those voters include military service members and eligible family members and U.S. citizens living overseas, a Federal Voting Assistance Program website said. That system lets those voters access and mark their ballots electronically.

Montana’s overseas voters could begin voting in the November general election Sept. 20. But Max Himsl, a Flathead County, Montana voter living and working in the United Kingdom, noticed Harris’ name wasn’t on the ballot, the Daily Inter Lake, a Montana newspaper, reported. Himsl reported the issue to the Flathead County Elections Department, the paper said.

Jacobsen's office issued a Sept. 23 press release explaining what happened and countering what it said were "egregious misinformation campaigns circulating online."

Election officials were notified about the issue shortly after the Electronic Absentee System went live at 8 a.m., the press release said. The secretary of state’s office took the system offline while the vendor that handles the system troubleshot and fixed the problem. The system was back online to voters, "including those few voters who may have been impacted," by the afternoon, the release said.

"No ballots were affected, including those that will be sent to registered absentee voters and those that will be presented to voters at the polling place on Election Day," the office said.

The secretary of state’s website lists Harris among the 2024 candidates for U.S. president. 

K.V. "Ginger" Aldrich, elections administrator in Montana’s most populous county, Yellowstone, said that, to her knowledge, no Yellowstone voters were affected beyond the short delay in accessing the electronic system.

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"The Secretary of State notified county election officials that they were troubleshooting missing choices in races in the electronic system for UOCAVA (Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act) voters on Friday morning and were temporarily taking the system offline," Aldrich said. "The system was restored later Friday by the Secretary of State. Any problems with the system would not affect paper ballots which are printed and prepared separately."

Registered overseas voters are sent physical absentee ballots in the mail 45 days before the election, but also can use the Electronic Absentee System to print a ballot and mail it back or fill in an online ballot, the secretary of state’s website says.

Bradley Seaman, Missoula County’s elections administrator, said the electronic ballots were due to be sent out Sept. 20, but, because of the error, the state told local officials about 9:45 a.m. Montana time to wait if they hadn’t yet sent them.

He said the ballots for voters who choose to vote electronically come through the secretary of state’s database. The files and digital layout for the paper ballots are done through Montana’s certified vendor, Election Systems & Software.

Physical absentee ballots for Montana voters who are not overseas will be mailed Oct. 11. Those ballots had not been printed when this error happened, Seaman said.

Seaman dismissed social media claims that Harris’ name was omitted intentionally.

"It's a whole office of individuals who work collaboratively to help get this out," Seaman said. "You know, I can't speak to any motives or reasons, but I feel very confident in their staff and all the people involved that this was not an intentional action."

Social media posts said that "the Montana Secretary of State left Kamala Harris off the ballot."

The state’s Electronic Absentee System, which is limited to overseas voters, briefly omitted Harris name, but the claim leaves out important details and takes things out of context. The Sept. 20 glitch affected only a few voters and was caught shortly after the system went live. The system was taken offline while the issue was fixed, and voters could cast their electronic ballots by that afternoon. We rate the claim Half True.