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Section 4. Eligibility for Public Office. Any qualified elector is eligible to any public office except as otherwise provided in this constitution. The legislature may provide additional qualifications but no person convicted of a felony shall be eligible to hold office until his final discharge from state supervision.¹

History

Sources

1884 Proposed Montana Constitution

Art. VII, Section 7. No person shall be elected or appointed to any office in this State, civil or military, who is not a citizen of the United States, and who shall not have resided in this State at least one year next before his election or appointment.²
Art. VII, Section 11. The Legislative Assembly may pass laws allowing women the right to hold any school district office, and vote at any school district election.²

1889 Montana Constitution

Art. IX, Section 7. This section of the 1889 Montana Constitution adopted the exact same language as Art. VII, Section 7 of the 1884 Proposed Constitution.³
Art. IX, Section 10. Women shall be eligible to hold the office of county superintendent of schools or any school district office, and shall have the right to vote in any school district election.³
Art. IX, Section 11. Any person qualified to vote at general elections and for state officers in this state, shall be eligible to any office therein except as otherwise provided in this constitution, and subject to such additional qualifications as may be prescribed by the legislative assembly for city offices and officers hereafter created.³

Drafting

Committee Proposals

Majority Proposal: Section 4. Any person qualified to vote at general elections and for state officers in this state is eligible to any public office except as otherwise provided in this Constitution, subject to any additional qualifications provided by the legislature.
Comments on the Majority Proposal: The most important part of the comment is that the delegates did not intend for the language in Section 4 to be prohibitive of the legislature's ability to establish necessary technical qualifications for specialized jobs (i.e. the office of Attorney General) but the delegates did intend to prohibit the legislature from creating arbitrary qualifications for certain offices. One example of an arbitrary qualification for certain offices is age.⁴
Minority Proposal: The Minority Proposal for Section 4 is the exact same language as the Majority Proposal cited above.
Committee Vote: The committee sent the Majority Proposal to floor in a vote that occurred on February 9th. The final vote count was 6-2, with Delegate Lorello and Delegate Vermillion as the dissenting votes.

Floor Debate & Voting

There was little floor debate regarding Article IV, Section 4 on the floor. According to the official transcripts, 88 delegates voted in favor of the proposed changes. Delegate Lorello, Delegate McKeon, Delegate Rollins, Delegate Romney and Delegate Rygg voted against the changes. Delegate Baylock, Delegate Dahood, Delegate Holland, Delegate McDonough, Delegate Toole, and Delegate Van Buskirk were marked as 'absent' and Delegate Furlong was marked as 'excused.'⁵

Ratification

There was little presentation to the voters on Article IV. In the 1972 Official Voter Pamphlet, there were only a few short sentences describing the proposed changes. The following was stated for the proposed changes to Article IV, Section 4: "Revises 1889 Constitution by providing that a felon's right to seek public office is automatically restored after serving sentence."⁶

References

1: https://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/CONSTITUTION/IV/4.htm

2: https://www.umt.edu/media/law/library/MontanaConstitution/Miscellaneous%20Documents/1884_const.pdf

3: https://www.umt.edu/media/law/library/MontanaConstitution/Miscellaneous%20Documents/1889_const.pdf

4:https://courts.mt.gov/portals/189/library/mt_cons_convention/vol1.pdf (Page 333-38)

5: https://courts.mt.gov/portals/189/library/mt_cons_convention/vol6.pdf (Page 1864-65)

6: http://www.umt.edu/media/law/library/MontanaConstitution/Miscellaneous%20Documents/Const%20VIP.pdf