MATT VOLZ
Associated Press
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The presidents of Stanford University and Dartmouth College are sending 100,000 letters to Montana residents disavowing election mailers that state officials called deceitful and worried will influence the state’s two Supreme Court elections.
The mailers were sent last week by political science faculty members at the universities conducting a research project. The mailers rated the four nonpartisan Montana Supreme Court candidates in next week’s election as liberal or conservative on a scale that compared them to President Barack Obama at one end and former Gov. Mitt Romney at the other.
Their use of the state seal on the mailers caused state officials to worry about the effects of an official-looking document that injected partisan politics in a nonpartisan race.
The letters by Dartmouth president Philip Hanlon and Stanford president John Hennessy dated Tuesday apologized for the mailers and said no research study should risk disrupting an election.
“We genuinely regret that it was sent and we ask Montana voters to ignore the mailer,” the letter said.
The wording was agreed to by the schools, Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch and Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl. The letters were being printed and are expected to arrive before next Tuesday’s election to the same 100,000 people who received the original mailers.
The $52,000 cost for mailing the letters will be paid for by the schools, Motl said.
McCulloch said at a news conference that she believes the mailers were meant to influence the outcome of the state Supreme Court elections in favor of particular candidates.
Additional questions remain that will be part of an ongoing investigation by Motl’s office. Those questions include where the money came from to pay for the mailers, why the researchers chose Montana, why they didn’t consult with the state first, and why they didn’t go through the proper protocols the university uses to approve research projects, McCulloch said.
The letter is the best possible solution to reach voters before the election, though the damage may already have been done, Motl said.
“Stanford and Dartmouth can’t withdraw the full effect,” he said. “But can you think of anything that they could have done which is better?”
The aim of the study was to find out whether providing more information about the candidates to voters would improve voter turnout and the total number of votes cast in the state Supreme Court elections.
Former state solicitor general Lawrence VanDyke is challenging incumbent Justice Mike Wheat, and Billings attorney W. David Herbert is attempting to unseat Justice Jim Rice.
Stanford University spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said the project was funded with a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, but Motl said his office was investigating whether there were other funders, as well.
“No other group funded the study,” Lapin said. “We have tracked the invoices, all to the Hewlett grant funds.”
The letter from the university and college presidents said the liberal and conservative ratings attributed to each candidate were based on the ideologies of the donors who contributed to their campaigns, not on the candidates’ positions.
The study is nonpartisan and doesn’t endorse a candidate, and it was not the intent of the project to create a partisan alignment of the candidates, the letter said.
Besides Motl’s investigation, both schools are conducting their own inquiries.
“This has had the attention of the university at the highest levels and university leadership very much wanted to do this,” Lapin said of the letter.
Dartmouth spokesman Justin Anderson said the letter speaks for itself and declined to comment about the college’s internal review.
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