Campaign mailer was a political science experiment

In what sounds like a plot from an eerie science fiction movie, a campaign mailer recently sent to Montana voters with information about this year’s Montana Supreme Court justice candidates was part of an experiment conducted by researchers at Stanford University and Dartmouth College.

According to the researchers’ own abstract, the experiment was aimed at seeing if information provided to voters in nonpartisan elections could influence how they vote. The researchers used the Great Seal of the State of Montana and the Voters Guide symbol used by the Montana Secretary of State’s office to make the mailer look like an official Montana state document.

Sen. Jon Tester has called for a full investigation and has even talked about criminal penalties.

Montana election officials are particularly sensitive about campaign violations after dealing with “dark money” groups that refused to follow the state’s election laws in three consecutive election cycles. State election officials are also aware that efforts are underway to make judicial elections partisan, which alarms some current and former members of the state’s high court.

The matter initially drew the attention of Montana state officials after the mailer showed up in Kalispell, Missoula, Billings and Helena. Secretary of State Linda McCulloch held a press conference on the matter on Oct. 23 and made it clear her office never gave any such group permission to use the Great Seal of the State of Montana or the Voters Guide symbol .

McCulloch cited state law about the offenses of impersonating a public servant and using a fraudulent contrivance to impede or prevent voting, and she filed a complaint with Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Jon Motl.

The mailer shows two line graphs ranging from “More liberal” to “More conservative” for two nonpartisan races for Montana Supreme Court justice. President Barack Obama is at one end of the line graph, and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney is at the other end.

The names of Montana Supreme Court justice candidates Jim Rice, W. David Herbert, Mike Wheat and Lawrence VanDyke are also shown on the graphs.

Text below the graphs states that “this guide is nonpartisan and does not endorse any candidate or party” and that the guide “was created as part of a joint research project at Stanford and Dartmouth.”

The mailer also states that it was paid for “by researchers at Stanford University and Dartmouth College, 616 Serra Street, Stanford CA 94305.”

Tester called for an investigation and sent letters to Stanford University president John Hennessy and Dartmouth College president Philip Hanlon about the matter.

“The flyer is apparently part of a so-called research project that uses Montana elections as a political laboratory at the expense of free and fair judicial elections in our state,” Tester wrote. “Your academic institutions apparently approved and sponsored this project, which was apparently undertaken without the knowledge or consent of the people of Montana or its state and local election officials.”

Tester also warned about the legal ramifications.

“Your institutions may have now influenced these decisions by meddling in our elections,” he wrote. “Perhaps that was not the intent, but nevertheless, it may well be the outcome of this endeavor. In doing so, it is also possible that your institutions have violated state and federal law, and I will ask appropriate authorities to fully investigate this possibility.”

Tester has asked Chief Postal Inspector Guy Cottrell to investigate whether the flyers broke federal laws against deceptive mailings.

According to the Stanford University Web site, a political project called “The Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections” was conducted by researchers Adam Bonica, Michael Woodruff, Jonathan Rodden and Kyle Dropp in 2014.

The researchers gathered information about supreme court justices and measured them along ideological and political lines. They acknowledged receiving data from the Sunlight Foundation, the National Institute on Money in State Politics, and the Center for Responsive Politics.

In bold print in the middle of the DIME project’s abstract is the following statement: “Note: If you received a flyer regarding candidate positioning in Montana or California, it is part of a joint Stanford/Dartmouth academic study on the impact of information about candidate positioning on turnout and ballot roll-off in congressional primaries, judicial elections and other contests where voters are unable to distinguish between candidates on the basis of partisan affiliation.”

Stanford University spokeswoman Lisa Lapin addressed the matter on Oct. 24, saying the research project intended to compare voter turnout between precincts that receive the mailers and those that don’t to determine whether more information about candidates would lead to more voter participation.

Lapin said she didn’t know why the researchers decided to provide voters with information about how partisan a judicial candidate might be in a nonpartisan race.

Dartmouth College spokesman Justin Anderson declined to answer any questions about the project, saying the college is conducting an internal review.

The Stanford and Dartmouth political science faculty members were funded with a $250,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and a matching $100,000 grant from Stanford University, Lapin said.

The project was approved by the Dartmouth Institutional Review Board but not the Stanford board, Lapin said. She said Stanford University officials were investigating the matter.

“We can now say that the study did not follow Stanford’s protocols that would have required a review by the Stanford IRB,” she said.