Montana's Election Software Got 20 Years; the Evidence Stops at 17

The Montana Legislative Audit Division's financial-compliance audit of the Secretary of State's office⧉ found the office assigned its $3.9 million ElectMT election-management system a 20-year useful life -- five times the state's own four-year default for software -- and never documented why.▸ When auditors went looking for evidence to support 20 years, the only data on record topped out at 17: the office's own two former IT systems lasted three and 17 years, and the external comparison systems its IT expert cited turned out, once auditors pulled the agencies' actual records, to support an eight-year estimate, not 20.

ElectMT⧉, the office's election-management system, was completed in January 2023 for a total cost of $3.9 million.▸ Montana's state accounting policy assigns software a default useful life of four years -- the period over which its cost gets amortized on the books -- and requires that default unless a different estimate is supported by documentation, such as the actual performance of similar assets. The office assigned ElectMT 20 years instead, and, per the audit, did not document its rationale for the change.

Auditors traced the 20-year figure to an office employee with deep IT knowledge but no accounting background.▸ That employee told auditors legislators are reluctant to accept a four-year life for this kind of software, and that a 20-year estimate signals the office's intent to use the system far longer -- an operational judgment, not a documented accounting one. At the January 15, 2026 hearing⧉ where the Legislative Audit Committee reviewed the report, lead auditor Steven Althoff put it more directly: "Management searched for evidence to support their position rather than going out and finding data and using that as the basis." Auditors also told lawmakers they separately surveyed the state's software systems broadly and found the longest reached 16.6 years, the shortest 3.8, and the median 7.5 -- none close to 20.

The audit's Table 2 isolates the useful-life call from the office's other accounting errors: on its own, the 20-year estimate overstated fiscal 2023 ending fund equity by $323,314, and by fiscal 2024 that cumulative overstatement had grown to $1,055,022, with $731,708 of the growth booked in fiscal 2024 alone.▸ Because the office never documented a basis for departing from the four-year default, state accounting policy allows only the default -- meaning, per the audit, ElectMT's book value will be overstated for the full 20 years⧉ unless the office corrects it, and the report warns this could affect the office's audit opinions for years to come.

The useful-life call was one piece of a wider pattern.▸ The Legislative Audit Division issued an adverse opinion⧉ on the office's fiscal 2023 financial schedules on the regulatory basis of accounting -- meaning, in the report's own words, "the reader should not rely on the information presented and the underlying financial records" -- and a qualified opinion for fiscal 2024. Measured instead against U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, the office drew adverse opinions for both years. Separately, auditors found the office misclassified SOS Enterprise software-maintenance invoices as development expenses, in amounts ranging from $40,000 to $327,000, and failed to record a liability for investment income earned on unspent federal Help America Vote Act grant money, misstating the office's federal fund balance by $268,000 in fiscal 2023 and $423,000 in fiscal 2024.

The report issued four recommendations to the office and none to the legislature.▸ Of four recommendations carried over from the prior audit, none had been fully implemented, two were partially implemented, and two had not been implemented at all. Auditors identified two material weaknesses and two significant deficiencies in the office's internal controls, and wrote that "weak controls and misapplied policies have undermined the accuracy and reliability of the office's financial reporting."

At the hearing, state Sen. Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, called the findings "flunking"⧉, a characterization auditors confirmed.▸ Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen did not appear before the committee, and Deputy Secretary of State Angela Nunn, who did, did not explain her absence. Nunn disputed the framing directly: "I don't believe we're flunking. ... We did the best we could and characterized what an expert on our staff with expert knowledge told us. We didn't agree with how that was characterized." She acknowledged the documentation gap: "We agree that documentation was lacking. We will improve."