By Mike Dennison

Read the original article at The Helena Independent Record.

An initiative to expand children’s health insurance in Montana may be the only measure to make the November ballot by petition this year — and it did so with the help of a unique volunteer and political force, supporters say.

Montana Women Vote, a coalition of groups that pursue low-income and women’s issues, teamed up with its member organizations to help put Initiative 155 on the ballot and register women voters as well, says Alysha Goheen Jannotta, outreach director for the group.

“It was a great way for us to engage women voters,” she said Wednesday. “They’re seeing issues that actually affect them on the ballot, and it makes it effective for them to register and get out to vote.”

I-155, if approved by voters this fall, would expand Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to cover as many as 30,000 additional kids who currently have no health insurance. The two programs are funded by the state and federal government, providing government-funded health insurance to children whose family incomes are under a certain level.

I-155 hasn’t been certified by state election officials for the ballot, but supporters said last week they’ve collected enough signatures to gain the certification, which should occur in July.

A half-dozen other initiative petition drives in Montana have either failed or been withdrawn, leaving I-155 as likely the only such measure to qualify this year.

Supporters needed at least 22,308 signatures of registered voters to qualify the measure.

Jannotta said volunteers organized by Montana Women Vote and its members collected about 13,000 of the signatures.

One of the groups, the Montana Human Rights Network, trained 54 volunteers in eight communities across the state on signature-collecting.

“As we talked to our neighbors about I-155, we saw a real understanding that access to health care should not be based on someone’s ability to pay, but instead based on a person’s need,” said Kim Abbott of Helena, organizer for the Network. “We believe that this is the beginning of a movement toward universal health care.”

Stacey McClure, community coordinator for Montana Women Vote in Missoula, said volunteers collected signatures at events like former President Bill Clinton’s visit to Stevensville, a career fair in Billings, a powwow in Great Falls and Bonner Park in Missoula.

“We were registering people to vote and gathering their signatures for I-155 while their uninsured kids played in the sprinkler park,” she said.

Jannotta said in addition to collecting signatures for I-155, the efforts also registered about 1,500 people to vote, two-thirds of them women.

The other groups under the Montana Women Vote umbrella include Working for Equality and Economic Liberation, WORD, Homeward, Planned Parenthood, Women’s Voices for the Earth, the Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, YWCA and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).