Here's why a failed attempt to change Montana's Senate rules matters

Montana Democrats got some good news Wednesday ahead of Sen. Jon Tester's re-election bid, when a Montana state legislative committee voted to table legislation that would have changed the rules in that race by effectively freezing out a third party from the general election ballot.

The bill wanted to turn only the Senate primary (and no other race) into a top-two primary, where candidates run on the same ballot regardless of party and the top-two finishers move onto a general election regardless of party.

That would have almost certainly advanced Tester and the top Republican running against him onto the general election ballot, and blocked a third party candidate from the general election.

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But the Associated Press reports that the state House committee considering the measure voted to table it -- leaving the proposal floundering unless Republicans are able to sway their party to bring it up again.

That's a big deal in Montana because when Democrats have historically won there, they've done so primarily with Libertarian candidates taking a meaningful share of the general election vote (and with the Democratic winner regularly falling short of a majority themselves).

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In all but one of Tester's Senate bids, he fell short of winning a majority of the vote. While he won just over 50% in 2018, he won about 49% in 2012 and 2006, two years where the Libertarian nominee in the race pulled in more votes than the difference between Tester and the Republican nominee.

While a third-party candidate doesn't often pull exclusively from one party, Republicans have long accused Libertarians of siphoning away from their vote share.

Tester told NBC News that there’s “very little doubt” when asked if the bill was designed to target him politically, and added that while some Montana Republicans may be "focused on politics," he's not worried.

Sen. Gary Peters, the Michigan Democrat who runs the Senate Democratic campaign arm, added that while it "certainly appears" that Republicans were targeting Tester with the proposal, "he'll still win, regardless of what they do."