By March 6, however, the secretary of state qualified the Greens for the ballot because the petitioners had submitted enough signatures to do so. At that point, it was still unknown who paid for the effort. That's even with a new state law passed by the 2019 Legislature requiring anyone spending more than $500 to qualify a minor party to register with the commissioner within five days of the expenditure.

Green Party candidates can be seen as drawing votes away from Democrats, while Libertarian candidates, who are already qualified for the ballot, can draw votes from Republicans. Minor parties are running in major statewide and federal races here this year, and both parties have played a role in big elections before. In 2018 the Greens were briefly qualified for the ballot, in a paid effort whose funder still remains unclear, before Democrats sued and succeeded in removing the party by calling into question enough of the signatures used to qualify. And in the 2012 U.S. Senate race, featuring U.S. Sen. Tester and former U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, a Libertarian candidate benefited from $500,000 worth of advertising from a group that also supported Tester.