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This Week in Pierre





 

 

Four weeks of the 2015 Session have now passed. Several bills dealing with election issues were dealt with this week. While the focus should be on problem solving the great issues of our state like juvenile justice reform and rebuilding roads and bridges, some of these clearly partisan issues took the forefront.

SB 166 has caught a lot of media attention and rightfully so. It sought to revise the method used to calculate the number of signatures required for initiated measures. The proposal in effect would have doubled the required signatures from over 13,000 signatures to 26,000 signatures – a nearly insurmountable barrier for grassroots South Dakotans. Instead of basing the number of required signatures as 5% of the actual vote in the last gubernatorial election, proponents want it based on the same percent of all registered voters, whether or not they vote, have moved, or died and have not been removed from voter lists.

Thankfully, the sponsors of SB166 tabled it on Friday, Feb. 6th in Senate State Affairs. This essentially killed the bill for this Session. A little history lesson might be used to explain why ballot issues like initiated measures and referrals are so important to South Dakotans. Since 1898, South Dakotans have used the process to initiate a law. In fact, we were the very first state in the Union to use this process of direct democracy. Ninety years later, in 1988, the state’s voters changed the state constitution to eliminate a requirement that an initiative be submitted to the legislature for approval before placement on the ballot. Clearly, protecting the citizen’s right to initiate and refer laws is a timehonored practice representing our state’s democratic principles.

We are thankful to South Dakotans who called and wrote to legislators on this important issue. Your voice clearly made a difference in protecting the rights of citizens.

SB 69

Senate Bill 69, as it was amended in Senate State Affairs, will make it more difficult for candidates to run for office. It passed through committee and the Senate floor along straight party lines. It now goes to the House. The original bill came from the Secretary of State and had input from the bipartisan Election Board. In its original form, it sought to provide more time for petitions from candidates to be challenged in court, hoping to expedite the process and resolve the challenges in time for ballots to be printed for the primary.

However, the amendments to the bill were outside of the original intent and quickly became partisan. These amendments would make it nearly impossible to replace candidates who commit early and then decide they just can’t manage to run for office. The deadline for filing has moved from the last Tuesday in March to the last Tuesday in February. Comparative research shows this will give South Dakota the earliest deadline in the Midwest and one of the earliest in the nation. This is challenging enough. However, while a candidate may still withdraw, the amendments isolate only a few circumstances which will allow a replacement candidate to be substituted by the deadline in August. Such maneuvering of the current system is clearly designed to protect incumbents and make it even more difficult for newcomers to run for office.

SB 69 also makes it almost impossible for third- party candidates to appear on the ballot for all offices. Ballot access is an important constitutional right, and we may be inviting a court challenge such as the one we faced in 1984 over early deadlines. There are currently 86,264 independent voters in South Dakota who deserve to be treated fairly.

Daschle Rule

Yet another election related issue was raised with HB 1176, nicknamed the “Daschle rule.” Passed in 2002 by a Republican controlled legislature, it established a rule which prohibited a candidate from running for President or Vice President and another office in the same election cycle. HB 1176 overturns the law and allows a candidate to be on the ballot in two places. The hypocrisy of this bill is obvious. We urge South Dakota voters to contact their legislators.

I invite you to contact me with your questions and concerns. Please let me hear from you. My phone at the Capitol is 605-773-3821 or reach me through email at Sen.Heinert@state.sd.us


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