Some South Dakota lawmakers want to subject ballot questions to a tyranny of the minority

Yahoo

15-04-2025

State Rep. Rebecca Reimer, R-Chamberlain, speaks on the South Dakota House floor on March 6, 2025. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)
Getting an initiated constitutional amendment on the ballot in South Dakota is plenty tough for citizens. House Bill 1169 would have made it almost impossible.
HB 1169 required that signatures representing 5% of the votes cast for governor in the most recent election be collected from each of the state's 35 Senate districts to get an initiated constitutional amendment on the ballot. Current law calls for collecting signatures totaling 10% of the votes cast for governor in the last election. Those signatures can come from anywhere in the state.
HB 1169 would have been something of a jobs program for accountants. Not only would petition carriers have needed to figure out 5% of the votes cast for governor in each Senate district, but they would also have had to make sure that their overall total of signatures equaled 10% of the vote total for governor.
The good news about HB 1169 is that it was vetoed by Gov. Larry Rhoden. In his veto message to the Legislature, Rhoden said he feared that the geographic requirement for the collection of signatures would be workable only for big-money groups that have the resources to canvass the entire state.
Legislature sustains veto of geographic signature requirement for constitutional amendment petitions
To override a veto, a two-thirds vote is needed in both chambers in the Legislature. That's 24 votes in the 35-member Senate and 47 votes in the 70-member House. Fortunately, the Senate vote of 16-16 was not enough to override the veto. The governor's veto stands, and that's the good news. However, there's plenty of bad news to go around.
Part of the bad news is the wide-ranging support that such an onerous change had in the Legislature. Bills with such success are usually destined to become law. HB 1169 flew through the House State Affairs Committee on a vote of 10-1 and through the House on a vote of 60-9. In the Senate State Affairs Committee, it fared just as well, earning passage on a 7-1 vote. It was only in the Senate where the bill met some resistance, but still passed, 19-15.
There was more bad news on the last day of the legislative session as the House voted 50-18 to override the veto. Fortunately, both chambers need to override the veto for the bill to become law.
Clearly, HB 1169 has plenty of backers in the Legislature. The bill's main sponsor, Rep. Rebecca Reimer, a Chamberlain Republican, recognizes that and said in a South Dakota Searchlight story that she would work on the language in the legislation and bring it back next year.
In her testimony to the House State Affairs Committee, Reimer said passage of HB 1169 would ensure that rural voices are heard rather than letting petitioners set up shop in only Rapid City or Sioux Falls to collect signatures. She said the bill 'ensures fairness, strengthens voter representation, protects the integrity of our constitutional amendment process.'
Maybe that's one way to describe the bill. Another would be to say that it's a cynical, bordering on sinister, attempt to cut citizens out of the initiated amendment process.
This isn't the Legislature's only accomplishment when it came to making it tougher for citizens to get their measures on the ballot. Already the subject of a lawsuit, legislators endorsed a bill that would cut the amount of time for gathering signatures by three months. Another measure they placed on the 2026 ballot would raise the threshold for approving a constitutional amendment to 60% rather than relying on a simple majority of voters.
It's easier for lawmakers to get something on the ballot. They only have to convince a majority of their colleagues. If you're not lucky enough to be in the Legislature, you have to collect 17,508 signatures for an initiated measure or referred law, or 35,017 signatures for an initiated constitutional amendment.
The bill that was so popular with lawmakers didn't take into consideration the eccentric nature of legislative districts, the borders of which can veer off in odd directions. It would take a cavalry scout and a GPS for petitioners to figure out if they're collecting their signatures in the right Senate district.
If one legislative district is stingy with its signatures, the entire effort fails. The state Supreme Court in Idaho struck down a similar law, saying it amounted to giving each legislative district veto power and calling it 'tyranny of the minority.'
If Reimer has her way, that tyranny will make its way back to the Legislature in the next legislative session. Here's hoping the governor has his veto pen ready.
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