Attorney General Jackley Releases Final Explanation For Proposed Constitutional Amendment On Amending, Repealing Ballot Measures
PIERRE, S.D. – South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley has released the final ballot explanation for a proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit the State Legislature from amending or repealing ballot measures for seven years. The measure is proposed by Brian Bengs of Aberdeen.
The Attorney General takes no position on any such proposal. He has provided a fair and neutral explanation on the proposed constitutional amendment to help assist the voters.
This proposed constitutional amendment states that a ballot measure approved by the voters may not be amended or repealed by the Legislature for seven years from the date the measure is enacted. The final ballot explanation can be found here.
If the required 35,017 valid signatures are gathered and approved by the South Dakota Secretary of State’s Office, the proposed constitutional amendment will be placed on the 2024 general ballot. A majority of the votes cast in the general election will be needed to pass the measure.
The Attorney General’s explanation was drafted after a review of all the comments received during the proposed amendment’s 10-day comment period. A total of two comments were received.
State law requires the Attorney General to draft a title and explanation for each initiated measure, initiated constitutional amendment, constitutional amendment proposed by the Legislature, or referred measure that may appear on an election ballot.
For more information regarding ballot measures, please visit the Secretary of State’s website.
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Spend millions painting an IM as something good and needed in order to get it passed and along with that insure maximum chaos by hamstringing the legislature in fixing any unintended consequences for seven years. Why just seven years if it is such a great change in operational SD law?
Just say NO
It’s a really bad idea.
There is already a lot of political pressure on legislators not to undermine the “will of the voters.”
Look at medical marijuana. It passed. The initiated measure needed to be amended in all sorts of ways to make it workable. People may quibble with one decision or another, but overall the state has implemented that measure as the voters intended.
This also ignores the possibility of a court challenge to a ballot measure. Remember IM 22, the “anti-corruption” measure. Judge Barnett ruled that it was unconstitutional. The legislature reacted by repealing it, but then passing similar measures to enact most of its goals. You can get into an argument about the details there, but if this stupid amendment had been in place, the legislature would not have been able to fix IM 22, even though it was unconstitutional.
Just super dumb.
Just look at who’s pushing the measure. That’s all one needs to know…bad, bad idea.
logically it could pass and a legislature could still bring this specific IM forward and kill it if it gets enacted, because its approval happened before the bill took effect.
however, if it includes the einstein-like provision that anyone voting to kill the bill be barred from all future public office, then all bets are off.
If you could trust the legislators this would not be necessary, but you cannot trust them. Their previous actions have shown this.
that presumes that you are qualified to fairly judge who to trust. you’re painting with a broad brush. i’d presume two things – one, that a sitting lawmaker earns and keeps the trust of those who elected them, and two, your dislike and loathing of this or that lawmaker doesn’t convey some grand verdict on their trustability. the referral process needs no changes.
This measure guarantees that dumb ideas are constitutionally protected for seven years. Which means that even if the voters pass a measure and then realize it was a mistake, they cannot call their local legislator and demand that it be fixed.
And it means that if the proponents of an initiated measure realize they got it wrong on first draft, they themselves are still stuck with dumb original language. “Sorry! Cant be fixed without a second initiated measure, to fix the first one.”
This ballot measure would be great if ALL proposed measures were well thought out, clearly drafted, and constitutional. When did that ever happen? Too many of these measures have been drafted on a bar napkin.