I was speaking with a few politicos the other day and the topic of the ACLU filing a lawsuit via attorney Brendan Johnson came up – Specifically the “why” behind the challenge to the deadline for new political parties. In case you’re not familiar with it:
The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal lawsuit challenging a South Dakota law that moved the deadline for new political parties striving for a place on the 2016 ballot.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of South Dakota’s Libertarian Party and Constitution Party, challenges a section of the law that shifted the deadline for new parties to submit declarations to participate in primary elections backward by four weeks — from the last Tuesday in March prior to the date of the primary election to the first Tuesday in March. The plaintiffs are asking the deadline be set for no earlier than March 29 for a party that wants to participate in South Dakota’s primary election, and August 1 for a party that does not need to participate in a primary election.
and..
The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU, the ACLU of South Dakota, and Brendan Johnson of Robins Kaplan LLP.
The discussion centered around an assumption that the movement to refer Senate Bill 69 (which in part was designed to make South Dakota more compliant with federal mandates to allow at least 45 days for military voting) is likely not going to be successful one, and may fall short of it’s goals. The talk was that, recognizing that likely outcome, the liberal powers that be decided to move forward with the lawsuit in an attempt to take up another front against the clean-up legislation.
With the referred law petition turn-in deadline looming on Monday at 5PM, there are three measures that are being currently circulated – The aforementioned Senate Bill 69 (Petition & election deadline reform act), Senate Bill 177 (Youth Minimum Wage), and House Bill 1179 (Changing the definition of a veteran).
What do you think? Are the petitions to refer legislative measures going to squeak in with sufficient signatures? Or are they going to fall short? And is the lawsuit a recognition of that fact?
This law is crap and gives the GOP in Pierre a black eye for pushing this horse shit.
The law was signed by the Governor and supported by 27 Senators and 50ish members of the House. It was not that polarizing.
This is such a bunch of nonsense and the original intent of the proposal by the SD Board of Elections was to address the issues relating to the inadequate time for someone to challenge invalid candidate petitions. Imagine if Bosworth could have been removed from the ballot prior to the election rather than going through the trial.