KELOLAND News is reporting tonight that there are allegedly people calling and identifying themselves as being with the Secretary of State’s office, when that isn’t the case. Now law enforcement has gotten involved, and it is investigating who might have tried to perpetuate this fraud:
KELOLAND News first became aware of the calls on Monday morning when a family member of a newsroom employee received a call from someone claiming to be a volunteer with the Secretary of State’s Office.
and..
Some of the callers are saying they are with the South Dakota Integrity Committee or with Petition Integrity Commission. They are questioning citizens regarding the Abortion Rights petition. A committee named South Dakota Petition Integrity did file a campaign finance statement of organization this morning. Whoever is behind these false actions have taken the farthest path from integrity possible.
and..
The South Dakota Petition Integrity committee named in Soulek’s statement is run by Republican State Rep. Jon Hansen.
Could be interesting..
Jon Hansen and Tom Pischke. Proof that district 25 doesn’t send its best nor brightest.
ICMI, in 2006 we had an Initiated measure about abortion and Leslie Unruh was on TV with a whole stack of fliers she had mailed out, to people who had signed the petition, and a large number were returned to her as undeliverable, indicating that a lot of those petition signatures and addresses were not real. So it’s not a bad idea to check and make sure these people really exist.
Frankly I would thoroughly enjoy calling up people who signed this one, just to ask them if they want me to explain what causes pregnancy, since they apparently don’t understand how to prevent it.
Current law does not have exemptions for rape and incest, so prevention not really the issue there (not sure telling someone “Don’t get raped” is the most helpful advise after-the-fact). You can be opposed to abortion and still think the law is too restrictive. This measure is not the best, but it is better than what we have.
Also, I still find it odd the party based on the philosophy that “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” wants to use the government as a tool to dictate medical care that should only be of concern to the doctor and the patient. Remember, the pendulum swings. If one side takes this approach, the other will and impose their views the same way.
Some argue that Levonorgestrel ( “Plan B”) is an abortifacient as some people do, but it actually delays any impending ovulation for a few days so it actually prevents conception. So that takes care of the rape complaint. In any case, an abortion after rape doesn’t make the trauma go away, it just allows her support system to pretend it never happened and ignore her. Or, in the case of statutory or familial rape, they can continue to abuse her and the crime goes unreported. An abortion really isn’t helpful.
As for the hysterics over incest, that was an ancient practice in many cultures prior to Moses, who imposed a prohibition against it. The prohibition has been ignored for thousands of years by royalty around the world and was still being practiced a continued with Fundamentalist Mormons.
Other than the fact it is “yucky” there really is no reason to kill the offspring of an incestuous relationship. Terminating a healthy pregnancy needs a better reason than “it’s so icky-poo.”
“Healthy pregnancy” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Incest has demonstrable negative outcomes at a genetic level.
actually the genetic defects are rare in cases of incest. It was practiced by both ancient Egyptian and Hawaiian royalty; European royalty is so inbred it’s amusing to trace their family trees.
While incest is not recommended, and not legal, fears of genetic defects have been exaggerated.
Gee, do I listen to some dude judt claiming stuff on the internet, or the body of scientific research?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27892699/
Just because there is consanguinity does not automatically mean there will be deleterious effects, and prenatal genetic testing can be done to determine if there is a problem.
People who are known carriers of genetic mutations already get testing done. The risks are similar to cases of advanced maternal age.
Should it be against the law to marry after age 35 just because there is a higher risk?
Should carriers of genetic mutations be forbidden to marry?
The rationale for prohibiting incest is based on a higher risk of genetic defects. The same arguments could be used to prohibit marriages of women after age 35, or marriages of people with a family history of hereditary disorders.
Holy shit if you need to have every reason why incest is bad spelled out to you you’re especially dense or one hell of a troll. It’s not just the risk of genetic issues, but also the fact that most cases of incest also arise from rape or cultural pressures that are misogynistic at a minimum.
What if a woman is prevented from taking Plan B immediately after the rape occurs? Like what happens in a kidnapping or other similar scenario? Real life is a lot messier than whatever picturesque fantasy you dwell in.
and how is an abortion going to erase the trauma?
It’s pretty lame to think an abortion will fix anything; in fact, some rape victims have reported that having an abortion was like being raped all over again.
If a pregnancy is allowed to continue, the victim will remain under a doctor’s care for months, and her state of mind can be monitored.
The Messrs. Hansen and Pischke are insaner than most. I would not put this past them. Mr. Hansen is a smart enough fellow in some accounts, but he has tendencies to put fellows like Mr. Pischke in charge of things, and if that is the case here we all know how Pischkeisms end.
Dumb. Why aren’t they raising money?
If you can’t get Thune, Noem, Rounds and Dusty Johnson on board to give or help raise money to stop abortion you are not the person to run a committee.
3 years ago Hansen was a guy who could have done that.
With 55k names turned in, I don’t think they’re going to knock 20k names off the petition in the time allotted.
Jon Hansen’s “Life Defense Fund,” which is supposed to be fighting the abortion measure, raised $210k in 2023 and spent… $209k in 2023, ending the year with less than $20k on hand.
All of this spending was for the “Decline to Sign” campaign, which was such a brilliant success that the petition organizers turned in more than twice as many signatures as they needed.
What a waste of money! Start focusing on voter education to vote no!
Agreed. Not at all likely they will knock off enough signatures to keep from the ballot. Should be spending every dime they have on advertising to educate/inform the voters of their viewpoint.
Remember: these are the same pieces of human refuse who cry about “election integrity.” Just zero shame and and completely willing to violate the law themselves.
The best way to get people to “decline to sign” is to let them know they are putting themselves on a mailing/telephone list, and annoy the heck out of them.
Intelligent people do not give their names and addresses to strangers they meet in the Walmart parking lot, so that tells you a lot about the mental capacity of the petition signers.
It is quite possible that the callers are saying something like “i am a volunteer with the South Dakota Petition Integrity Committee and we obtained your name from the Secretary of State’s office,” and what the listeners heard was “I am a volunteer with the Secretary of State’s office.”
Remember, they aren’t very bright.
So you won’t be signing any petitions to put 201 on the ballot then?
why would I want SB 201 on the ballot ?
It’s the pipeline companies that want it overturned, not me.
Granted, if it is not overturned, utility companies will just pass the additional costs onto their customers, so that sucks.
your evaluation of this made-up integrity crisis has a shining brilliance that we can all bask in.
Hansen wants to ban abortion and ban education and prevention of pregnancy at the same time. This autocratic authoritarianism of new age GOP policy is going to fail. Give it up already, live your life, you can’t expect to live everyone else’s lives. I know the “unborn” are a great target audience, they don’t ask for anything, you can insert your own values on them, they are innocent, but only the “born” get to vote.
Hansen wants to jump on every populist bandwagon that comes through.
He doesn’t care what the cause is, as long as he gets to ride.
But I really really like the idea of harassing the people who sign these petitions. They’re asking for it.
“I think that people who dare have the gumption to stand against the government or who dare to let their voice be heard via petition suck and deserve harassment.”
Gee you’re quite the troll or misanthrope.
The petition business started when petitions were circulated among people who actually knew each other.
Now we get strangers accosting us in parking lots..
Exactly! The Decline to Sign people were very aggressive and abusive. It is not surprising their tactics continue.
Ok so Hansen is advocating Decline to Sign 201 now? Brilliant!