Liberal Democrat Cory Heidelberger strikes out in gathering petition signatures.

From the Secretary of State’s website:

The referral for House Bill 1094 by former Democrat Senate candidate Cory Heidelberger that was approved for circulation on March 29th seems to have hit a fatal stumbling block.

He didn’t turn any petition signatures in. 

According to the Secretary of State, nothing was turned in by the 5 PM deadline today.

In what will likely be a blow to his petitioning efforts, it doesn’t appear that the late appeals by his allied Democrats or Heidelberger’s own efforts were sufficient to gather the nearly 17,000 signatures required to place the measure on the ballot.

Barring a last minute court challenge, HB 1094, an act to revise certain programs regarding transparency of the petition circulation process will go into effect on Monday, July 1st along with the other legislation that passed during the normal course of the South Dakota Legislative Session this year.

That leaves Cory his initiated measure titled “An initiated measure changing initiative and referendum requirements,” which would roll back many of the reform measures passed by the state legislature over the past several years to gather signatures on.

Heidelberger had announced that he’s backed by out of state interests on his other circulated measure, which made preventing this act important for the group, since this new law places tighter verifications on the residency of the petition circulators, including registration similar to lobbyists, and whether the circulator is a registered sex offender.

But, now the protections and verifications go into place. Meaning that Cory will have to make do with South Dakotans. And not hired guns from out of state.