Secretary of State announces Petition challenge (18% ballot question) Unsuccessful
Pierre, SD – Today, Secretary of State Shantel Krebs announced that the challenge submitted for the initiated amendment to the South Dakota Constitution Limiting the Ability to Set Statutory Interest Rates for Loans (18%) was unsuccessful.
An Initiated Amendment to the Constitution Limiting Ability to Set Statutory Interest Rates for Loans (18% rate cap) was originally validated January 4th and certified to be on the November 2016 general election ballot as a ballot measure the citizens will vote on. The sponsor turned in 63,772 signatures to the Secretary of state’s office. A Constitutional Amendment requires 27,741 signatures from South Dakota registered voters. Once the signed petitions were delivered to the Secretary of State’s office, a 5% random sampling was conducted in accordance with 2-1-16. It was determined that 66.17% or 42,195 of 63,772 signatures were in good standing.
The petition challenge was submitted by Cory Heidelberger of Aberdeen. The challenger submitted specific deficiencies on 1,219 signature lines to the Secretary of State’s office. The review concluded that 885 of the challenged signatures were invalid.
This will be Constitutional Amendment U.
An individual wishing to challenge the validity of the petitions can proceed to circuit court.
2-1-18. Court challenge of validity of signatures. Nothing in §§ 2-1-15 to 2-1-18, inclusive, prohibits any person from challenging in circuit court the validity of signatures or other information required on a petition by statute or administrative rule.
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What? Cory goofed? Whodathunkit? If someone turned in petitions where 1/3 were bogus, I would think there should be some sort of investigation. Who were the people collecting signatures? Were they asking the right questions? Should the signature collector have known that at least SOME of the signatures were bogus?