Secretary of State Certifies 6th Ballot Measure
Pierre, SD – Today, Secretary of State Shantel Krebs announced that an initiated amendment to the South Dakota Constitution establishing Nonpartisan Elections was validated and certified to be on the November 2016 general election ballot as a ballot measure the citizens will vote on. The sponsor turned in 44,095 signatures to the Secretary of state’s office. A Constitutional Amendment requires 27,741 signatures from South Dakota registered voters. Once the signatures were delivered to the Secretary of State’s office, a 5% random sampling was conducted. It was determined that 67.8% or 29,924 of 44,095 signatures were in good standing. This will be Constitutional Amendment V.
This is the sixth initiated measure to be approved by Secretary of State. A total of 8 measures were submitted for review. This office will continue the signature validation process of the remaining 2 measures in the order they were submitted to the Secretary of State. A total of 275,000 signatures were submitted among all petitions.
Those looking to challenge the Secretary of State’s certification of a ballot measure have 30 days from the date they are certified, which would be February 8, 2016.
Challenges to all statewide initiatives and referendums must be brought within 30 days after the petition has been validated and filed by the Secretary of State (SDCL 12-1-13)
Someone should challenge this one. It was filed with the SOS on November 9, 2015. The state constitution requires that initiated amendments be submitted “at least one year before the next general election at which the proposed amendment is submitted to the voters.” The general election is Nov. 8th of this year. They missed the deadline by a day.
I agree with the previous poster.
Also a very slim margin for having enough signatures by the SOS count.
If 1 & 2 above don’t work; we need to all VOTE NO on this crazy measure….V is for VERY VERY BAD
Someone please challenge this one. The Dems must think the only way they can win is no one knows they are Dems! Once again, look to the sponsors of this and VOTE NO!
The blogger at Soakliberty.com stated he was in favor of this Constitutional amendment because “current primary elections are basically taxpayer-funded private elections.” But how are taxpayer dollars used for primary elections in SD? According to the following site:
https://sdsos.gov/elections-voting/campaign-finance/campaign-finance-faqs.aspx
“Can Public Funds be used to Influence an Election? No. The State, an agency of the State, and the governing body of a county, municipality, or other political subdivision of the State may not expend or permit the expenditure of public funds for the purpose of influencing the nomination or election of any candidate. “
My question is are taxpayer funds used for elections in SD?
Taxpayer funds are used to administer the election, but not to influence the outcome.
As Mark says the taxpayers are paying to administer the elections. The Republican Party in SD has decided it only wants party members to vote in its primary election. Personally I have no problem with that decision. But the taxpayers are paying money to administer that primary election. Personally I think all parties should design and finance their own method to choose candidates for the general election. But if that doesn’t happen (and likely never will happen) another choice is to go with one primary that includes all candidates on the ballot. I think the party labels could have been left though, those really don’t matter.
“Currently, most general election candidates for federal, state, and county
offices are selected through a partisan primary or at a state party convention.”
“Each political party rnay establish such procedures as the party determines to elect party officers, endorse or support candidates, or otherwise participate in all elections. However, no such procedures may be paid for or subsidized using public funds.” These are taken from the amendment wording.
Wouldn’t taxpayer funds still be used to administer a nonpartisan election? And isn’t that the only place that taxpayer funds are currently used? I do not understand the reasoning behind this, if the only thing taxpayer funds are currently and with this amendment being used for is administering an election.
Yes, taxpayer funds would still be used. But all voters would then be allowed to participate without having to join a party. Dem Party does allow independents, but there are many elections in SD that only have Republican candidates. So the primary basically acts as the general for a lot of elections.
What’s to stop the Dems now from having their own primary? Oh yeah, candidates!
The moment that Democrats actually had competitive Primary elections that would allow voters to chose candidates, they would close their Primary.
If I recall correctly, the Dems had only 3 primaries in the entire state in 2012, for example.