I would ask if Senator California Carley has paid attention to any court case regarding counties and election equipment this year, but I can answer that myself. Of course he hasn’t. Because he’s brought a bill – Senate Bill 217 – that absolutely flies in the face of all those court decisions and if it passes, it will trigger lawsuits against the state for violating the rights of the disabled which South Dakota will lose. Badly.
SB 217 by Pat Powers on Scribd
Section 1. That a NEW SECTION be added to chapter 12-1:
The State Board of Elections may not authorize the use of any automatic tabulating or electronic ballot marking system.
The governing body of a political subdivision having supervision of an election may not adopt, implement, or use any automatic tabulating or electronic ballot marking system in an election.
Literally, in the opening sentences of the measure, he directly gets to the thing that’s going to get South Dakota sued in federal court, and justifiably get stomped all over the place. And they’ll use the same precedents and court decisions that were successfully used in Lawrence County to turn back this exact same type of nonsense.
In case you forgot, re-visiting my post from January 10th…:
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Because of this action against the county, Lawrence County Commissioners had to seek legal counsel to respond to the hand-counting petition. And via Sara Frankenstein at Gunderson Palmer, they did so:Respondents’ Brief in Support of Motion to Dismiss by Pat Powers on Scribd
When you have a 48 page response with a table of contents, one can assume they have a lot of ammunition to bring to the fight.
That was in October. And today, the circuit court made their decision. Not only did they find for the County, they dismissed Braithwait’s action with prejudice.
Order on Petitioner’s Affidavit and Application for Writ of Mandamus by Pat Powers on Scribd
Someone should explain to Senator Carley that the issue isn’t that state law is a magic barrier he can just change. THESE ARE FEDERAL LAWS AND COURT DECISIONS. He’s not going to wave his hand and make the Americans with Disabilities Act disappear – disabled people get to vote too.. and they’re allowed to use assistive technology to do so.
Go to page 37 of the PDF which is the brief submitted by Sara Frankenstein of Gunderson Palmer in the Braithwait case which explains in a few pages why that dog isn’t going to hunt. At all.
If Carley’s bill passes, I’m not sure which organization would start pounding on the State of South Dakota first. Disability Rights? The Justice Department? Individual litigants? It would be a free-for-all which the state would quickly lose, and be forced to write checks for something we already know is very much against the law.
It’s like we’re going from bad to worse as we hit the deadline for legislation.
Legislators, I beg of you: please just stop before we go any further behind.
I think we need to get a few of these bills passed. Publicly suffer the consequences of the lawsuits so people can see what happens when you elect idiots to represent you
I agree, time to reap what you sow South Dakota. Think the state has budget problems now LOL
California Carley is your guy. He brings no South Dakota common sense to the game, and wants to remake our Black Hills into the Hollywood Hills.
Just shows what can happen when voters are too lazy to vote.
A majority of 18% of SD voters is running the show.
What we are now reaping is the failure to pass the open primaries initiative. About half of the legislative seats were decided in the closed Republican primaries, thus many of those wackos were chosen by that little sliver of the state’s citizenry known as Crazy Republican Primary Voters Inspired By Donald Trump’s Wacko Election Denial and Conspiracy Theories. If y’all had supported and worked for passage of open primaries then the Independents (like me) would have been able to save you from your own looney tunes scourge in the next (2026) cycle by helping elect sensible and competent Republicans in the primary. Too bad, so sad for all of us.