With our referendum drive on Senate Bills 69 and 177 well underway, the Secretary of State finally publishes the official guide to circulating statewide ballot question petitions for the 2016 election. Points 1–15, 19, 21 and 22 are relevant to our referenda.
Among some tidbits not spotlighted in my rough-and-ready circulator’s guide:
- (6) Watch those addresses: if your signer lives in a “first-class municipality”—i.e., a town with 5,000+ population—your signer can’t give you a P.O. Box for address. Your big-town signers must give a street address or some physical description of where they live. This rule applies only to signers from Aberdeen, Belle Fourche, Box Elder, Brandon, Brookings, Huron, Madison, Mitchell, Pierre, Rapid City, Sioux Falls, Spearfish, Sturgis, Vermillion, Watertown and Yankton.
- (10) As long as the information requested in all six boxes of each signature line is provided, Secretary Krebs won’t get on your case if your signer prints on the top line and signs below, or flips date and county (which they do!).
- (12) I mentioned this, but it bears repeating: Every petition has two sides! Print double-sided! Secretary Krebs will reject stapled, taped, or glued sheets!
- (19) You need to send all notarized petition sheets to me, because I have to submit them all under a single affidavit to the Secretary.
- (22) If you have a local election coming up, you cannot circulate petitions at the polls! State law says you have to stand at least 100 feet away from the polling place. Watch your step, and respect democracy!
Amazing we have to go through with this again because our Governor pays no attention to the voter, his nick name Do nothing.
They count on our being too tired to do it all over again. We can’t succumb to their hopes.