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Represent US Director Calls SD Legislature’s IM 22 Repeal “Most Egregious”

Josh Silver, founder and director of Represent.US, sees Maine Governor Paul LePage’s refusal to implement the voter-approved Medicaid expansion until the Legislature pays for it as part of an “ominous pattern” of “legislators across the country resisting the will of the people by gutting or even repealing citizen initiatives.” The worst offenders, says Silver, are South Dakota legislators:

Perhaps the most egregious repeal of a voter-approved initiative in modern history took place this year in South Dakota, where voters passed a suite of ethics and campaign finance reforms aimed at eradicating political corruption endemic to the state’s politics. The state’s legislature… swiftly repealed the citizen-approved measure intended to regulate their own corrupt behavior [Josh Silver, “Maine’s Governor Wants to Ignore the Will of the Voters; He’s Not Alone,” Denver Post, 2017.11.09].

I ellipsize an error by Silver, who incorrectly claims that our Legislature declared an emergency session to repeal Initiated Measure 22. Our Legislature repealed IM 22 in regular session under a bogusly invoked emergency clause.

But those specifics aside, Silver is right to say that our Legislature egregiously affronted the voters of South Dakota by so rankly disregarding the voters’ will. That affront exceeded even the 2015 Legislature’s vote to undo the minimum wage hike for young workers that voters approved in 2014 and had to return to the polls in 2016 to defend.

Silver may get another whack at our egregiously anti-democracy Legislature: the South Dakota branch of Represent.Us submitted a petition with over 50,000 signatures last month to place a new and improved version of IM 22 on the 2018 ballot. That initiative, the Voter Protection and Anti-Corruption Amendment, could be one of eight citizen initiatives on the ballot in 2018. One key provision of the VPAC would prevent the Legislature from repealing any more citizen initiatives without the permission of us voters.

5 Comments

  1. grudznick 2017-11-10 17:07

    Boo. BAH on all measures initiated. This time the voters will be wary of people who want to take taxpayer dollars and give them to politicians and evil-doers. #VNOE and #reviveTheBorehole

  2. Roger Cornelius 2017-11-10 18:17

    Obviously grudz did not read the new IM submitted to the SOS.
    The new anti-corruption measure does not include the provision for funding campaigns.
    If you choose to support corrupt state republican politicians, by all means don’t vote for the new IM. When the corruption continues to defraud taxpayers don’t come back crying, “corruption”.
    One of the biggest problems that our shaky democracy is experiencing is that voters don’t read beyond the headlines.

  3. grudznick 2017-11-10 21:20

    It is good this new IM #22 does not take taxpayer money, without telling the public and using lying commercials funded by big, dark, out-of-state money, to foist itself upon the masses. Were you for that part of the original IM #22, Mr. C? I would like somebody like Slick Rick to float that balloon all by itself, but associated with these new measures initiated, and see how many people keep eating at Parker’s Bistro.

    I submit what will kill these measures initiated is the past lying by the pushers and the annoyance of these out-of-state pushers by good South Dakotans.

    Talleys will be hopping in the morn, Mr. C, be early.

  4. grudznick 2017-11-10 22:17

    Here’s an equivalent piece of news: grudznick calls the US Represent Director “Most Egregious” and bans him from South Dakota.

    Discuss.

  5. grudznick 2017-11-11 02:09

    Even if there is a measure initiated, perhaps by the good Doctor McTaggart or other fellows with brains much bigger than all of us bloggers brains, to force the digging of The Borehole, I still urge you all to #VNOE. I tell everybody at breakfast to do just that.

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