Speaking of running for county commission, the petition requirements in Minnehaha County demonstrate how Republicans and Democrats have rigged the system to keep independents off the ballot.
The Secretary of State offers this handy-dandy guide to circulating nominating petitions for state, Legislative, and county offices. The info for county commission candidates is a bit thin, since lots of counties have wards, which make for more data than can fit on a neat one-page spreadsheet. But for the few counties with nothing but at-large seats and for all counties’ county-wide offices like auditor and state’s attorney, the SOS lists the signature requirements. Under SDCL 12-6-7.1, no county candidate who belongs to a political party has to submit more than 50 signatures to qualify for the ballot. Minnehaha, Pennington, Lawrence, Lincoln, and Codington are the only counties where that maximum applies. In every other county, partisan candidates can qualify under the lower criterion of 1% of the vote for their party’s gubernatorial candidate in the last gubernatorial election. That’s 8 in Faulk, 7 in Miner….
But independents are held to a higher standard. Under SDCL 12-7-1, and independent must muster 1% of the total combined vote cast for Governor in the last gubernatorial election. That’s 9 signatures in Miner and Faulk, 89 in Lawrence, 169 in Lincoln, 335 in Pennington, and 543 in Minnehaha.
Independents have to collect nearly eleven times as many signatures as Republicans or Democrats to run for county office in Minnehaha. Nuts to that! Among legislative priorities next year, let’s revise SDCL 12-7-1 to set the maximum signatures for county office to 50 for everyone, regardless of party affiliation. Or let’s adopt the standard that was stripped from HB 1286 this year and allow candidates to choose: 50 signatures from voters sharing the same party affiliation, or 100 signatures from any registered voter in the county.
I am somewhat in agreement with you CH. Independents are discriminated against. However there is no limit to the number of independents that could be on the Ballot in November. There is a limit on the number of candidates from organized parties. That makes a good argument for non-partisan primaries.
Are we better off with six candidates for three positions or sixteen candidates for three positions? In a sense we have that “primary” in the race for mayor in Sioux Falls where the top two candidates meet in a runoff if nobody gets over 50% of the vote.
PS – Vote for Jolene Loetscher! jb
Cory writes:
Guess I’ll chime in here with my usual criticism of that idea. If the state were to force any party to accept candidates nominated by people who aren’t even members of that party, it would be blatantly violating party members’ constitutional right to freedom of association.
I have no problem applying the Sioux Falls nonpartisan mayoral election model to elections for every office. Let everyone run in one primary race, all on an equal footing, all able to get signatures from the same number of voters, regardless of party affiliation. If one of those finishers gets a simple majority, congratulations, Madame Mayor. If not, runoff between the top two. Any disadvantages to that system?
Kurt, would we overcome your objection by simply removing party labels from petitions and ballots?
Cory asks:
I’d strongly prefer a ranked-choice voting system rather than a top-two runoff, but yes, removing party labels from petitions and ballots would moot my objection regarding freedom of association.
If Mr. Evans means, when he says
that the people in that big, liberal town would rank the 6 candidates 1,2,3,4,5,6 and for each #1 ranking the people would get 6 points or 12 points or something and for each #2 ranking the people would get 2 points or 4 points or something, then grudznick likes his idea. The more complex the better.
“grudznick” writes:
That isn’t what I mean. In ranked-choice voting, if no candidate gets 50 percent of the vote, the votes for the candidate who gets the fewest votes are reallocated to those voters’ second choices. If there’s still no candidate with 50 percent of the vote, the votes for the remaining candidate with the fewest votes are reallocated to those voters’ next (second or third) choices, and so on until a candidate has 50 percent.
Imagine a four-way race. It’s possible for the candidate with the third-most votes in the initial balloting to move into second place when the fourth-place candidate’s votes are reallocated, and then into first place when the third-place (initially second-place) candidate’s votes are reallocated. In other words, every voter has direct input into the final outcome, and no candidate goes into office with less than 50 percent of the vote.
In a top-two runoff, that (initially) third-place candidate—whom most voters actually regarded as a better choice than the (initially) first-place candidate—would have been eliminated from the race months before the general election.
Establishment Republicans tend to dislike this system, because it would allow Libertarians to actually vote for Libertarians without the supposed risk of “wasting” their votes or “spoiling” elections. In other words, many Republicans would prefer to risk a “spoiled” election rather than to risk a strong Libertarian showing on Election Day.
I’m fine with trying ranked-choice voting, since I agree that RCV could better reflect the preferences of the electorate.
That my suggestion about removing party labels from ballots and petitions says something interesting about the freedom-of-association issue that raises Kurt’s concerns. For most people, the “association” involved in saying, “I’m a Democrat” isn’t any deeper than the association involved in saying, “I’m a Packers fan.” They root for the Packers, but they don’t participate in any decisions about recruitment, coaching, or starting line-up.
The vast majority of people who identify themselves as D or R on their voter registration never attend a party meeting, never run as a candidate for that party, never donate money to the party, and never participate in activity organized by the party. I know a couple people who are registered independent who are more aware of and active in supporting Democratic activities than a lot of the door-to-door folks I’ve gotten to sign my nominating petition. Writing party labels into law seems to create a technical “association” where there is no practical association.
Maybe we should drop party affiliation from voter registration as well and thus drop every statutory recognition of party identification.
Cory writes:
I’d argue that there is some practical association, however minimal, in registering for the ability to participate in a given party’s primary elections. I’d agree, though, that we should drop every statutory recognition of party identification. Supporters of political parties have no more inherent right to special treatment under the law than supporters of football teams.
This ranked choice voting would confuse old people and dimwits. What if Ms. Krebs just decides to implement it on her way out the door?
“grudznick” writes:
I’ve read that something like two percent of ranked-choice voters invalidate all but their first choices by filling out the ballots incorrectly (typically by selecting their first-choice candidates for multiple rankings), but I think you’d be able to figure it out.
Mr. Evans blogs:
Don’t be so sure, Mr. Evans, as I am very old and very dim, and often go to the voting places very early in the morning when the dew of confusion still drips from the cobwebs of my mind.