House Local Government pushed forward the Republican war on ballot measures Thursday. The committee’s Republicans happily passed Senate Bill 77, Senator Al Novstrup’s petition-crushing requirement that sponsors of initiatives print their text on their petitions in 14-point font (that’s up from the original 12-point Al proposed, because professedly small-government Republicans just can’t get enough of destroying the initiative process that South Dakota originated with hyper-regulatory technicalities).
I have proposed far fairer and more useful petition reforms, like allowing initiative sponsors to follow the example of referendum sponsors and simply place the short title of their initiatives on their petitions. In exchange, I would gladly support requiring the Secretary of State to post the full text of each initiative in simple, easily accessible format online on the SOS website and requiring circulators to carry with them printed copies of their full initiative text, separate from their petitions, to share with potential signers on the street. But far be it from the Legislature to entertain real reforms that give the public more access to ballot question information without strangling the initiative process.
House Local Government further whittled away at the initiative process by approving Senate Bill 123, the misdirected measure that will delay citizens’ ability to collect signatures on initiative petitions by another 20 days while we wait for inside baseballers to pick nits over the Attorney General’s title and explanation of their initiatives. That 20-day delay for “public comment” achieves no practical good—the Attorney General is required to review those comments but doesn’t have to change one word of the official title and explanation in response. It only takes away 20 days—likely beautiful spring and summer days—when eager petitioners could collect thousands of signatures at fairs and concerts and on busy sunny sidewalks, thus inevitably resulting in fewer petitions that collect enough signatures by the November deadline.
Yet not even the sole Democrat on House Local Government, Rep. Ryan Cwach (D-18/Yankton) stood against this additional erosion of people power. He joined a unanimous committee in taking away more time for the people to make their voices heard.
The only grace—and I won’t call it saving, because there’s no saving this bill as long as it takes away 20 days of petition-circulation time—was that the committee amended SB 123 to eliminate the silly 19th-century restriction of comment to written form. Instead of requiring all comment to reach the A.G. by mail or personal, physical delivery, SB 123 now just says, “The attorney general shall accept comment for ten days….” Alas, that line does not guarantee that the comment will be truly public—i.e., shared with all of us so we can see which interested parties spoke about and perhaps influenced the Attorney General’s statement. Again, even in a faint nod toward expanding public participation, the Legislature fails to create a truly useful public process.
House Local Government also tacked on an enactment date of November 1, 2021. Thus delayed, SB 123 won’t affect any pending ballot measures that may circulate this year for the 2022 ballot (at least not unless I win one more court argument and get the November 8 deadline pushed back to next July or August!). We could thus wait until the 2022 Session to repeal SB 123 and save future initiatives from this further delay… though I would much rather the House come to its senses now and kill both SB 123 and SB 77.
I have heard they are going to amend this law bill to make these kind of things be chiseled in a piece of stone, no more than 6″ thick at any point, and at a minimum 28″ x 37″ measured from any side to the side opposite the center of the rock.
Any weak-armed fellow or lady without a chaperone who can’t carry this stone around and get it chiseled out with people’s signatures that are legible and match the voter roles will be guilty of several misdemeanors.
grudznick is against these kind of shenanigans, so I plan to fund some meandering squads of truth speakers around Rapid City if this mess doesn’t get resolved.
Cory,
Which font theme is required by law? (I.e. Arial, Times New Roman, etc) 14 pt is simply a size. Are all legal notices going to require larger font as well.
Arguably, the First Amendment is the most important to the maintenance of a democratic government. … The freedoms of speech, press, assembly and the right to petition the government and seek redress of grievances proclaim that citizens have the right to call the government to account. Restrictions must be REASONABLE as to time, place and manner.
So, the question is, are these proposed regulations reasonable with regard the petition process overall.
Ms. Schaffer, I believe it is Comic Sans 14 pt.
Good point Mr. Schaffer. Will those legal documents that appear in the papers now be required to be larger font. We are gonna have to cut more trees. Bad time to have a paper route, but more soy will be needed for the ink.
Oh my golly, if I have been wrong showing Mr. Schaffer respected by calling him Ms. instead of Mr. then, golly, grudznick stands all red faced and butt ugly.
My apologies, Mr. Schaffer.
I truly feel bad about any confusion I have cause, Mr. Schaffer. I meant no disrespect, in fact I meant the opposite.
Little Al is Little lord Fontleroy, a short fontman for NOem, the evil queen to do her bidding.
The other legislators need to take a stand for once and not be minions. As Sir Edmund Burke said during the revolutionary period of the U S colonization. “All evil needs to do to triumph is for good men to do nothing”.
Francis, SB 77 does not specify font type, only size.
One can do some remarkable things with 14-point font.
14 point is ridiculously large for a document. Most documents are in 11 or even 10 point, and when you reach 14 point or larger, you’re talking the size used for headings or for advertisement text.
And, as others have noted, 14 point doesn’t actually specify a font. If they were really concerned about readability, they would specify a font, not just a point size. Is it okay to write a legal document in wedding script, or Curlz MT, or Impact, as long as it’s 14 point? And not all 14 point fonts are created equal. Some take up quite a bit more space than others.
Basically this was written to hamstring the initiative process, and it was written by lazy people who bumped up the point size to meet their page requirement for term papers.
The answer =
First, pass this constitutional amendment into law:
Consent of the Governed Act:
“Any initiated act or Constitutional Amendment passed by a direct vote of the people, shall not be nullified or altered or amended in any way by any means other to a direct vote of the people.”
Second, pass an initiated measure into law that eliminates the BS that the GOP has added to the process and get back to simpler times.
Nothing, I repeat NOTHING else to the passing of that first amendment above, is anything but a total waste of time in the face of out-of-control anti-democracy of the SD GOP. NOTHING else matters in the initiative and referenda “battle”. NOTHING ELSE is anything other to a surrender to self-defeat.
24 point wingdings incoming. You did this to yourselves, Pierre.