Proliferating ballot measures again capture reporter Bob Mercer’s weekend column attention. Mercer’s latest Capitol Notebook notes that with three measures already on the ballot and eleven circulating or about to circulate, South Dakota could match its historic high of fourteen ballot measures set in 1916. Arguably, a 2016 basket of fourteen measures would be more remarkable in terms of direct democracy than the 1916 ballot, since nine of the fourteen measures on the ballot a century ago were amendments placed there by the Legislature. Of today’s fourteen ballot measures, only one is an amendment from the Legislature; one is a fake, decoy amendment from lying payday lending corporations trying to co-opt the initiative process for their private profit; the other twelve are genuine expressions of grassroots democracy. Even if the ballot length is the same as in 1916, twelve genuine voter-driven ballot measures indicate a record level of dissatisfaction with the Legislature’s ability to take care of business in Pierre. (Candidates, that’s a hint.)
While petitioning and winning voter approval for the eleven pending ballot measures takes some sweat, Mercer exaggerates the basis for skepticism about the prospects for those ballot measures. Consider Mercer’s opening comment about signature requirements:
Here is the immediate question about the wild multitude of petitions circulating in South Dakota proposing changes to the state constitution and to state laws.
Is there enough ink? At least 235,801 valid signatures are needed [Bob Mercer, “Direct Democracy Approaching Historic Level for 2016 Election,” Rapid City Journal, 2015.08.].
235,801 signatures (27,741 for each initiated amendment; 13,871 for each initiated law) constitutes 44.47% of the current tally of registered voters. Add the 33% cushion we obtained across the two referendum petitions submitted at the end of June, and current circulators should get signatures from 313,000 voters, more than half the registered pool. That’s a lot of signatures!
But circulators aren’t collecting unique signatures for each petition. My friends and I circulated the petitions for Referred Laws 19 and 20 (the incumbent protection plan and the youth minimum wage), and I’d estimate that a majority of the voters who signed for us signed both petitions. Dems at the Brown County Fair are circulating petitions for the legitimate 36%-rate-cap law and the independent redistricting commission amendment. Some circulators of the various marijuana-related initiated laws are carrying multiple petitions. With all that double duty by circulators and signers, it’s possible that the number of unique signers may be less than half the number of signatures submitted for all petitions this year. Getting a quarter of the electorate to sign ballot measure petitions is still no mean feat, but it’s not as hard as getting the half Mercer suggests petitioners will need.
Mercer then looks at the six elections when South Dakotans had ten or more ballot measures and finds voters approved only 25 out of 86, or 29%. Mercer concludes that “Having so many measures on the ballot didn’t equal success.”
Mercer’s definition of “success” misses the fact that nine of the 61 rejected measures in his count were laws referred by the voters. When citizens refer a law, they usually want to overturn a bad idea from the Legislature. Those nine laws overturned by referendum should thus count as “successes,” at least in the eyes of the organizers. That raises the “success” rate in Mercer’s sample of the six busiest ballot years to 39.5%. That’s lower than the overall “success” rate for ballot measures of 48.7%. However, as I calculated back in March, that difference and the overall correlation between number of ballot measures and success rate is statistically insignifcant.
Mercer’s claim that more ballot measures doesn’t equal success is technically correct. But more ballot measures doesn’t mean failure, either, at least not as far as South Dakota’s historical electoral data indicate.
In other words, rock on, petitioners! Don’t be afraid of putting lots of measures on the ballot. Just scoop up those signatures before the next guy can!
p.s.: If South Dakota voters do the right thing this year, they’ll refuse to sign Lisa Furlong’s fake 18%-rate-cap petition and defend our initiative process from the payday lenders’ foul deception. But even without Furlong’s fakery, we could still break the ballot measure record in 2016: who knows how many bad laws the Legislature will pass next year that we’ll have to refer?
Question Cory. Could having so many ballot measures hurt the chances of the measures themselves?
The generally held wisdom is that there is a built-in 5-10% “no” vote on ballot measures. These are folks who are ideologically opposed to the I & R or (by far the majority of this set of voters) vote “no” when overwhelmed or in doubt. More measures would drive the built-in “no” vote higher, which would give an edge to referenda and a hurdle for initiatives. That’s a general rule, but it all depends on what the measures are, and most people will pick and choose which ones they vote for and against, and which they leave blank. I expect the pot measures, if they make it on the ballot, will increase the turnout of folks who don’t always vote, and whether they vote for or against other measures, or leave them blank, will be interesting to see.
Generally, the more complex the amendment or wording, the more people who will vote against it. I do not know if the number of amendments will increase the percentage of no votes. I doubt it. It will however increase the number of people not voting down ballot. The farther down the ballot one goes and the longer it is, usually the fewer total votes.
How is this not indicative of an autocratic executive and a rubber-stamp legislature passing his extremist agenda?
No, Larry, it is proof that South Dakotans are among the freest of the free.
No, ‘Spencer’ South Dakotans are free like lunches in jail are.
Telling PP that Democrats are cruel is like reminding Mike Rounds that he is short.
Larry, you are free to express your ideas and participate in society. Much of what you complain about are only problems experienced largely by people who lack gumption. Believe it or not, but you are only a “can do” attitude away from voting a straight GOP ticket.
Making shit up for political expediency and selling it to voters is the earth hater party’s stock-in-trade. Being in South Dakota keeps you in the slow lane, “Spencer:” good place for you.
Curious whether Mitch Krebs knows his wife sold Kristi Noem out to a progressive blogger.
Spencer is not only a dump in South Dakota it is in Iowa, too.
I bet you those pay-day loan people will be cooking up a bunch more of these hairball initiated measures to confuse the world and anger voters. This is why we need to outlaw crazies making up laws for us to vote on. If you can’t get your laws through the legislatures then you need to just sit down and take a look around.
Regardless if this is one or one hundred ballot measures, I hope voters take time to research the issues before the election. However Spencer is correct, the more wordy or complex the ballot measure the better chance of it failing. This is going to be a busy election season.
What part of spencer,iowa is a dump?
And the more insane the measures become the more angry voters will be. When item #1 is insane and item #2 is insaner and item #3 is insaner yet the voters will just go NO NO NO NO NO the rest of the way down the ballot. Which is why the payday loan people are probably behind some of the crazier measures and have more in their pockets.
MC are you the same MC that will be running for Rep Hickey’s seat?
All of the parts that are in Iowa, Mike.
If only South Dakota’s legislature had more Steve Hickeys and fewer emcees.
On the complexity Donald and Spencer mention, that bodes ill for Referred Law 19. That proposal includes 24 sections of percentages and arcane ballot rules. I know from trying to explain it during the petition process that people are hard-pressed to understand what it’s all about. I look forward to that complexity dooming RL 19.
But Spencer, we do know that the number of amendments does not reliably increase the number of nays.
Grudz, you identify one big problem with the payday lenders’ abuse of the petition process with their deceptive ballot measure. If they make enough trouble, they may provoke the Legislature to tighten up the rules on I&R, and we don’t want that. The solution here is not to make it harder to do I&R (more difficulty stops real grassroots South Dakota petitions, not the deep-pocketed tricksters). The solution is a vigilant press and electorate.
I&R pander to the ignorant electorate. The press is even more ignorant.
And what happens if voters approve both pay-day-loan initiatives?