I was right, and the well-financed stooges of payday lender Rod Aycox were wrong… again.
Give Us Credit SD is gucking up our courts with its specious challenge to the petition that placed the real 36% rate cap on payday loans on our ballot as Initiated Measure 21. Wednesday I demolished their primary insinuation, that their P.I. didn’t find six of the circulators when he knocked on their doors and that those six may be criminal out-of-state circulators whose petition sheets are thus invalid.
I was absolutely sure about four of those six not being guilty of that of which GUC (which is led by out-of-state IT guy Bradley Thuringer). Now I have received direct confirmation from a fifth that GUC’s lawsuit is full of malarkey.
GUC’s lawsuit contends that circulator Jean Behr of Sioux Falls could not be found at the address she listed. Jean Behr of Sioux Falls sent me this message yesterday:
I did collect those signatures, and I do in fact live there. My state issued ID is that address. He may have stopped by my house. But, with the job and having a life….I’m not often there [Jean Behr, message to Dakota Free Press, 2016.06.23].
Of the 2,658 signatures GUC claims it can invalidate with its insinuation of non-residency, I have now established that 98.7% are legitimate. Only the 35 signatures GUC ascribes to a purportedly non-existent Lincoln Stoel (who may be the real South Dakotan Lincoln Steel) remain in question under GUC’s residency argument.
Behr’s message shows how the state could easily win a motion for summary judgment against GUC. The court documents I’ve seen so far do not present a prima facie case against Behr and the other allegedly non-resident circulators. One guy went to Jean Behr’s address one time and found no one home. GUC builds on that slim instance an allegation that Jean Behr doesn’t live there. It’s not up to Jean Behr or the state to prove that Behr live there; it’s up to GUC and its Republican lawyer, Sara Frankenstein, to prove to the court that Behr not only does not live there now but did not live there when she signed her circulator’s oath.
Again, don’t be distracted, IM 21 supporters: payday lender Rod Aycox and his minions have no case. They are only clogging our courts with insinuations and lies in a futile effort to deny South Dakotans their right to vote.
I’d like to believe there is a standard of some sort that has to be satisfied before Joe Blow can tell the court, with absolute certainty, that a person does not live where they claim to live.
Shouldn’t they need some kind of documentation to prove the claim?
Absolutely, Mike. One affidavit from one dude on one visit is documentation, but it’s not proof. Thuringer/GUC/Frankenstein have the burden of proof; at this point the state could just sit back and laugh at this lawsuit and win summary judgment.