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IM 21 Withstands Latest Payday Lender Challenge, Remains on Ballot

Miss South Dakota 1997 beat Miss South Dakota 1998 yesterday. After two days of courtroom combat between Secretary of State Shantel Krebs and her beauty queen successor, Rapid City attorney Sara Frankenstein, Judge Mark Barnett rejected the payday lenders’ lawsuit to throw Initiated Measure 21, the real 36% rate cap on payday loans, off the ballot.

Frankenstein represented the Give Us Credit ballot question committee, fronted by former Dan Lederman bailbondsman Bradley Thurginer and funded so far almost entirely by Georgia-based payday lending exec Rod Aycox, in the latest of a steady stream of nefarious efforts to stop South Dakotans from regulating their exploitative industry. Frankenstein brought to the stand Lederman bailbondsman turned GUC private dick Michael Napier and former Secretary of State’s office staffer turned GUC temp Aaron Lorenzen to recite the payday lenders’ recycled claim that several IM 21 petition circulators provided false addresses, thus invalidating all signatures they collected and leaving the petition with fewer than the 13,871 signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot. GUC offered additional arguments, filing 26,000 challenges to the original 19,232 signatures.

Stephen Lee of the Pierre Capital Journal summarizes Barnett’s bench ruling, which came just after 5 p.m. yesterday:

  • Judge Barnett cited SDCL 2-1-11, which requires that petitions be “liberally construed, so that the real intention of the petitioners may not be defeated by a mere technicality.”
  • Judge Barnett said, “The vast majority of the challenges have no merit.”
  • Judge Barnett rejected arguments about technically incomplete voter information: “To me ‘Rapid,’ is Rapid City…. ‘Mnhh’ is Minnehaha. I’m ruling that St. and Ave. are not required.”
  • Judge Barnett rejected lots of challenges based on alleged illegibility: “I saw hundreds of examples of what you claimed were illegible (signatures and addresses) when, without my glasses, I could look across the room and clearly make them out, a signatures, a date, or whatever.”

Initiated Measure 21 now goes to the ballot. Payday lenders are thus likely now to focus on the court of public opinion with what is sure to be a huge, expensive, and noisy campaign of deceptive ads.

Lee reports that Judge Barnett made an interesting recommendation to the Secretary of State and the Legislature on dealing with petition challenges:

“For future reference, the secretary of state … may want to consider figuring out whether legislators want to give them the express authority to give a random sample (to validate petition signatures.) We have 10 (measures) on the ballot this year. If all 10 had 20,000 signatures, and eight objections were raised for each (signatures) . . . that is 1.6 million objections.”

The secretary of state’s office would be obligated to check out those objections, he said, all within the short time leading up to an election.

“If you can’t random sample that, the whole system shuts down” [Stephen Lee, “Judge Rejects ‘Give Us Credit’ Court Challenge of Measure 21,” Pierre Capital Journal, 2016.08.12].

I understand Judge Barnett’s concern, although I would note that only two petition challenges went to the court this year, and only the well-funded corporate challenge from the payday lenders had the resources to throw that much spaghetti at the wall. The Secretary of State already gets to certify statewide initiative and referendum petitions using a random sample rather than rigorously reviewing every signature. The law does not allow challengers to base their challenge on extrapolation from their own random sample: they have to flag enough signatures to sink the petition. At that point, the Secretary of State and the court should be obliged to respond to the full evidence presented by the challengers.

Of course, we could relieve Judge Barnett’s fears of a system swamped by multiple challenges by adopting an electronic petitioning system that would automatically validate every signature as it is collected.

9 Comments

  1. Mark Winegar 2016-08-12 09:49

    Thank you Judge Mark Barnett for standing up against the dirty tricks of out-of-state interests trying to impose their will upon the good people of South Dakota.

  2. W R Old Guy 2016-08-12 11:38

    Apparently this is not newsworthy to the Rapid City Journal. There is no mention of it in today’s edition.

  3. leslie 2016-08-12 22:03

    meanwhile I can’t believe AG Jackley’s 100 lawyers paid by the state can’t find law to support prevention of loan sharking industyrial manipulation and representation in SD’s law-making process. this subterfuge calling the industry measure 18% interest unless otherwise agreed, versus dilution of the intent of the opposition’s 36% measure is certainly going to fool a majority of voters into misunderstanding what they are voting for. pathetic. rogue GOP capitalism at its worst.

  4. Moses11 2016-08-14 17:20

    Marty cant even find the eb 5 guys.

  5. barry freed 2016-08-15 08:12

    Two Identical IM challenges, one Judge, two decisions 180 degrees opposite of each other.

  6. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-08-15 09:57

    Um, no, Barry, not really. On IM 21, the challengers failed to provide evidence that the Secretary of State erred in counting signatures. On would-have-been IM 24, the petitioners failed to provide evidence that the Secretary of State erred in counting signatures. The outcomes were opposite because the Secretary’s action was opposite—validating one petition for the ballot, rejecting the other—but in both cases, the plaintiffs failed to place before the judge enough evidence to justify overturning the SOS action.

  7. barry freed 2016-08-16 08:20

    You reported that the Judge did not look at the 21 challenger’s evidence, deciding after the SOS presented. Now you say 21 proponents didn’t have enough evidence, which is it?

    The issues he found with 24 are EXACTLY the same as 21.

    How did the Secretary or Judge find, for example, “Rapid” was acceptable for “Rapid City” on one IM , but not the other?

  8. barry freed 2016-08-16 08:21

    24, whatever.

  9. jerry 2016-08-18 09:32

    Payday loans and all subprime loans are a clear and present reminder of what happened to our economy in 2008. The entire presidency of Obama was shoveling the crap that Wall Street and its minions dealt us. Here we are again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s This is about as good of an explanation on how payday lenders all corrupt the system with the poor. Here is another way to fight the fight along with your vote http://stoppaydaypredators.org/CAF/

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