Senate Bill 12 eased through Senate State Affairs Friday. One of ten Initiative and Referendum Task Force proposals placed in the Legislative hopper, SB 12 removes the requirement that initiative petitioners print the full text of their measure on their petitions and instead requires that they “make available” to each signer the full text on a separate form.
When I first read the bill, I was concerned that SB 12 could require petitioners to print and carry a lot more papers, increasing cost and hassle of circulating. However, nothing in Friday’s brief committee testimony (starting at 30:45) suggested that will be a problem. Dakota Rural Action’s Rebecca Terk testified in full support of SB 12, and she’s been dogging the bad bills from the I&R task force (like HB 1004, HB 1005, and HB 1006, against all of which Terk testified against on January 12, and SB 11, against which she testified Friday right before backing SB 12). If Terk says SB 12 is good for the petition process, I’ll support her position.
Senator Reynold Nesiba (D-15/Sioux Falls), the task force member sponsoring SB 12, impressed the committee by unfurling what was likely John Dale’s unsuccessful “beach blanket” petition, about 10,000 words, plus 85 signature lines, crammed onto one side of a 32″x42″ sheet of paper. Nesiba’s fellow task forcer Senator Jim Bolin (R-16/Canton) said the giant piece of paper could persuade any opponents of the bill to change their minds and eliminate what he said looked like “a mockery of the process.”
SB 12 moots my concern about HB 1004, which would allow the Board of Elections to define the font and paper size for initiative petitions. If we had to continue printing the full text of our initiative proposals on our petitions, font and paper specifications would effectively limit the length of ballot measures, against which I raise all sorts of political and constitutional resistance. Statute imposes no limits on the separate form to which SB 12 would move the initiative text—most importantly, unlike petitions, no statute specifies that the circulator’s form must be a single sheet of paper. SB 12 would allow circulators to carry lengthy initiative text in booklet form, perhaps on ten sheets stapled together and printed in nice 12- or 14-point font. I’d even suggest that we could interpret “form” to mean a webpage or PDF file that we could show signers on our tablets. Folks who want a copy of their own could get it from a link we’d hand out on a card.
SB 12 passed Senate State Affairs 6–1 Friday, with Senator Ryan Maher (R-28/Isabel). HB 1004 cleared the House Tuesday 60–6 and heads to Senate State Affairs (date not yet assigned).
All of this would be made moot if they outlaw measures initiated in their entirety. There are probably some insidiously approaches to sell that to the same electorate that was hoodwinked into voting for the IM # 22. I expect there are some fellows working on that right now to drop a law bill by the end of the week.
You really don’t trust people, do you, Grudz?
Which fellows are doing that anti-democratic work?
I have no knowledge of the first hand about which fellows, but I have suspicions. We will need to see if they roll those law bills out before the deadlines end.
The legislatures usually save their last few limited bills for special ones they really want to be a feather in their hats. It will be interesting if this idea floats out as one of those or as one of the hordes in the nearly limitless filing rules they are bound by now.
And SB 12–arguably the most useful idea to come out of the Task Force—died on the Senate floor yesterday. If you were listening, you might have heard the sudden chaos of folks switching their votes during the roll call. What a mess. And SB 11, which deserves serious examination, passed with nary a peep.
HB 1006 is crossing over tomorrow, so we’ll be taking another whack at it in Senate State Affairs. Rep. Bartling brought a reasonable amendment on the House floor; it went nowhere.
Wait a minute—so the item that would make petitioning easier fails (and failed a vote to reconsider this afternoon)? SB 12 is the only thing that made HB 1004 tolerable; now we’re back to HB 1004 effecting a de facto limit on the length of initiatives. Unacceptable!