After hearing Aberdeen legislators bow and scrape to local lobbyist Julie Johnson and vow they’ll vote for all the bills seeking to fund crackerbarrel host Northern State University’s big capital projects, Sharon Stroschien sought an audience for her concerns about the Republican Legislature’s attack on initiative and referendum.
Stroschien, who frequently volunteers to circulate ballot question petitions, focused her concern on House Bill 1177, one of seventeen Legislative proposals that mostly make it harder for South Dakotans to circulate and vote on initiatives and referenda. HB 1177 complicates petitioning by requiring ballot measure committees to print customized forms for each circulator to hand to each signer. Those forms would have to include the circulator’s contact information and would have to be approved by the Secretary of State.
Take a moment to think about how that works: right now, if Sharon recruits a volunteer to circulate a petition, she can hand that eager volunteer a couple petition sheets, a handful of handouts with the A.G.’s explanation and sponsor contact info, and the volunteer can go to work right there. Under HB 1177, Sharon would have to print up a new form with that circulator’s contact info, send it to the Secretary of State, wait for the Secretary’s okee-dokee, then print off that stack of custom handouts for that now-long-delayed volunteer.
House State Affairs made HB 1177 a little better Friday, removing residential address from the printed information circulators must provide. And prime sponsor Rep. Drew Dennert (R-3/Aberdeen) said he’s willing to entertain a further amendment to apply HB 1177 only to paid circulators.
But HB 1177 still creates unnecessary bureaucracy that hinders the initiative and referendum process. If the real concern—cited by Dennert and Rep. Lana Greenfield (R-2/Doland)—is stopping out-of-state circulators, we already have laws prohibiting their intrusion on our democratic process; all we need are cops, prosecutors, and a Secretary of State to enforce that statute. And statute freshly imposed this election cycle already requires circulators to hand out contact information for the ballot questions sponsors, who should be able to provide signers with any information they need to decide whether they should support the petition drive or not. HB 1177 is overkill… which is exactly what Dennert and Greenfield’s party is trying to do to to initiative and referendum.
Yes, that bill is not needed, and a lot of the present bureaucracy should go as well. But, I also don’t like the idea that you can find a volunteer circulator, and, without any training, that person is gathering signatures immediately. I prefer trained circulators.
The circulator is the mot important person in the process and the first defense against fraud. If there is any requirement, it should be for circulator training. I don’t think anyone goes into the process wanting to commit fraud. They just don’t know all the important steps that need to be done. Leaving petitions to sign without a circulator present constitutes fraud. By far the worst violators of the rules are candidates and their volunteers. I have suggested a 1-2 hour web-training video be placed on the SOS website. In the past, I insisted that any new circulator go with me for their first time so that I could train them properly. I’m sure I was just anal retentive about this, but we always had very clean petitions.
Donald, I’m with you for clean petitions. Sharon is, too—I’m sure she makes sure every volunteer she recruits knows how to do petitions right.
Alas, no bill in the hopper is talking about training circulators. That idea might make the petition process and ballot measures stronger, and that’s anathema to the Republican agenda.