BiPartisan Dakotans, a Rapid City PAC run by Jody Severson and Jeff Masten, has set up a website to counter the Republican Legislature’s war on ballot measures. DontSilenceUs.org invites South Dakotans to raise heck with their legislators about House Joint Resolution 1007 and House Joint Resolution 1008. HJR 1007 would repeal our right to put constitutional amendments to a vote by petition. HJR 1008 would keep that right but subject the amendments we pass to Legislative veto.
BiPartisan Dakotans contends that South Dakota voters have used their power to initiate amendments with responsible restraint:
South Dakotans do their homework. Since 1972, only 17 citizen-initiated constitutional amendments have been on the ballot, and only 7 passed. During that same time period, the South Dakota State Legislature placed 71 constitutional amendments on the ballot – 40 of which passed.
What About Out-of-State Interests?
We’ve shown outside interests that we don’t care for their meddling. Rare is it that an externally-imposed measure breaks through, because we band together and defeat them. Jail for Judges? Nope. The Gag Law? Uh-uh. Unlimited interest rates? Forget about it.
On the other hand, South Dakotans have used initiative to fight invasion. Without citizens standing together, we would be storing Denver’s garbage and the nation’s nuclear waste [BiPartisan Dakotans PAC, DontSilenceUs.org, retrieved 2018.02.19].
House State Affairs will hear HJR 1007 and HJR 1008 on Wednesday morning, 7:45, in Room 414 in the Capitol. Preceding those two agenda items will be HJR 1006, the single-subject restriction on constitutional amendments. All of these unnecessary restrictions on voter rights are constitutional amendments, so if passed by the Legislature, they would all appear on our November ballot. We would get our chance then to kill these bad amendments, but it would be a lot quicker and easier if we could just kill them in committee on Wednesday. Click the DontSilenceUs.org contact form to tell your legislators to Vote NO on HJR 1007 and HJR 1008 (and mention that voting no on HJR 1006 and every other measure touching on initiative and referendum would be good, too!).
Signed and sent
It’s simply stunning how deeply the SDGOP dislikes voters’ voices.
Have any of you visited the SilenceYouMorons.org website yet? They have much better points.
I’d like to see the GOP put their names to a website like that. They would at least be honest about their attitude toward us commoners… the ones who elect them and pay their salaries.