Drunk idiots are good for something. A drunk driver whose blood test showed a 0.289% blood alcohol content may have helped me make the case for electronic petitions.
Kelso Bowers pulled out of Bob’s Lounge in Pierre one summer night in 2016 and swerved all over Dakota Avenue and the Missouri River Bridge. Pierre cop Lee Coopersmith pulled Bowers over and smelled hooch. With “glassy, bloodshot eyes” and slurred speech, Bowers refused field sobriety tests, so Officer Coopersmith hauled Bowers to jail and called a judge to authorize a blood test:
Officer Coppersmith drafted an electronic affidavit for a search warrant seeking to obtain a blood sample from Bowers. He attached his electronic signature to the affidavit, emailed it to a Sixth Judicial Circuit magistrate judge, and placed a phone call to the judge. Over the phone, the judge instructed Officer Coppersmith to swear under oath that the contents of the affidavit were true and correct. The judge electronically signed the jurat on the affidavit, affirming that the affidavit had been “subscribed and sworn to” before the magistrate. The magistrate judge then signed the search warrant and emailed the affidavit and warrant back to Officer Coppersmith. After receiving the warrant, a medical professional drew a blood sample from Bowers. The sample was later transported to the State Health Lab, which found Bowers’s blood alcohol content to be 0.289% [Justice Steven Jensen, ruling, South Dakota v. Kelso Bowers, 2018.06.27, p. 2].
Bowers doesn’t deny the results of that damning blood test. He argued instead that Officer Coopersmith’s affidavit and warrant were bogus because Coopersmith electronically signed the affidavit outside the physical presence of the judge. The state pointed out that we have statute (SDCL 23A-35-4.2) explicitly allowing exactly this sort of electronic back and forth for affidavits and warrants, and the Supreme Court said yeah, state’s right, shut up and take your lumps, Mr. Bowers.
If South Dakota can allow police and judges to use electronic signatures to take away citizens’ basic rights—in this case, to search and seize bodily fluids—then we should certainly be able to allow citizens to use electronic signatures to exercise our basic rights to petition the government and place candidates and laws on the ballot. The SD v. Bowers ruling does note that statute requires notaries public to physically witness signatures while making no similar requirement of judicial officers administering oaths. However, applying that distinction to the notarized oaths required on nominating petitions and ballot question petitions raises a question of statutory technicality, not constitutional principle.
Electronic affidavits and signatures make law enforcement more efficient. We should use electronic petitions to make citizen participation in democracy more efficient.
E-pets (electronic petitions) are an excellent way for SoDak to get it’s feet wet, help initiate the timid with results based debate and move away from the fear of outsiders, which has crippled the progress and potential of the state.
~ Internet petition signing may involve less risk than Internet voting, largely because a signer’s anonymity need not be preserved and officials could recheck a sample of signatures by contacting voters directly. Moreover, the automated decryption and checking process for digital signatures may prove superior to today’s manual methods for verifying handwritten signatures.
https://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0109/0109049.pdf
The judge electronically signed the jurat on the affidavit, affirming that the affidavit had been “subscribed and sworn to” before the magistrate.
Before the magistrate takes on entirely new meaning, but that is progress, I suppose.
Да, commrad, мне нравится идея любого электронного и веб-сайта.
El Rayo X, my electronic petition plan will come with a rider calling for seizing Ellsworth Air Force Base and launching a nuclear strike on the Russians the morning that we can begin circulating petitions. No ground strikes; just high atmospheric bursts to EMP all Russian computers and put their hackers out of business for a few months. ;-)
All those people at Dakota State that look, act and speak like they’re “not from around here” are the Russian hackers you speak of. *Stevie Sibson told me so
Perhaps some of that fresh internet tax money could fund this very modern advancement in democracy.
El Rayo X, my electronic petition plan will come with a rider calling
Jackley will soon be out of a job. He could be that rider for you.
I am currently organizing a project called Paperless Petitions. The intent is to have a state government establish a website for state and local ballot or proposed measure petitions. The states that I have looked at have statutes that explain, ‘if a law requires an action to be done in writing, then it can also be done electronically.’
http://www.paperlesspetitions.com