David Wegner proves his commitment to democracy by circulating the People Power Petitions. He also takes time to tell us about his commitment to restoring the people’s voice in politics with this letter to the editor in today’s edition of that Sioux Falls paper urging all South Dakota registered voters to sign our initiative and referendum petitions:
First Amendment rights are no longer assured in South Dakota. Nearly gone is our right to “petition government for redress of grievances.” State law now conflicts with the 1787 Bill of Rights. Our state legislature has, for some years, had a problem with grass-roots initiated measures. During the last couple years, they’ve changed South Dakota law to make the process more complicated. Reduced time frames for gathering signature have been imposed. Newly required circulator tasks and identification are insulting to many. Such requirements undermine people’s rights to peaceably assemble and engage with one another.
Two petitions are being circulated for the purpose of restoring reasonable rules to the process. Both measures must obtain over 17,000 valid signatures to qualify for the 2020 ballot. One measure revises existing state law by striking words-sentences-paragraphs, then adding words-sentences-paragraphs to existing state law. The second is a referendum seeking to nullify a truly obnoxious 2019 law called HB-1094.
Do you remember IM22? It was entitled “The South Dakota Accountability and Anti-Corruption Act.” It was a very thorough piece of work. Voters passed it in 2016 — the legislature killed it in 2017. Other initiatives came along. Payday loan rates got capped. In these and other cases, citizens accomplished what seemed unlikely to happen in Pierre.
The U.S. Constitution strongly emphasizes citizen participation in government (referred to as the Jacques Rousseau – Machiavelli effects). South Dakota’s voters need to give state government a push in that direction by signing these two petitions [David Wegner, letter to the editor, that Sioux Falls paper, 2019.05.19].
Wegner tells me he’s spreading that message to lots of other dailies and weeklies around the state. I’m immensely grateful to him for speaking up, not just for our People Power Petitions, but for the broader rights of all South Dakotans to petition and put to a vote the laws under which they live.
But while good words and deeds like David’s may tempt me to call him a rock star of democracy, Wegner would prefer to be called a rock fan of democracy, one who, instead of giving out his autograph, eagerly seeks the autographs of the true stars of democracy—every decent citizen on the street.
3 Cheers for David Wegner. Lots of cheers for Cory standing up for South Dakotans. It’s a good letter by Wegner and a good column concluding paragraph by Heidelberger.