Secretary of State Steve Barnett is whining about how hard it is to respect the will of the people. Apparently his office had to spend a week processing (not even validating yet, just stamping and copying) the medical marijuana initiative petition submitted on November 4:
The office just went through its latest instance of what happens when signatures are collected on irregular-sized petition sheets.
Five different employees in the state office spent an estimated 40 hours having to first hand-stamp each of the 2,192 signature sheets for a medical-marijuana initiative and then making a computer copy of each page.
…Barnett described the medical-marijuana petition sheets as “a little bit odd-sized.”
“It’s a little wider than a standard eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet. So we had to hand-stamp all of the sheets, over twenty-one-hundred of them, and then hand-copy them into our scanner,” Barnett said [Bob Mercer, “S.D. Secretary of State Staff Spent a Work-Week Logging Medical Marijuana Petition into System,” KELO-TV, 2019.11.20].
Golly: far more than five employees spend far more than one work-week handling candidate petitions, preparing primary and general election ballots, and ensuring election security—do we gripe about that, or do we accept that democracy requires a little effort?
Secretary Barnett seems to be signaling his desire to revisit the issue of ballot question petition size. In 2018, amidst a cornucopia of anti-democracy measures, the Legislature passed House Bill 1004, authorizing the State Board of Elections, which the Secretary of State chairs, to restrict the paper and font size used for petitions. 2018 HB 1004 specially amended ballot question petitions statutes to make absolutely clear the Legislature’s intent to further hamper the voters’ ability to initiate laws and constitutional amendments and refer the Legislature’s bills to a public vote.
I argued at the time (and maintain now!) that such size restrictions unconstitutionally limit South Dakotans’ rights to free speech and to propose measures for the ballot. I don’t know if then-Secretary of State Shantel Krebs heard me, but the only rule she proposed under that new statute was a width restriction of eleven inches. Even that was too much for the Board of Elections, and this year’s petitions circulated without any restriction on paper or font size.
As a ballot question sponsor who designed and circulated a petition that was an 11×17 sheet folded in half (hamburger, not hot dog), I offer the Secretary of State the same assurance Einstein offered a little girl about her mathematics homework: Do not worry about your difficulties in processing petitions. I can assure you mine are still greater.
Ballot questions sponsors have more practical incentive to keep their petitions on normal-sized paper with legible font than our chief election officer does. Printing petitions on odd-sized paper complicates getting fresh petition sheets in the hands of volunteers. Weird paper sizes and folds complicate making copies of the petitions for our records.
But ballot question sponsors may want to use larger sheets of paper to make more room for bigger fonts that signers can more easily read. If they want to amend more than even a few lines of statute, or if they want to enact a comprehensive plan that requires multiple steps and details, they may need to bump up from letter or legal to larger paper sizes. We recognize that larger paper will complicate circulating the petition, but we also recognize that putting the details on larger sheets of paper may serve the voters well. If ballot question sponsors are willing to do the extra work of preparing, printing, and processing all of those big petition sheets, the Secretary of State should be willing to do a little extra work, too.
Our freedom to petition should not be restricted by any government official’s choice of machine to process our petitions. The Secretary of State has all the machines necessary to handle odd-sized petitions: those machines are his people, their watchful eyes, and their steady hands.
If Secretary of State Barnett finds paperwork a pain, he (a) ran for the wrong job, and (b) is complaining about the wrong thing. He wouldn’t have a problem with paper size if he didn’t have to handle any papers at all. We could make life easier for Secretary Barnett, for petition sponsors, for petition circulators, and for all interested voters by ditching paper and adopting electronic petitions. Electronic petitions would save printing costs, allow petitioners to involve volunteers and voters around the state almost instantly, and make counting and validating signatures a snap. We’d get more reliable petitions and signature counts with less time and effort from all parties involved.
Forget quibbling about paper width, Secretary Barnett! Get with the 21st century and get the Board of Elections to approve electronic petitions! If you won’t, then as your next Secretary of State, I will!
Do I think petitions should be mandated to be a certain size? No. Do I think sponsors should try to accommodate the SOS if at all possible? Yes. I expect the SOS to do his job in any case, but why make his job unnecessarily difficult?
I’ve never thought large bills serve the public well, whether proposed by legislators or by an initiative sponsor. I realize there are some exceptions to this, but most bills and initiatives should be “simple.”
grudznick feels that young Mr. B needs to suck it up, like Mr. H does, and also like Mr. H hates the whining of people who picked a job and then whine about it *cough* teachers *cough*.
In this case, the intentionally annoying of the State Secretary by the purveyors of the Demon Weed may well come back to haunt them. When the legislatures find out about all the extra work and wasted taxpayer dollars they are likely to choke down even tighter on the neck of these mongers of measures initiated.
Barnett sure puts a lot of effort into complaining about his job. You’d think he was stuck flipping burgers or something.
I agree: the simpler the initiative the better. But my failed initiative this year is an example of how that problem regulates itself. The longer the initiative, the more complicated the language, the bigger the visual impression it makes on paper, the less likely people are to sign and circulate, and the less likely the Secretary of State will ever have to process it. The exception is for petitions like medical marijuana petition, which can be encapsulated in one easy phrase or one icon and which people are raring to sign without bothering to read any details.
Next year is 2020 A.D. Why are we still passing petitions the same way they did before electricity was harnessed? The voter informaton portal is able to instantly verify voter registration. Why can’t we extend that technology to online petitions?
Get with the 21st century, Cory and Gideon say. So, let’s do it then. My phone won’t do anything except tell you what time it is until it looks at my face and determines it’s me trying to use it. It can easily tell a Sec. of State if I’m registered, where I live, and if I have any restrictions on my voting privilege.
-Put petitions on a website where voters can electronically sign on the digital line.
-Use the money these petition certifiers are paid, to broadcast Public Service Announcements on all common forms of media, asking people to browse the list of referendums and become a participant in direct democracy.
– On the public announcements give a rotating list of the petitions people can approve (along with a short synopsis) which will then appear on their electronic ballots, during voting month.
Gideon makes a good point. It might be a good idea to consider whether and how switching from paper petitions to electronic petitions might simplify the SOS’s work and make petitioning more accurate. Money would be saved, and a lot of controversy would be staunched. The text of the petition could be on the computer. I would argue against the AG’s forced speech statement, but you could also have that on-line. Electronic petition signing would also do away with concerns about “out-of-state” and/or paid circulators.
I’m kind of an old fogey. I like hardcopy. I like talking to people about the issues and getting them involved, even if their involvement just extends to signing their name on a petition. I don’t really trust on-line banking and all the newfangled way we live our lives. But I think Gideon’s idea is the future. Why not find a way to move toward it?
Don. I used to be like you. Wary of online banking. I changed. Now, I do banking in China. They have more security than American banks do. *I pay all my monthly bills on my Chinese credit card then pay the credit card from my American debit card. The Chinese bank gives me 5% cash back on all purchases. Thus, I’ve cut my monthly bills by five percent.
Donald, I wouldn’t shut down paper petitions: folks who prefer hard copy could use it. They could even do both.
But I’ll note that electronic petitions would not stop sponsors and circulators from going out to talk to people. I can field questions and collect signatures on the street as easily with an iPad in my hand as with a big clipboard.
I share Don’s queasiness about some technology—I still want paper ballots counted by hand in every election—but getting with the 21st century would give us a faster, more accessible petition process with greater quality control.
Cory, I share your embrace of paper ballots. There is a way for electronic voting devices to also produce a paper record. But, to address the questionable complaint by Republicans that ballots are to “cluttered” by unnecessary petitions and it takes too long to vote, I suggest the mail-in ballot. They save money and increase informed voter participation. e.g. A voter can sit down with their ballot at a moment when they have plenty of time, research candidates and issues on the internet, and interact with friends and family members as to what they believe is right or wrong.
Mr. Pay, I won’t even use those fancy, one-eyed machines outside of banks to get money because I don’t think they’re trustworthy and also because they watch me. grudznick likes to go inside and see the young ladies who pull the cash out of the drawers with their own real hands.
Grudz and Porter,
I use the ATMs. It took me 20 years to get over my distrust of them. My daughter was telling me about some outfit she uses in China where the money is all electrons now. No money changes hands. She thinks the small box banks are all going to close in a matter of 5 years, and it will all be on-line. The change has been very rapid in China, where just ten years ago she had to take a big pile of Chinese bills over to Tsinghua University to pay her tuition.
You are right Cory. These crony Republicans never give up their scurrilous hold on state-wide political power. The hell with Democracy.
What are the chances that online petitions can be hacked, say at the minute they need to be turned in? You see for yourself how a certain party in red loathes electronic security, especially if it helps foreign nations get wingnuts elected.
Mike, I’d say the chances are the same that someone might hack my paper petitions by robbing my house, throwing coffee on my clipboard on the street, or running me off the road on the way to Pierre. But there’s less threat of technical hacking than there is of on-the-street blocking and misinformation campaigns by payday lenders and Republicans.
With electronic petitions, there might not be a single submission event. If signatures go straight to the SOS for instant verification, we could easily maintain a running file. Right now, I have to keep signed, notarized petition sheets secure until the final submission. Under a running electronic system, the first signature could be filed and validated on day one, more safely registered than if I have to keep it on a sheet that could blow away at the fair before I get it all filled out.