Last updated on 2024-01-09
I’m not surprised that the Republicans on Senate State Affairs voted to kill Senator Reynold Nesiba’s Senate Bill 102 and Senate Bill 112. Clarifying possible conflicts between initiatives and legislation and removing redundant paperwork from the ballot question petition process are sensible reforms that protect the people’s mottled right to rule, so South Dakota Republicans are against them. SB 102 and SB 112 didn’t even drew zero opponent testimony—code counsel Wendell Cummings spoke for 102, and conservative advocate Tonchi Weaver spoke for 112—but Senators Ewing, Bolin, Langer, Klumb, and Novstrup didn’t need anyone to tell them what they already knew: protecting people power doesn’t fit the SDGOP agenda, so down go those two bills.
What puzzles me is the same five Republicans’ support (oh, plus Brock Greenfield) for Senate Bill 103, a strange little bill from Senator Jim Stalzer and co-sponsored by an odd assortment of Republicans that seeks keep us from learning how many votes our Presidential candidates get in November.
SB 103 would make it illegal for any public official to make public the number of votes cast for each candidate for President on the general election ballot until after the Electoral College votes in December. SB allows the Secretary of State to release Presidential vote percentages, rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent.
But then SB 103 turns around and suspends that prohibition until enough states agree to the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” a plot to subvert the Constitution by getting states with 270 Electoral College votes to agree to force their electors to vote for the winner of the national popular vote.
Wait—I get it now. It sounds like Senator Stalzer is trying to sabotage the National Popular Vote movement. If New York, California, Texas, and several other states decide to bind their Electors to the winner of the popular vote, they’ll need an accurate count of the popular vote. If South Dakota withholds its numbers, those NPV states can’t make a legal conclusion… at least not if the national vote is much closer than it was in 2016, when Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 2.9 million votes, more than five times the number of registered voters in South Dakota. SB 103’s sabotage would only work if margin between the top two Presidential candidates in the other 49 states combined was smaller than about 370 votes, which is equal 0.1% of the total votes cast for President in South Dakota’s 2016 election and is how close the other states could figure South Dakota’s Presidential vote to be based on the percentages allowed in SB 103.
I appreciate the trickery… but Stalzer needs to do better math. And he and his Republican friends need to learn that there are better ways to solve problems than keeping secrets. Iowa Democrats are catching heck for not posting their full caucus results within 24 hours. Keeping our Presidential election results secret for over a month would probably prompt Minnesota to invade Pierre and give Steve Barnett noogies until he told them the vote count.
Heck, if Republicans really want to protect the Electoral College, they should just wait for other states to enact the National Popular Vote scheme, then sic Jason Ravnsborg on them in court. He’s a big defender of the Electoral College (and, problematically for Stalzer, of states’ rights to set their own rules for their Electors); surely he could convince the Supreme Court that if states want to ditch the Electoral College (and they should!), they need to do it the right way, by amending the Constitution, not by sneaky legal tricks.
Senator Stalzer’s own sneaky legal tricks now bounce to the Senate, which will debate solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
Please, spare us the election fraud, Republicans. This is just a way for Republicans to throw in a whole bunch of fake votes for Der Fuhrer. Who’s going to trust the count for any of the races if they are going to withhold the top of the ticket numbers? Who wrote this bill? Putin?
🙄🤬🙄🤬🙄
Is that even legal? Or is this just another SDGOP bill that will go to court, lose and drain more taxpayer $ to pay the other side’s attorneys? The SDGOP must be the dumbest state lege in the USA.
I’d love to see this bill challenged in court, if it passes. The South Dakota Newspaper Association could be persuaded: their man Dave Bordewyk testified against this secrecy proposal yesterday:
Perhaps one can argue in court that SB 103 undermines confidence in the results of an election called for by the Constitution. Perhaps it can also be challenged as a single state holding public information hostage to prevent other states from exercising their sovereignty… but can we run a states’ rights argument against one state that violates other states’ rights?
How would SD know if a recount had been/should be triggered if the vote count is not known? This seems to give the power to call a too-close-to-call election.
This would be the new slogan: “South Dakota—We Don’t Count.”
“Suspicions?” The only reason to withhold vote totals is to screw with them. Every dictator knows that.
“Suspicions?” Did they see what happened after the Iowa caucuses when the vote was delayed?
“Suspicions” buries the lede. What Bordewyk should have said is that it creates a loophole in open records laws for the purpose of cheating on an election.
What’s to keep other states from “withholding vote totals” on other races where Republicans might win?
Shorter version: “we won, get over it.”
Great! SD will make national news, AGAIN. We just embarrassed ourselves with the youth transgender legislation attempt. Previously, we got a nod for our potty legislation. Now, we don’t want votes revealed like it is some big secret. I mean, how would we have known about the 5 million illegals that voted in the last election, if it were not for “transparency?” (That is sarcasm for GOP members that may be reading.) Good grief, SD, get it together. We didn’t used to be this way.
O, great point about recounts! Stalzer clearly did not do his homework:
Under SDCL 12-21-15, electors or their party leaders who come in second can call for a recount if the margin between them and the winner is no more than “one-fourth of one percent of the total of votes cast for both such groups.” We can’t figure a quarter-percent margin if all we’re given is tenths. Even if we get hundredths, there might be some rounding error. We need the exact vote total to determine whether losers are legally entitled to a recount.
Pass this on to the Senate: The Legislature cannot pass SB 103 as written without fouling recount law. If the Legislature feels Sb 103 is necessary, it must amend the bill to maintain fair recount procedures.
Under 12-21-16, ties trigger an automatic recount. I suppose the SOS could look at the vote totals in secret and publicly declare the recount without reading the actual count out loud, but again, for the candidates and the public to know what’s going on, we really ought to get the exact numbers.
SDGOP spin blogger Pat Powers pretty much copies my argument against SB 103:
Let’s take that as a signal from the GOP establishment that Stalzer’s bill is not long for this world… and that the GOP establishment has trouble thinking of original things to say.
SB 103 does being by saying “unless a recount has been requested,” but that doesn’t cover how we get to a recount, by knowing exactly how many votes separate the loser and the winner.
Due to Stalzer, AD is being mocked once again on social media.
Does the SDGOP think this backwards idiocy is good for tourism or attracting newcomers? 🙄🙄🙄🙄
Guess what: Stalzer appears to have copied his bill from a bill in New Hampshire, HB 1531, which was introduced January 8. The New Hampshire bill gets a little yahoo-age from a conservative commentator at Daily Signal who says, ” Constitutional institutions, especially the Electoral College, are under attack,” blissfully ignoring, of course, that the greatest threat to the Constitution right now is the jerk who got to the White House thanks to the Electoral College subverting the popular will.
We vote for electors, not the candidate. Think of how crazy this is in practice: Would we not want to know who wins an election until after they vote?
And, the alleged interstate compact is likely to need congressional approval as it affects more than the states in the compact.
Further SCOTUS will be deciding whether “faithless electors” can be punished by the states by June.
Stalzer of ALEC’s South Dakota chair holder “fame”. ALEC, the Koch Bros legislative bill mill, and much much more (advocates states rights over federal law-Bears Ears ect) that mfi referred to in another thread. Guns, Bundy, Trump’s budget….