As the biggest petition nerd in South Dakota, I’m embarrassed not to have noticed sooner the third initiative proposal posted to the Secretary of State’s 2022 ballot question webpage. The initial draft of this proposed constitutional amendment is puzzling, and the Legislative Research Council comments, dated November 6 and received by the Secretary of State on November 9, only make it harder to read.
Here’s how the LRC marked up the original draft it received from one Arthur Taylor of Winnebago, Nebraska:
The amendment proposes a completely new, fourth section under Article 23 of the South Dakota Constitution, the article dealing with constitutional amendments and revisions. It would suspend two of the rules on initiated amendments imposed by Article 23 Section 1: the requirement that initiated amendment petitions be submitted one year before the election and the nefarious single-subject rule. The suspension of those two rules would take place only if the Presidential election is not resolved within seven days of the election. The suspension would last for three years. During that time, any initiated amendment petitions submitted and validated by the Secretary of State would be submitted to the voters in a special election within sixty days.
Now I’m actually leaving some things out of the amendment’s original language, because, as written, the original language doesn’t make sense. Both the original language and the LRC’s revision seem to say that “Such petitions” would go to a special election vote within sixty days after the disputed Presidential election.
If we’re talking about new initiated amendments, proposed and reviewed and petitioned after the triggering election, that’s impossible. It takes 75 days at an absolute minimum to get a proposed amendment through the review process and approved for circulation. Then you’ll need at least two months to collect the necessary 33,921 signatures. The Secretary of State will need a couple days to certify your petition, then a week to print and distribute ballots. Then the election has to be set to allow 46 days of early voting.
If I read Taylor’s amendment generously for intent, I can only guess that, since it removes the one-year deadline, the amendment seeks to give petitioners more time to collect signatures. But the amendment can’t just strike the one-year deadline and let the placement of a new initiated on the ballot default to the next election, because then someone would submit a petition on November 7, 2022, and demand placement on the ballot the next day. Calling a special election for any proposed initiated amendment within sixty days of the petition’s submission would be kind of cool… but that’s not what the draft of Taylor’s amendment actually says.
I also question why the amendment would forge a connection between a national election dispute and changes to our state constitution.
If the Presidential election is in dispute, changing the South Dakota Constitution won’t resolve that dispute. Neither the one-year deadline nor the single-subject rule for initiated amendments have anything to do with the results of the Presidential election. And looking at the timeline I described above, no new amendment, single-subject or multi-subject, would hit the streets for petition signatures, let alone a statewide ballot for votes, in time to contribute one iota of resolution to a Presidential election that would be finalized by the Electoral College in December or by Congress in January.
I can’t think of any other justifiable philosophical point or policy need to make sense of this amendment. The dispute over this year’s election resides largely in the fantasies of the loser, not in any justiciable fact. Do we really want the denial and egomania of one sore loser to trigger changes in our state constitution?
On policy, what consequences could a disputed Presidential election have that would require our lonely state to make changes to its constitution? A lack of resolution one week after a Presidential election does not mean we’re going to be without a President and need a raft of emergency fixes to the South Dakota Constitution. If the peaceful transition of power in the White House really did break down, the proper response will likely not be to run around South Dakota with petitions; it’s more likely we’ll need to gather a couple million allies of democracy to march on Washington, rally behind the legitimate winner, and carry the loser of the election out of town.
Plus, Taylor is from Nebraska. Why does a guy from Nebraska want to tie South Dakota’s Constitution to the Presidential Election, and do so in such a seemingly tangential fashion?
Maybe I’ve misread Taylor’s amendment—and with all of LRC’s unexplained revisions and the resulting jumble of words and red ink, that’s possible—but I just can’t see what it’s trying to achieve by linking the Presidential election and the South Dakota Constitution.
Who knows Cory but I’m sure its meant to gum up the works. Legislators hate to lose control to mere Democracy, especially Republicans. After all, they know what is best for you.
But gum up the works for whom, Mark? What is this amendment after?
I believe that its evidenced by South Dakota’s recent attempt to neuter the Marijuana passage. Just blur things and settle it in court no matter what the people think.
Marsy’s Law worked for these fascists, so why not.
It is indeed meant to gum up the works and poke a pile of guffaw at the idiots who try to legislate from the cheap seats. The measure numbered 22, the Law of Marsy, and the Amendment lettered “A” are prime examples of the dangers of letting goofballs muck about unfettered. It should all be banished, but it is good entertainment.
What’s interesting is this across the board? Other states?
Some lawyer looking actually at 2024? Too many questions……
Why even amend at all? It’s already difficult enough, I don’t trust this is to make anything easier
Who the bleep is this Arthur Taylor and why the bleepity bleep is some random dude from a neighboring state even permitted to submit bills purporting to change our state constitution?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthurhtaylor
Might be this guy, Laurisa.
Laurisa, I’ve placed a couple calls and am hoping for a reply.
T, that’s a good question about other states. We need to do some hunting on other states’ ballot question pages. This amendment would make more sense if it were part of a coordinated effort across the nation to somehow respond to disputed Presidential elections… but that would be a complicated effort, since only eighteen states allow citizens to amend their constitutions by initiative. Interestingly in the context of the 2020 election and Trump’s war of falsehoods, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are not among them.
Looking for a rational explanation of why a possible Trumpist might seek to change the law in another state reminds me of hunting snipe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe_hunt
Snipe hunting was good, clean fun for almost all involved. Even the Snipoe would agree.
Mark, I have trouble seeing a connection between this Taylor amendment and Noem’s attack on Amendment A. Taylor seeks to suspend the single-subject rule that Noem is using to attack A. Plus, given the LRC’s response date of November 6, it is almost certain that Taylor sent his draft in for review in October.
BCB, if Taylor is a Trumpist and is seeking some way to turn Trump’s lying sore-loserism into a pro-Trump revision of state constitutions… well… that still doesn’t click. Trump will be retired to Mar-a-Lago (assuming Palm Beach County lets him break his 1993 promise not allow Mar-a-Lago to be used as a permanent residence) before Taylor could launch the petition drive to place this question on the 2022 ballot.
I’m really hoping Mr. Taylor responds to my calls so I can find out his intention and explain to him whether that intention is achievable through our initiative process.
Maybe UC Irvine Prof Rick Hasen has alerted us to impending Republican mendaciousness (setting up a 6-3 SCOTUS to overturn precedents like the one that the Supreme Court rejected on a 5-4 vote in the 2015 case, Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.
https://blog.harvardlawreview.org/the-next-threat-to-redistricting-reform/
“Roberts wrote a blistering dissent for the four conservative Justices arguing that only state legislatures can set the rules for drawing district lines. This view would spell the end of independent commissions…that would kill the use of redistricting commissions enacted by initiative for congressional line-drawing….”
A 6-3 SCOTUS is a big problem.
Arthur Taylor appears to be the Chief Financial Officer of the Omaha Tribe of Indians located in Thurston County, Nebraska which, as it happens, is the county that I grew up in oh so many years ago, and in which my brother still resides. I’d never heard of him before, but I haven’t lived there in decades…. what his interest in South Dakota ballot initiatives is somewhat mystifying to me, but I hope Cory gets to the bottom of it!
I tried reaching Arthur Taylor through that tribal office, but no one returned my call. No action appears to have taken place on this proposal since LRC issued comment. There’s no AG statement, and I see no ballot question committee formed by Taylor or anyone else in support of this initiative.
White people worry about borders. Indians, not so much. One thing to understand is that the Ho-Chunk (or as they were called by the Potowatomi, Winnebago) originally inhabited the land that I live on now (the area that is now called Madison, WI). The tribe was uprooted from here and many were forced west, eventually to South Dakota before being settled in northeast Nebraska. So, if Alex Taylor is Ho-Chunk he can probably claim a lot of geographical area as home, since his ancestors may have come from all over the Midwest, and he may actually be from South Dakota.
Excuse me, Arthur Taylor, not Alex Taylor.