While we wait for Secretary of State Steve Barnett to crank out his sampling spreadsheet and figure out if enough registered voters have signed petitions to place Medicaid expansion and marijuana legalization initiatives on the November ballot, we can focus our attention on the big ballot measure on our June ballot, Amendment C, the Republican measure subjecting ballot measures to minority rule. Our neighbors at South Dakotans for Fair Elections crank up the computer and produce this video saying Amendment C’s 60%-vote requirement to pass taxing and spending ballot measures shreds our constitutional principles of majority rule:
Protect majority rule and the initiative process from Republicans who would impose their ideological bias on our constitutional rights: get out today and Vote NO on C!
They know this is about marijuana. We know they they know this about marijuana. They know the weknow they know this is about marijuana.
And yet we are still forced to participate in this fiction.
dicta – it’s about the sticky icky, but it’s also about other things that people want that the sycophants in pierre don’t want us to have.
don’t worry, though. it would take some jurisprudential gymnastics for our courts to let amendment c stand after it passes, so i expect it to be thrown out unceremoniously. they will try again, but not until after that sweet sweet cannabis is legal.
This is still the only solution to SD congress critters avoidance of their truly representational duty.
Consent of the Governed Act:
“Any initiated act or Constitutional Amendment passed by a direct vote of the people, shall not be nullified or altered or amended in any way by any means other to a direct vote of the people.”
Get it on a ballot.
Richard Schriever; You are quite right “on’. Republicans seem to want to call the opposition party (Democrats) ” elite’ snobs etc but in our “red’ state, if the “common folk’ enact a really hard-fought-for law of their own they’ve been “bamboozled”, or worse, by out-of-state moneys.
Along comes “Amendment C”-dreamed-up by elite, long term legislative leaders, and backed SOLEY by out of state KOCH Bros $$$$ (Committee for Progress) to guarantee that the minority
vote will prevail and stop this nonsense of the ‘people’ voting their will into state laws. The Republican ‘mindset’ seems to be “The people of SD pay US to think and enact laws for them”!!!
Republicans have never cared about majority rule, they never will.
Mark, your concise comment really strikes the correct chord. Amendment C is a reflection of our legislature itself that requires a super-majority to pass tax increases (although simple majority to reduce taxes). The Republican bumper sticker turned political philosophy of “no new taxes” has transcended policy into process. In all, a minority can dictate to the majority how things will be when it comes to restricting taxation and revenues.
I would also argue that the whole “single-subject” requirement is also a tool for the minority to hold sway over the majority because it makes instituting any new tax structure that replaces or repeals an old one almost impossible to accomplish.