Benjamin Case is a sociologist who studies politics and social change. He is a postdoctoral research scholar at Arizona State University’s Center for Work and Democracy. Case is interested in ballot measures; he sees South Dakota’s Amendment C, the Legislatively conceived proposal on Tuesday’s ballot to raise the vote threshold for passing fiscal ballot measures to 60%, as an attack on voter rights. The following is Case’s argument against Amendment C.
Ballot initiatives are South Dakotans’ strongest protection from government overreach. They are the only tool that voters can use to bypass representatives and make policy choices themselves. While many laws are written and decided by politicians and party bosses behind closed doors, ballot initiatives allow people to directly decide the rules they want to live by. Advocates of Amendment C are trying to take this right away.
I am a sociologist at Arizona State University studying the fight over ballot initiatives. Twenty-four states have citizen-initiated ballots in their laws or constitutions, and many of them are currently seeing the same types of attacks as South Dakotans. When everyday people are allowed to vote on laws, research shows they tend to make different choices than elected representatives make for them. For state representatives who are used to making the laws for everyone else, voter choice represents a threat.
If Amendment C passes, future ballot initiatives that are determined to impose or increase taxes or fees or cost the state $10 million will require a 60 percent supermajority to pass. But the devil is in the details – or in this case, the people who decide the details. It would be up to the secretary of state and the legislature to determine if an initiative would cost taxpayers and how much the state would have to spend. Because the state has so many operating costs as it is and they are all funded by taxes and fees, it is technically possible to claim that anything qualifies. In practice, Amendment C would allow the state government to raise the winning threshold for any ballot initiative.
If passed, there is every reason to believe that Amendment C will be used cynically. The process to pass it already is. Advocates are putting a constitutional amendment on a Republican primary ballot – a blatant attempt to limit voters to those who they believe are most likely to vote “yes.” And they are requiring a threshold of 50 percent plus one to pass a ballot that will require future ballots to get 60 percent plus one. Essentially, Republican state representatives are trying to trick Republican South Dakotans into voting away everyone’s rights, leaving all government decision-making in the hands of politicians.
Trust in the government has been severely weakened in recent years, and for good reason. Neither party has delivered for working people. Partisan politics have become more about stoking anger and fear than enacting meaningful policies that improve everyday people’s lives. The beauty of ballot initiatives is that they take away the performance and promises of parties and candidates and instead simply ask voters if they want a certain policy or not. The only people who should oppose such direct policy-making in principle are those who have an agenda that is different from the people’s.
South Dakota was the first state in the US to institute ballot initiatives in 1898. Since then, citizens have used them sparingly but effectively to enact laws their representatives refused to, and strike down laws that legislators created which the people felt were unjust. In recent years, ballot initiatives have been used to pass policies such as 2014’s indexed minimum wage increase. When state representatives tried to roll that vote back and allow child workers to be paid less than minimum wage, South Dakotans used a veto referendum to call another statewide vote and defeat the legislature’s attempt to overrule the will of the people.
Ballot initiatives are not left or right; they represent popular choice. They put questions to voters and let the people decide. And if 50 percent plus one is good enough to elect a state representative to go and create laws in Pierre, it should be good enough to pass a ballot initiative for everyone else. It is by no means a perfect system, and much could be done to make the initiative process more accessible, but it is the only mechanism we currently have for people to pass laws without politicians. A vote against Amendment C is a vote to keep the citizens’ right to ballot initiatives.
The fact that this is put on primary ballot, as the author pointed out, is abhorrent. As a people, we are better than this. We are better than the lack of transparency and lopsided face we’ve been given.
This blatant disrespect of the voter by the legislature should be obvious to everyone by now. Not only on this issue – but marijuana, the minimum wage and other issues as well. They are, of course, trying to block a future medicaid expansion vote too.
Please tell your friends that they must get to the polls on Tuesday. Even if there is not much else to vote on. This is VERY IMPORTANT.
“As a people, we are better than this.”
It should be obvious by now that “as a people” we are not better than this.
“As a people” we elected Bill Janklow governor several times. “As a people” we elected Kristi Noem to congress over Stephanie Herseth, fercrissakes. “As a people” we are about to put her back into the governor’s chair.
“As a people” we would elect a potato if it ran as a Republican.
What Bob said…
I don’t suppose we even get a choice of butter or sour cream on the spud…too many carbs anyway…and now back to Tucker for more red-face antics and the ‘news’…
For candidate spuds which would you prefer…. Kennebec, Red Viking, Yukon Gold or Burbank Russet? All from certified seed and all happily growing in my garden.
Mr. Mike, who is from Iowa of course, is a fancy pants when it comes to spuds, but I’m sure he knows his taters as well as anybody.
grudznick loves all sorts of taters if they come with gravy. I don’t much care what breed of tater it is.
The same is true of the politicians I like.
Kennebec ~ The flesh is soft ivory, firm, and starchy with minimal water content. Kennebec potatoes offer a rich, earthy, and notably nutty flavor.
After Republicans said NO to the people’s choices of an ethics commission for politicians and legalized weed it seems many more are paying attention to ballot choices.
Keep away from my garden, Grudzilla. You are allegedly the human form of blight which is not good for taters and tomatoes and of which my garden doesn’t happen to have any.
South Dakota’s governor is a reactionary cracker. Infrastructure is crumbling. A tiny fraction of eligible voters even bother. Industrial agriculture is smothering wildlife habitat. Churches are girding for gun violence. Meth has replaced alcohol as the state’s drug of choice. Pierre’s culture of corruption and attacks on kids have ended open government. Native wildlife are being exterminated to make way for disease-ridden domestic livestock and exotic fowl. Jails far outnumber colleges. Bankers continue to enslave landowners and the state’s medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny.
Thank goodness it appears that Amendment C is going down like Bush’s, read my lips, no new taxes.
Schoenbeck, et al, acted like a box of Kampeska rocks ignoring the majority will – both with interfering with the SD initiative process, AND with re-niggiing on the sunset provision of the “temporary” sales tax increase. It’s long past the time to send Schoenbeck to legislative assisted living along with his nonsense of minority rule.
C is gone !!!!
Democracy by the people, our 1898 Law passed by Progressive Governor, stands!
Progressive Party gave us Initiative and Referendum in 1898, it can give us much more,
many good things in 2024 and beyond !!!
Are you out there, Mr. H? Are you writing bloggings on the elections?
Of note, and I am sure you will have a blogging but it will not feature the winner, Mr. Novstrup the elder, it will be an NDS focused blogging. So let me start here by being the first to congratulate Mr. Novstrup, the elder, and state that grudznick, for one, is glad his haircut is back in the legislatures without a doubt.
Grudz–yes, Moe Howard is back….now the Party needs to add a Larry and Curly Joe..any nominations??? Notice you were wrong on District 30 and the incredible Julie is back, like a bad rash, in 35.
OOOPS…sorry Grudz, pulled the trigger too soon…Goodwin has taken a 60 vote lead over the incredible Julie with about 15% of the vote yet to be counted…maybe I shouldn’t have doubted the great Republican Diviner of the Future.