Monae Johnson promised “Greater Transparency in your Secretary of State Office!”
Of course, we knew that promise was a sham back during the campaign when she wouldn’t give open answers to simple questions of fact, like, “Did Joe Biden win the 2020 Presidential election?”
Now South Dakota Searchlight reports Secretary of State Monae Johnson is making it harder to access public records. As reporter Seth Tupper learned when he requested pardon records, the Secretary of State is refusing to accept public records requests by email, taking a long time to respond to records requests, and charging an exorbitant fee to produce those public records:
I sent an email on Dec. 28 to that office’s designated address for media requests. Having received no response by Jan. 9, I sent another email directly to Secretary of State Monae Johnson and Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Deadrick.
That’s when things got interesting.
“We are requiring that all requests for public records be in writing,” Deadrick replied on Jan. 10. “Emails will not be accepted. This is for tracking purposes on our end in order that we can best comply with the relevant statutes.”
…Deadrick told me a typed letter on official letterhead, sent through the mail, would suffice. I complied.
Eighteen more days passed with no reply. South Dakota law says the keepers of public records must respond to requests within 10 days, or the request is considered denied, and the denial is appealable to the state Office of Hearing Examiners.
Not wanting to go through the time and trouble of an appeal, I emailed Deadrick again and asked him to please reply.
He finally did, on Jan. 30, and added another wrinkle.
He said the office had records of approximately 215 pardons and commutations issued by Noem, and he said the charge to copy and mail them to me would be $2 per page – $430 total.
“You also have the option of coming to the Secretary of State’s Office and reviewing the pardons and commutations, for which there would be no fee for reviewing,” Deadrick wrote [Seth Tupper, “When Emails Aren’t ‘Writing,’ and Other Adventures in Pursuit of Pardon Records,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2023.04.07].
Tupper got a “one-time” waiver of that fee, but only because Secretary Johnson’s office can’t walk and chew gum at the same time:
I replied with a doomed email asking for reconsideration of the exorbitant fee, and when no immediate response came, I sent another email the next day informing Deadrick that I’d make the drive to Pierre from my home in Rapid City.
He responded with an email saying that since I was willing to make the drive, and since the office was busy with the legislative session and therefore wouldn’t have adequate staff to “monitor” me, he was “willing to make a one-time exception” to the fee. He attached digital copies of the pardon records to the email [Tupper, 2023.04.07].
I have requested a variety of public records from state government. I think I have submitted all of those requests by e-mail, and no state office, including the Secretary of State’s, has ever refused to take those electronic requests.
Nine years ago, I asked Secretary of State Jason Gant to send me a copy of Annette Bosworth’s nominating petition. I got an electronic copy one day after Bosworth filed the document. I don’t recall the fee Gant charged, but the work certainly wasn’t worth $2 per sheet; the Secretary of State already runs every petition through the scanner to create electronic copies, so the only additional work I was requesting was for a Gant staffer to drag and drop that big PDF into an email. I was two time zones away, so without Secretary Gant’s acceptance of my email request and swift electronic response thereto, I would not have gotten the petition in time to coordinate a volunteer effort to review and challenge Bosworth’s petition within the five days allowed by law for challenges.
Electronic record requests and transparency in general make democracy work better. Secretary Monae Johnson is throwing out her promise of transparency and throwing foot-dragging and fees in the way of democracy.
Is it any surprise that MAGATS are also luddites? After all, Trump doesn’t use email or text messaging AT ALL. So, why should his public “servants” be any different? If there are no records to show, there can be no transparency – that’s the reasoning of the MAGA mob’s boss.
As Richard said, if there are no records there is nothing to trace. The MAGAs like paper copies because they can be ripped up and flushed (remembering that more than a couple sheets at a time will clog the plumbing) and/or you can stuff them in your mouth and make them disappear. We all knew that Monae’s office was going to function as well as A/G Jason’s, but there is something about that “R” by the name that S. Dakotans can’t seem to resist.
We haven’t yet learned that the “R” stands for Rong.
Welcome to 1980s South Dakota, where honesty and lawlessness lives. I mean, really? This is Janklow-level non-transparency, or its incompetence.
One of the benefits of technology is that it simplifies routine requests. When I did my FOIA requests to the US Department of Energy regarding the nuclear waste borehole tests in Spink County it amazed me how efficient the federal system had become. They had a handy dandy gadget that made the request pretty easy to do. I had done lots of these FOIAs in the era before the internet, and was amazed at how user friendly these requests had become. This was during the Obama years, which was an era of relative transparency in federal government operations. It’s surprising that SOS Johnson can’t seem to match Obama-era efficiency. She needs to get with it, or resign.
Monae Johnson campaigned on hand counted paper ballots. It should come as no surprise she hasn’t figured out how to use modern technology to make life better.
Rumour has it Johnson wears a sign saying she is a weasel so, right up front you know she’s a weasel. And whoever has heard of a transparent weasel? Come to think on it, being trans anything in Duhkota would likely get her kicked out of the party.
You’d think Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Deadrick would know better. He served eight years in the S.D. House of Representatives where he aspired to also serve as Speaker. He was an attorney and was part of the post-Gant clean-up team working for the competent Secretary of State Shantel Krebs. Jason Ravnsborg hired him as an assistant attorney and he stayed on staff when a competent AG was appointed. He ran a law office and real estate title office in Platte for several years. He should be less of a little bitch when a news reporter requests public information.
Working for Monae Johnson must really be getting under Tommy’s skin. After all, you’d think he’d be Attorney General material by now, or working in a major law firm. These really should be his prime earning years! Instead Tommy’s the second lieutenant for a third rate Trumpy election denier. Sorry Tommy, but this is the path you chose.
Worse, we’re all going to look back on this and Cory’s treatment years earlier from the incompetent, scandal-plagued Jason Gant administration: “Do it today and dump Monae. Her office is sloooooower than Jason Gant.”
Ms. Monae is very young and inexperienced, so let us not compare her to Jabba the Gant. Ms. Monae is much prettier. Give her a chance, even though she was supported by those who are insaner than most.
Mr. Tears, you over-estimate the competency of young and disastrous Ms. Krebs, who of course was better than the very low bar of Jabba the Gant. And you forget…Mr. Deadrick is a dentist of renown. It is said he hisownself work on Ms. Monae’s smile before the elections of the caucuses, and is teetering on the edge of being an older fellow, too.
His gravy years are long behind him, only viewed through the cracked rearview mirror of his 1978 Country Squire wood-paneled life.
That establishment Republicans distrust their officeholders how can South Dakotans have any hope for the integrity of anything let alone election outcomes?
Ignorance of the laws one is supposed to uphold is no excuse, not even for inbred magats.
Looks like the Conservative wing of the party got punked.
The future of the pub party. Soros to tell you.
Voter suppression. Does voting still matter? The GOP War on democracy. Now there is a new front. Power.
A white supremacy front across the nation. Again the GOP lock on the SD legislature is prescient.
“Super majority rule. Gerrymandered Super Majority Rule. Stripping elected officials of power. “I don’t care if you are elected—you can’t do your job.” Punishment. A show of power. Protest. Political debate. Free speech. “You can’t protest here.”
Elected officials have had their mics cut as insurrectionists. Multiple fronts of the GOP’s new war. Mitch McConnell taking away the power of a president to appoint a Supreme Court nomination. He also changed the rule in 35 states, in Tennessee to strip the Governor of the power to replace his Senate seat when he steps down. Drunk with power. Super majority. We no longer live in a democracy. The “accelerant of Trump—all I need are 11,501 votes….”
Wisconsin. Kentucky. The “insurrectionist” Tennessee Three. Expulsion. South Dakota abortion overreach. Sanctioning the voters themselves. Disabling the power of initiative in South Dakota. Single issue limitation. Powerful overreach. The rush to sanction and punish elected officials. School boards raided. The power to suppress. Power without process is not law.
This is systemic. A “break-the-glass-moment!” We need to save our democracy. This is an emergency. It is complicated. An all encompassing Republican power grab. Fixing systemic process is the work of democracy that Democrats are faced with. Every race, every elected official has power. Sheriffs. County commissioners. Water boards.
Two decisions are pending in SCOTUS in gerrymandered Southern states. Justice Thomas taking luxury trips. Unenforceable ethics rules. No process. No due process.
Sherrilyn Ifill, past President, NAACP, on Amicus podcast April 8, 2023 @04:15-26:00
https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus/2023/04/the-tennessee-three-and-the-republican-strategy-to-make-voting-irrelevant
The vagaries of So Dak elected officials.
Can we learn from the Tennessee Republicans evicting 2 black legislators?
ADD. And Add more. Always.
Oh our decorum was breached. We’re voting your out.
Republicans are trying to evict us for various reasons, and we know we are making full payment, we are 18, US citizens… and the decorum to democracy keeps getting smaller and smaller under right wing Republican rule.
We have to think and DO things differently. Less talk. More actions.
First of all, join the Tennessee Democratic Party , maybe as an affiliate or Honorary member. Let’s Occupy Democracy! Crowdfund the return of the 2 eloquent gentlemen to their original seats.
Second, since elections don’t start till next year, we need to Occupy Democracy here, right now, without waiting!
What is Occupy Democracy? A protest? Sit ins? How is Occupy Democracy bigger and better than what we have now? Look at Hawaii, 60% plus Democratic legislators, or South Dakota 1971 to 1979. Our Occupy Democracy can be Bigger and better than that!
It is not a raw numbers thing. Let’s say we run 10 Governors races 40 plus years into the future, with 60% Republican leaning voters and 40% Democratic leaning voters. Results? Losses.
Occupy Democracy is WINS, just wins every month and day of the year.
Build a solar device , it converts solar power into usable energy. Occupy Democracy, we are turning the human power of the center-left voters into usable Energy. And energy gets great things done.
You may say, but this won’t happen in elections. Probably true.
But how do we make this happen?
The B muscle.
Stop using the bitching muscle. Start using the Building Muscle. Use it daily. Keep pumping that muscle!
What do we build?
Didn’t Aristotle say something like: “Aristotle condemned manual labor as harmful to the body and soul” (Paraphrase from Dan Koe of the thedankoe.com)
So the Republican SoDak economy of the 2020s is built on harming the body and soul, just like the Democratic economy of the 1970s South Dakota did the same thing. Why take power at all if you are running the same bad economic system, capitalism without a brain or heart.
So this is what we Build. An economic system that values the humanity of every person over “market value”.
An economy that pays waitresses and waiters $4.75 an hour, or disabled people legally getting paid piecework, people trying to pay bills on low wages?
Who build an economic system of abundance? We the people. Not they the out of state corporations and trust fund companies.
More and more people will transition to Abundance as we do this. Build and build better now.
Through the First Amendment (US Constitution) we are guaranteed the right to build and have People’s Assemblies (probably 501 c 3 nonprofit groups and social businesses can do this, read Muhammad Yunus 7 principles of social business online) consisting of hundreds of members, elected by proxy, no need to campaign or raise money, and we can legally spend money, receive money, operate businesses, employ people, without the burden of levying taxes and passing laws. For example, the Fiji Water Association, 5000 members in South Dakota, could easily have a FWA Assembly of 1250 members, meeting and voting and making decisions every week of the year, having elections every week or every month, fresh big ideas always being generated.
Build Better Businesses. Run Nonprofit or Social Business Assemblies. This is how we can Occupy Democracy.
If we magically got 52% of the vote, we would just be building on the older slave wages labor economy.
We have to Build better now.
We can win every day, by playing a Bigger more Infinite Game. Playing the old game is 40%, you lose, Republican take all. Our game, we win every day. Build an abundance economy ourselves. Assemblies that have thousands or tens of thousands of Senators. Bigger and better is built every day.
I see I mistakenly pulled a Grudz in my post above. Grudz’ posts are full of tongue-in-cheek opposite of truths in order to get goats, or make a point. I, however, try to be transparent and honest. My tongue is always firmly down the throat of Truth, and Truth is a whole hell of a lot prettier than Monae, Grudz. That’s why I’m disturbed to read this from me: “Welcome to 1980s South Dakota, where honesty and lawlessness lives.”
I think I meant to say “dishonesty,” not honesty.
Mrs. Volesky, one of grudznick’s most favorite women, is righter-than-right in her blogging above.
They may spout the words “election integrity,” but the only things Moane Johnson and people of her ilk (those representing Leah Johnson in Minnehaha County and others) is for people of their similar beliefs to win. And I believe they are the ones who will do anything to make that happen. If there was anything amiss withe true voter integrity in South Dakota, people like Johnson and Anderson never would have won their elections, as they were running against the people who ran the elections they were complaining about. Their victories provided 100% proof that our elections were fair. Of course, Nick Nemec could be correct, too, in that they haven’t figured out that technology has very much surpassed using only paper.
The SDGOP spin blog agrees: “This kind of bureaucracy is dystopian and dysfunctional in the face of what is supposed to be open government.”