The mostly irrelevant and wholly ignored comments submitted to Attorney General Marty Jackley for his draft ballot explanation of Travis Ismay’s medical-marijuana repeal initiative include a couple of critiques of Ismay himself.
Nurse Catherine Miller emailed the A.G. on July 30 to insinuatively implicate the Butte County activist and welder in all sorts of impropriety:
Miller appears to refer to the arrest of Tim and Leslie White of Vale last winter for producing child pornography. I didn’t know those defendants are related to Ismay, but I know those defendants and their alleged crimes are not related to the merits of the Attorney General’s explanation of Ismay’s proposed initiative.
Michael Norman emailed the A.G. on August 6 to to more briefly complain that the initiative sponsor is “notoriously” and “comically” uninformed, yells at the Belle Fourche City Council, and claims a radical selfish libertarianism (or, in that extreme, is it libertinism?):
However loud, uninformed, and radical Ismay may be, those characteristics have no place in the Attorney General’s statutorily required explanation of the ballot measure Ismay seeks to place on the 2024 ballot.
The submission of these ad hominem attacks demonstrates the failure of the Attorney General to educate the public on the very limited purpose of the ten-day public comment period on his draft ballot explanations. The Attorney General should make clear that when he publishes a draft explanation of a citizen initiative and asks for comment, he is not taking comments on the merits of the initiative itself or of the initiative sponsors. He is offering the public a chance to evaluate his explanation of the measure; to say whether his text comes across as objective, clear, and simple, as required by SDCL 12-13-25.1; and to offer suggestions to make that text more objective, clearer, and simpler. Comments on the merits of the initiative should be saved for Twitter, the blogs, and morning coffee down at the Wild Magnolia. Accusations that Ismay is floating a statewide ballot measure to smokescreen an alleged child porn ring, if they have any merit at all, should be sent to the DCI.
Fascinating. Butte County a hotbed for child endangerment? Who knew? The late Sheriff Lamphere and Milo Dailey did.
Cory, the difference between commenting on the explanation and commenting
on the merits is perhaps a finer line than a whole lot of people care to appreciate.
Most members of the public did not go to law school or care to split hairs to
that degree.
I agree with Cory. A formal public comment period for the AG’s explanation didn’t occur over most of the history of the initiative and referendum. It used to be a closed process subject to secretive lobbying. No one really knows how many AG explanations were corrupted by this secrecy, but we found out about one such attempt by the SD Mining Association to plant some wording they wanted into the explanation on one of our mining initiative petitions. We squawked about it and the AG at the time (Tellinghuisen) said we could submit our comments on the explanation if we wanted. I recall that we did. It took a few years, but a public comment period became a statutory requirement. It was one of the few good changes to the process made by the Legislature.
Comments should focus on the explanation, as Cory says.
Wow, I agree with the author in this article, if this is true, what a scary thought if people could write letters to the Attorney General (or the government itself) asking the government to block initiatives and resolutions or amendments from going on a ballot based on hearsay, rumors, or gossip from the community(s) themselves. That is not the role of the L.R.C, nor the Attorney Generals Office, nor the Secretary of State here.
L.R.C’s job is to ensure the draft legislation is written to style, form, and manner, giving the petitioners an assessment of its financial impact;
The Attorney General explanation is only to serve the voters to help educate and inform them on what the ballot measure will do, and not do, letting the voters know if there are constitutional issues related to the ballot measure;
The Secretary of State role in the matter is to ensure that only “Legal Registered Voters” of the Counties have signed the petition, let alone the proper amount of signatures have been collected.
IF government were to block petition drives because of some allegation or accusation or a felony record of a petitioner, that alone would violate the constitution itself. Government should not be allowed to block any such petition drive, otherwise ‘we’ would end up with tyranny.
What school did this nurse attend? Good lord. If you are going to argue about the scientific proven benefits of a substance, perhaps write like you are educated.
I find it comical that Cory blames the AG for the general public for being stupid, though. Most adults don’t understand basic civics. That issue began WELL before the AG.
The late Milo Dailey and current Sheriff Lamphere, rather.
Edwin Arndt
“Most members of the public did not go to law school or care to split hairs to
that degree.”
It’s far from rocket science and requires no “hair splitting to that degree” except to your mind, Edwin.
Dicta
Civics education or not makes no difference as the AG could better serve an educative function to the benefit of the citizenry—if and particularly when the latter fail to rise to your standard of a civics education. As it is, the AG simply ignores all comments including Cory’s which latter were duly and properly submitted as to the merits of whether or not the meaning of the ballot explanation was clear or required further clarification.
Jackley is blameworthy on more than one account.
“Comments on the merits of the initiative should be saved for Twitter, the blogs, and morning coffee down at the Wild Magnolia.”
Dang right, Cory. Education is always an uphill battle against the forces of willful ignorance, and hat’s off to you for rising to the challenge.
Perhaps it is good the insaner rabble can blather their comments, and Mr. Jackley can just sit back and read them and laugh and laugh, and then ignore them. He probably has some of the dumber comments framed in the wallpapered hallways leading to the rest rooms in his office building.
Mr. Jackley probably cares not about the Demon Weed…this one is Mr. Ismay against all the stoners out there. grudznick hopes Mr. Ismay keeps us posted on his progress. Oh, and Mr. Ismay, don’t fall for the trick my good friend Bob did when he gave a young fellow $100 and a clipboard and the young sir just ran off through the crowd, taking Bob’s hard earned cash with him but providing no effort. He took the free money, no doubt, to have a nice breakfast and buy a few plastic ziploc baggies full of the demon weed.
Mr. G- thank you for reminding me of the anxiety and sweaty nightmares the cop impersonating a circulator last summer has experienced since.