How dumb is the South Dakota Secretary of State’s office? So dumb that they can’t explain the legal impacts of a law they are proposing.
On Wednesday I reported on Senate Bill 17, Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s proposal to amend the new voting residency requirement she’s using to disenfranchise RV voters to specify that the 30 days they live in South Dakota to establish their right to vote here must take place within one calendar year of their registration. Reporter Rae Yost quite logically asked Johnson’s deputy Tom Deadrick to explain what effect that change would have on RV voters:
When asked if the proposed SB17 legislation would change voting for full-time traveling residents, Deadrick said in an email, “That is a legal question that has many different legal avenues it could go down and is not a question we can answer” [Rae Yost, “New Voting Bill Appears to Focus on Full-Time RVers,” KELO-TV, 2024.01.04].
Horsehockey. Tom, Monae, if you propose a change in law, you have an obligation to explain what you think that change will do and how it will affect the people you serve. As election officials, you need to be able to tell people whether or not they are eligible to vote under current law and whether or not they will be eligible to vote under the alternative law you are proposing. You need to be able to tell the legislators who will vote on your proposal (perhaps as early as next week!) the effect their vote would have on their constituents. If you can’t explain what your law will do, you either don’t understand the law you’ve proposed or you’re trying to hide what that law will do. In either case, you’ve got no business proposing a change you can’t explain.
I suspect the Secretary of State’s office just doesn’t want to come clean on its real intention, which is to purge more citizens from the voter registry and reduce participation in elections. Legislators, don’t wait for an explanation from Deadrick and Johnson. Make a quick study of precedent, recognize that Johnson’s residency trick is unconstitutional, and hoghouse Senate Bill 17 to reject Johnson’s proposal and repeal the whole 30-day residency requirement.
I once had thoughts that Ms. Johnson would break the one and done streak for SD SOS, but it seems clear that streak will continue.
I was on-line during the January 23, 2023 SD BOE meeting. I can’t find the minutes on-line now, but I do have a screenshot listing my name, though not spelled correctly, as attending.
During the meeting, the general public had numerous comments concerning the security of SD elections. The general public was assured SD elections are secure.
The meeting ended, I could hear others hanging up, but the mike remained live.
Mr. Deadrich, the Deputy SOS, said to (I assume SOS Ms. Johnson),
“If we have a problem, we really have a problem.”
Lemme throw this out there… Not necessarily with voting but with the role that domicile/residency applies to other laws, such as abortion.
Do South Dakota abortion laws apply to South Dakota domiciled RVers that are rarely or never in the state?
RV’rs in Minnehaha are heavily registered at two precincts where they contribute to the population of their Legislative district. Even though absent they count.
They vote Republican.
Purging the old RV voters is stupid; it’s a version of shooting oneself in the face. Most RVers are and vote republican.
So . . . hand the SD republicans a shovel as they purge the ranks of their voters, kill the ranks of their voters with anti-COVID measures, and depopulate the state’s colleges with their radical anti-free choice measures.
Foreign-Born Persons have Risen Greatly Under Joe Biden’s Presidential Term
Since President Joe Biden has taken office, the Foreign-Born Migration has risen to nearly 137,000 persons per year, as compared to the statistics under Donald Trump’s presidency January 2017 to February 2020 averaging 42,000 a month.
Even scarier, is the average migration numbers at the Southern Border under Joe Biden – and has averaged between the years January 2021 to October 2023, there have been roughly eight million “encounters” at U.S. borders. This appears to be a record for a 34-month period, though in the past they were called “apprehensions”, which is a slightly different concept. Even more important, court records and other information on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) websites indicate that about 2.6 million (possibly 2.7 million) inadmissible aliens have been released into the country since the start of the Biden administration.
Inadmissible – something or someone not allowed or worthy of being admitted, foreign personnel who are ineligible to enter a country, to which Commonly applied grounds of inadmissibility include having a criminal record, a history of certain immigration law violations, being without a source of financial support, or having a communicable disease.
The huge increase in border encounters and got-aways seems closely related to the president’s campaign promises that created the accurate perception, well before he even took office, that he would curtail immigration enforcement, to which the Biden’s administration policy of Title 42’s termination, and DHS reported that in Fiscal Year 2022 showed 850,000 foreign visitors overstayed their authorized stay in that year, to which a total overstay rate for 2022 was 3.64 percent, which is more than double the rate of recent years. Of course, not all of these individuals stay long-term, and there is always some number of people who leave the country but whose departure was not properly recorded. Still, overstays have increased.
In testimony prepared in September for the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, of the Education and the Workforce Committee of the House of Representatives, we preliminarily estimated that the illegal population grew from 10.2 million in January 2021 to 12.6 million by May 2023.
Adding all the migration data together under the Joe Biden Administration – more than 17,300,000 foreign-born persons have entered the borders of the United States of America, all while the current American-Born population has stabilized, or slowed due to less Americans having children today. A stark contrast to the future viability of legally-born persons in America.
On November 9 of this year the Census Bureau put out new population projections. When they were released, Census Bureau’s “main series” projection shows a level of migration that simply does not comport with what the CPS or ACS shows a total foreign-born population of 47.05 million — which is 2.5 million below what the October 2023 CPS shows, and which as was not supposed to hit 49.5 million until 2027 or 2028.
The current scale of immigration (legal and illegal) into the United States has been truly enormous. The October 2023 Current Population Survey (CPS), collected by the Census Bureau, shows that 15 percent of the U.S. population is now foreign-born — the largest share on record. The prior record was 14.8 percent, 133 years ago in 1890. The immigrant share of the population has more than tripled since 1970 and nearly doubled since 1990.
The size and growth of the immigrant population is not static. Legal immigration continues at least at the pre-Covid pace, and illegal immigration almost certainly remains very high. If legal and illegal immigration were to continue at the current level, we project that the total foreign-born population will reach nearly 59 million and 17.3 percent of population by the end of Biden’s second term in December 2028. Adding so many people to the country so fast may please employers and immigration advocacy groups, but any serious discussion of immigration policy has to grapple with these numbers and the implications they have for American society.
At a time, ich the 50 Sovereign States are in the midst of a very terrifying election season, January through December, the number of foreign-born persons residing inside America is very huge concern, especially, since States like California, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, and New York are allowing many foreign-born persons to obtain driver licenses’ while allowing those same persons becoming registered voters ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
No wonder Congress is contemplating urging the 50 States to ratify a congressional proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States – to limit voter registrations to Natural-Born Persons only, as compared to foreign-born.
H.J.Res.37 – Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to provide that Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the number of persons in each State who are citizens of the United States, thus restricting voter registrations to both natural-born citizens and naturalized citizens who have legally domiciled themselves within the American States to date.
This protects all legal Americans, by ensuring that only Candidates for President are “Naturally-Born Citizens” of the States
The newly adopted amendment would also more properly assess, and accurately report America’s actual population as it relates to establishing, and aligning Federal Districts, to which the American People get 1 Representative to every 740,000 American Citizens – which means, the State of California would most likely lose seven (7) districts (representatives) in Congress.
America’s Migration of Foreign-Born Persons effects both the American Job Market, as well as America’s Electoral Process of voting for, and electing the Nations President, State Governors, Congressman, State Legislators, and plays a heavy factor in maintaining cheap labor costs, heavily manipulating, and allowing hourly rates to remain steadily, cheap…
President Joe Biden, the Democrat Party, and Neocon Republicans are directly responsible for allowing for Foreign-Born Persons to migrate to the United States, dangerously placing the security, and defense of our state borders to be placed in harm’s way. The media portrays Donald Trump as an insurrenctist, but in reality, Joe Biden, and the Left are the true insurrectionists, and you study the data presented to the people who really are committing treason against the 50 Sovereign American State’s today.
20 says migrants headed north to work but that’s slowing now as another eight month winter grips my home state.
Deadwood is home to a significant number of service workers from outside the US including the Philippines: Filipino is the largest detailed Asian group in South Dakota.
As young people and Democrats flee South Dakota more brown people are doing the work in the red moocher state. Meat processors and industrial agriculture employ the greatest numbers of Hispanics in South Dakota. Spanish speakers prop up the federally subsidized dairy industry East River but in Huron Karen refugees slaughter and process turkeys. The crony capitalism that keeps South Dakota the 8th worst state for the working class is destroying lands promised to native peoples by treaty and my home town of Elkton is struggling to find enough housing for migrant workers often living in squalor.
Republicans don’t like Common Core history standards and have targeted critical race theory because the curricula long-ignored by textbooks includes genocide and the near-extermination of American Indians by European colonialism. Indigenous American intellectuals insist the updated standards are crucial to providing education to propel Native children beyond colonization.
New Mexico endures multitudinous symbols of conquest and genocide.The Royal Road of the Interior that extended 1600 miles from Mexico City to Santa Fe was established some 400 years ago by Spanish Conquistador Juan de Oñate, infamous for the 1599 Acoma Massacre. Southeastern New Mexico is home to many descendants of the Confederacy.
Today, after consultations with stakeholders New Mexico’s Public Education Department hopes to provide instruction that is relevant to English language learners and Indigenous students alike by adding ethnic, cultural and identity curricula to the state’s social studies standards by emphasizing tribal sovereignty, social justice and sustainable futures.
What do these climate refugees and migrant workers have in common with their Midwest counterparts? Christianity. “Pro-life” is simply code for white people breeding. African-Americans terminate pregnancies at about the same per capita rate as white people do but don’t take their jobs. Latinas, however, have fewer abortions per capita and the extreme white wing of the Republican Party knows it’s hemorrhaging jobs to Latinos.
And as the Republican Party caves on immigration after Governor Kristi Noem said she won’t accept Afghan compatriots in South Dakota wage slaves could make real social justice change by walking off their jobs then calling for a general strike and bring Kristi to her senses, too.
Si, se puede.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion: Trump state economies are in the toilet according to Creighton University’s Ernie Goss but it’s not about laziness, it’s about Maria shrugged, if you will.
Add it all up: Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk — not-so-closeted racists themselves, the Kochs, JBS, the Council for National Policy, the National Rifle Association, Fox News, Tucker Carlson, now Mrs. Noem, their attacks on public education and their fear of the “Great Replacement.”
Just because we’re Democrats doesn’t make us subjects; it makes us powerful. The Trump Organization was simply the latest obstacle to public education because it hates people of color and social equity, too.
The extreme white wing of the Republican Party wants a not so civil war over critical race theory and DEI because oligarchs fear an admission of guilt implies liability and they will be compelled to pay reparations to Indigenous and to the descendants of enslaved people.
MAGA types believe our country is a republic not a democracy. For a long time I thought it was just another case of them being stupid, a republic and a democracy are the same thing although a democracy must either also be direct or indirect. MAGA types want a republic but only one in which the right to vote is greatly restricted which is exactly what it was back in Revolutionary War times. I am now convinced that is exactly what they want to return to and also explains (maybe) their anathema to the initiate and referendum.
CATO Institute blows Zit’s undocumented stats out of the water, as expected.
https://www.cato.org/blog/new-data-show-migrants-were-more-likely-be-released-trump-biden
Biden is an American hero. One who didn’t enable insurrection to change the results of an election Biden won by millions of votes.
Benjamin Franklin’s response to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
Doctor Franklin replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Maybe review the Pledge of Alligiance. In school, we started the day with this. I hear it is not that way anymore.
“,,,,,,and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God…..” Please note there is no pause between one nation and under God. Many state politicians say this incorrectly, but what do you expect? They pledge an oath to the Constitution but apparently don’t know what is in it. Yes, I am referencing the SD state senate.
It’s worth noting that the original Pledge of Allegiance did not include “under God.” That was added a couple or three years before I entered kindergarten.
We are a republic, but most definitions of that term include people electing representatives. Of course a lot depends on which people get to vote. Consider the PRC, which is a republic, and has elected leadership. Similarly, the US has a history of excluding people from voting, and the constitution has a number of democratic aspects, but also undemocratic aspects.
The only time it makes a difference between democracy and republic is when the level of rigging is factored in. Both systems should lead to the same ends, the same conclusions, the same results, but MAGA’s now realize — having lost the struggle through democracy — the new playbook for imposing minority rule on the majority is a rigged republic. The Electoral College and Senate (maybe even the Supreme Court) show that “converting” democratic will through a screen of process allows Republicans to hold control in their minority.
Socialism is bad — until it is time for the government to bail out the wealthy; big government is bad — until it is time to enforce the will of the elite over the majority; what is bad is how the US has allowed rigged systems to be the voice and power of only the elite.
What to make of SB48 (only introduced in the past few days), an act to “provide for the disclosure of a cast vote record and ballot images as a public record and declare an emergency.”?
Mr. Mowry: All this “cast vote record and ballot images as a public record” is just expensive nonsense. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, amiss with our election statutes or procedures in South Dakota. There has not been one shred of evidence that voter fraud, other than isolated instances of confused elderly voters accidentally violating procedures, All this proposed law would do is add totally unnecessary espense to the administration of elections. It is a product of profligate Ego Mania by its’ sponsors.
Zit, just three generations ago, my Epp/Peter ancestors left the Odessa region of Ukraine for Kansas, the Dakotas, and Nebraska.
Most of us “red blooded” Americans are not far removed from our immigrant family members. I have new family members who are first generation Americans from Latin America. They are proud of the US, got all their kids college educations (and more) and have started a business that pays taxes and employs people.
With apologies to my friend Larry Kurtz, America is the immigrant experience. We owe a debt to our Native American and Black fellow citizens for the price they had to pay and continue to pay because of that immigrant experience.
Hear, Hear, Mr. Epp.
And here I always thought we were neither a democracy nor a republic but rather a “representative republic.”
Either/or thinking is best recast as neither/nor.
I am a full-time traveler using the program in South Dakota through a service in Sioux Falls. I would like to explain that there are legitimate reasons to have this status.
There are many kinds of jobs where folks are traveling every day of the year. Traveling nurses, traveling salesmen, etc. Traveling full-time doesn’t necessarily mean an RV or a sailboat. A look on YouTube shows many people traveling the world full time making a vlogger living explaining about different localities they’ve visited. Another model are the Digital Nomads. In my case, I’m with my partner in her home country – and we spend part of the year in the USA and part in her country.
All those roles are very commonplace and normal.
How does someone maintain financial accounts and file taxes in such a situation? For someone traveling 365 days a year, it would be a waste to own or rent a home somewhere that you never visit.
I did register to vote, and I’m successfully maintaining financial accounts and paying taxes. I only registered to vote in national elections because I do not have any opinion on local elections.
Interestingly, the People of the United States are finally waking up to see the truth about what the United States is today.
Technically, there are three versions of the United States today…
The Republic of Free, Independent, Sovereign Republics (45), Commonwealths (4), Federal Territories (7), Native American Nations (571) – to which the Constitution upholds, protects, preserves, defends all of them, Promising a Republican Form of Government.
The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA – which is today, the District of Columbia, all Federal Enclaves – Administration Buildings, Military Forts, Court Buildings, Federal Roads, Highways, National Parks, Nature Reserves, etc.
The UNITED STATES LAND COMPANY – created in 1871, as they created a Company to be governed by a President, Secretary, Treasurer, Officers, Agents, Employees, to which today in 1874 Congress created the Municipal Government for the “Territory” to which gives to it a Mayor, 9 District Council Members, Department Officials, Officers, Employees.
Keep in mind, the United States of America consists of the Northeast Territory (13 States), Northwest Territory (5 States), the Oregon Territory (Oregon, washington State, Idaho), Dakota Territory (South Dakota, North Dakota, wyoming, Montana), Missouri Territory (Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas), Kansas-Nebraska Territory (Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma), Southwest Territory (Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada), Territory of California (California).
For the Remaining States – they were created by the Virginia Land Company as Americans purchased “Charters” from the company, to which as a contracted to the City of London, to organize, and develop a Territory of Plantation Companies, to provide Cheap Labor, utilizing Agriculture, and Other Trade Mechanisms leading to the following States – North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, west Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, conjoined by Virginia, Texas, later on, and later on, Missouri aligned with these States leading up to the Civil war that became a Second Revolution 1860-1880.
During this Period, the “Federal Government” began to force these Southern States adopt the same Articles of Compact, agreed to by the “Organically Created States” by means of “acts” created by the Continental Congress (1775), and Congress (1789).
This is what happened:
Abraham Lincoln by General Order 100, created a Federal Militarized Zone that encompassed all of the 11 States;
Abraham Lincoln would enforce stronger, the Tariff (taxes) owed by those Americans in the South;
Abraham Lincoln would adopt the Emancipation Act, which helped to Free African-American Born Persons, let alone, would later ‘free’ Prisoners of War captured by the Federal Government;
Abraham Lincoln Incorporated All Federal Owned Property, Programs, Territories, even those in the South;
Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act, which allows Americans not taking up arms against the Union, to now claim, own, and be granted 160 to 320 acres of land freely, to help generate revenues for the war efforts.
The UNITED STATES first had to “Organize the Southern States” bonded, and compacted together by the Virginia Land Company, to which they created the Southeast Territory” developing the goal of creating Federal Organic States.
What really happened in 1860 – the Old “State Governments” led by Governors, U.S Senators, U.S Representatives, Electors for President, State Legislators all vacated their Official “Offices” agreeing to align together as one Confederacy Member-States under the Articles of Confederation. This created vacancies in the U.S Senate, House of Representatives, and Electors for President, enabling “Congress” to incorporate the Southern Territory as a “Federal Militarized Territory” leading to Creations of New States.
beginning in 1862, Abraham Lincoln expanded upon, and mandated by proclamation, that ALL Congressman, Federal Officials, Officers, Judges, including ALL State Officials, Legislators, and Judges to take the Following Oath in order to entrap them – his so-called Iron Clad Oath:
All Public Officials, Officers, Elected, or Appointed, to Affirm that they had never “voluntarily borne arms against the United States” or other treasonous Acts.
Later on, the U.S Congress, by 1884, ‘after’ the adoption of the 14 Amendment, established a “New Path” for ALL U.S Senators, U.S Representatives, U.S Electors for President, ALL Federal Officers, Agents, Employees, Contractors that read:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
This “Oath” contracted these “U.S Persons” to the Federal Government…
Today, The UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT ‘acts’ as a United States Corporate Entity, and contractually binds the “Federal States” to this “Corporate Oath” and to deter them from breaking the corporate contract, the Federal Government, led by their Foreign Investors, Bankers, Bond-Holders, hand out Tax Benefits, Subsidies, and Other Tax Monies to keep them obligated to their Oath.
The Civil war became a forced Act of Congress to capture all the freely created States that were not originally created by Congress, but were accepted into the “UNION” as the States themselves agreed to accept them into the Union of Free States.
For More on this, I created this google document to better explain How the United States Became the United States of AMerica.
As the Southern States pulled out of D.C in 1860, they pulled all their Senators, Representaves, and Electors (President), this removed Lincoln from their State Ballots. They then compacted together, and aligned themselves placing Jefferson Davis as their “Presidential Choice” and the Electors all chose him as their President. So you have these different versions of America.
I think the Southern States put in place an Interim National Government. Had no desire to secede from the Confederacy of States (1777), but got forced into a Fight they really did not desire.
By the time they found some compromise, the FEDS already had recreated their Federal States, and put actors in their places in D.C
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I think Lincoln incorporated the federal property, but he had planned to close it. But he got shot, and killed. The congress created a Corporate Land Company that purchased all the assets of the Virginia Land Company, including the ‘charters”. giving it authority over the property rights. as they created U.S CITIZEN (persons), they became citizens of these states, creating them as I see them today. Federal Creations of COngress.
The United States’ longest war wasn’t in Afghanistan; it was against Indigenous Americans and ran from about 1785 to at least 1973. Despite the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act in 1862 that distributed unceded lands in the public domain to raise funds for colleges.
The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are directly linked to the Native American Genocide so after the defeat of the 7th Cavalry at Greasy Grass in 1876 and the Great Sioux War Congress abrogated that treaty in 1877 then the Utes, Lakota, Arapaho, Cheyenne and others who migrated, lived and hunted all along the Front Range were driven into concentration camps.
In 1980 attorney Mario Gonzalez filed the federal court case stopping payment of the Black Hills Claim award to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Gonzalez contends that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the Fort Laramie Treaty signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations.
David Treuer was born of a Holocaust survivor and Ojibwe mother. He wrote in The Atlantic that he believes that most land held in America’s national parks should be remanded to Indigenous peoples but it’s my view that much of the land held in the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service should also be part of that trust.
President Joe Biden restored the White House Tribal Nations Summit after the former guy declared war on Indian Country and undercounted Indigenous Americans. But, Republicans want citizens to believe democracy isn’t for everybody. With guidance from the Koch’s American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC North and South Dakota Republicans passed legislation that disenfranchised Native voters.
https://www.sdnewswatch.org/stories/push-for-greater-native-american-voting-access-could-impact-south-dakota-race-for-governor/
https://thefulcrum.us/voting/native-american-voting-rights-2646153121
Zit is , or should be, a certifiable nutjob. Where are the white coats when needed?
https://thefulcrum.us/voting/south-dakota-native-american-voting
https://ictnews.org/opinion/protecting-the-sacred-right-to-vote-for-native-americans
O is correct, as always. “Rigging” is what has always made our system undemocratic, and it’s been rigged since day one of this nation. When you exclude voters through various means, when you gerrymander, when you have an electoral college, when you have an undemocratic body as the senate, you have rigged the system.
Zit, besides spreading BS who do you and your MAGA thugs want to solve the problems at the border?
In realty your right wing friends don’t want to solve it. It’s literally the only thing you have. Inflation is down, unemployment is down at record levels, Biden saved is fron COVID, and he got a bipartisan infrastructure bill passed. So try as you might you have nothing.
Forrest Gump said-
Stupid is as Stupid Does..