Want to Amend South Dakota’s Constitution? Better Start by July 21!

Whether or not Dakotans for Health prevails in its legal battle to stop the state from moving the initiative petition deadline from the first Tuesday in May to the first Tuesday in February, an important practical deadline is approaching for South Dakotans who want to place constitutional amendments on the 2026 ballot.

Short form: If you want to start a petition drive to amend the South Dakota Constitution, you need to start by July 21, three weeks from now.

Here are the nuts and bolts of that timeframe:

Amendments proposed by citizens for a statewide vote must go through several steps before getting permission to collect signatures on a petition (I include statutory references for each step).

1. Sponsors must submit a first draft of their amendment to the Legislative Research Council for review (SDCL 12-13-25).
2. Within 15 workdays, the LRC must respond to the sponsors with written comment on clarity, style and form, fiscal impact, whether the amendment covers a single subject (good!) or multiple subjects (bad!), and whether the amendment is truly an amendment (good!) or a revision (bad!) (SDCL 12-13-25).
3. Sponsors may then revise their amendment, incorporating all, some or none of the LRC’s suggestions.
4. Sponsors submit their final revised amendment language to the Legislative Research Council, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of State (SDCL 12-13-25.1).
5. The LRC has 60 days to give the sponsors a fiscal note if the LRC determines the amendment will affect the state’s revenues, expenditures, or fiscal liability (SDCL 2-9-30).
6. At the same time, the Attorney General has 60 days to prepare and publish a concise draft title and an objective, clear, and simple draft explanation of the proposed amendment (SDCL 12-13-25.1).
7. The Attorney General takes public comment on the draft title and explanation for ten days (SDCL 12-13-25.1). Note: this period is not for comment on the proposed amendment itself. The public is supposed to submit and the AG need only consider comment relevant to the AG’s title and explanation.
8. The Attorney General gets ten days to review the public comment and produce the final title and explanation (SDCL 12-13-25.1). That’s 80 calendar days total for the AG’s review.
9. At the same time as AG review begins, the Secretary of State gets 15 workdays to certify that the proposed amendment covers only one subject and does not revise rather than amend the constitution (SDCL 12-13-26.1).
10. Once the sponsors have the AG title and explanation, the SOS certification of single-subjectivity and non-revisionism (please accept my nouns as symbols of the ridiculous level of bureaucratic hijinks with which the Republican Legislature has sandbagged direct democracy), and any LRC fiscal note, the sponsors must submit the following documents to the Secretary of State no later than one year before the general election (SDCL 2-1-1.1, with the new requirements passed in 2025 SB 91, effective Tuesday, July 1!):
    1. a petition form with the title, explanation, and any fiscal note in 14-point font;
    2. a separate sheet with the full text of the proposed amendment;
    3. a notarized affidavit with the sponsors’ names and addresses;
    4. a statement of organization for the ballot question committee formed by the sponsors to handle raising and spending money for the amendment campaign;
    5. circulator handouts with the AG title, amendment text, contact info for all sponsors, and the circulator’s rate of pay.
11. If the Secretary determines that all of those documents are in order, the Secretary approves the petition for circulation, and sponsors can start collecting voter signatures.

Now in calculating a timeframe for these steps, focus on two blocks of time and one hard deadline:

1. LRC review: 15 workdays + two weekends + one day for sponsors to think and write = 20 days.
2. AG review: 60 days review + 20 days (mostly fruitless) public comment = 80 days.
3. Deadline to submit final petition+docs to SOS for approval to circulate: Monday, November 3, 2025.

The LRC and the AG traditionally use all of the time statute gives them (read: state officials aren’t going to do initiative sponsors any favors and hasten their review). Add to that 100-day review period a couple days of turnaround time for sponsors to review LRC comment, draft documents, and proofread. To ensure that all those steps happen and sponsors can put a complete petition packet in the Secretary’s hands by Monday, November 3, sponsors need to launch the process, submitting a draft amendment to the Legislative Research Council, no later than Monday, July 21.

So if you’re thinking about amending South Dakota’s constitution in the 2026 election and you haven’t already launched your campaign (the way Dakotans for Health did back in December!) July is time to poop or get off the pot. Get your amendment first drafts to the LRC by July 21, or wait until the 2028 election cycle.