Back in January, during the House State Affairs hearing on House Joint Resolution 5003, the proposal now on the 2026 ballot to increase the vote threshold to amend the state constitution to 60%, amidst the litany of Republican hogwash used to justify this assault on democracy, Representative Brandei Schaefbauer (R-3/Aberdeen) contributed the following comment:
…all of us, yes, we experienced extreme ballot fatigue this last election cycle… [Rep. Brandei Schaefbauer, committee discussion, House State Affairs hearing on 2025 HJR 5003, 2025.01.17, SDPB audio timestamp 1:09:59]
Ah, ballot fatigue, that familiar sham excuse Republicans give for their well-documented war on initiative and referendum.
Schaefbauer commits at least three errors in this one sentence.
The first is a plain logical error. Schaefbauer attempts to generalize her opinion into a universal truth. She claims “all of us” experienced “extreme” ballot fatigue. She offers no evidence, no testimony from every person on the committee or from everyone in the hearing room, let alone from every voter who turned out for the 2024 election, to support this claim. Schaefbauer here apes Donald Trump, who often covers his lack of evidence and majority support by claiming “a lot of people are saying” whatever point he’s trying to make.
I have never experienced ballot fatigue. I actually feel a bit disappointed when I get a short ballot; when I go to the polls, I want to make lots of decisions. The more things I get to vote on, the more get to exercise my rights and take responsibility for the direction my community takes. That’s fun! That’s exciting! That’s our duty as citizens.
And I can’t be the only voter who feels that way. Turn to the 2016 election, which offered South Dakotans ten ballot questions to decide, a number topped in this century only by the 2006 ballot with eleven measures. The order of measures on the ballot and the total votes cast for and against each showed no evidence that voters got tired as they went through their ballots and stopped marking Yes or No before they reached the end. Political science prof Emily Wanless once told a pessimistic press that voters are “surprisingly more aware than we give them credit for.” I maintain they are also more enthusiastic about participating in deciding their own fate than Republicans like Schaefbauer give them credit for.
So when Schaefbauer says “all of us” experienced ballot fatigue in 2024, she really means she herself experienced ballot fatigue…
…which leads me to her second error, a political optics error. I would think that, however much we regular folks may like voting, people who run for Legislature must really like voting. The job you run for is to go to Pierre in the middle of winter and vote, vote, and vote, day after day. Yeah, to me, that sounds like a dream job! But if poor Brandei suffers “extreme” fatigue just from working through seven ballot questions, which she had months to study and campaign on in the media, I can only imagine the utter exhaustion she must feel in Pierre casting a dozen or more votes every day on bills and resolutions and parliamentary maneuvers that come rushing at her with little notice. Quick! Someone, get that frail woman some electrolytes! Spare her the soul-crushing agony of casting votes not just for herself but on behalf of all of her constituents.
Or maybe Brandei could spare herself further fatigue by resigning from her evidently tiring position and letting someone who actually likes voting do the job.
Spare herself… ah, that leads me to Schaefbauer’s third error, another logical error. She presents “ballot fatigue” as something from which she and her fellow legislators should protect voters. But—and a good Republican like Schaefbauer should already get this point—we don’t need government to protect us from this made-up menace (hmm…there’s something else Schaefbauer copies from Trump). If long ballots posed any danger of wearing us patriots out, each of us could just stop voting when we feel worn out. If Voter Sally gets to the last initiative on the 2026 ballot and runs out of gas, she can just leave that line blank and wearily slide her incomplete ballot into the election box. If Voter Fred uses every joule in his being to mark Beaudoin for U.S. Senate, he can stop there. No law says you have to cast a vote on every ballot measure. No law says you have to cast any vote at all. Voters can already reduce the number of ballot measure they have to vote on by not voting on them. Why conservatives keep forgetting their philosophical roots and thinking up big-government solutions to problems individuals can solve all by their lonesomes continues to escape me.
If you’re too tired to vote—Brandei—just stay home… and stop thinking of ways to take opportunities to vote away from those of us who enjoy democracy.