The petition process is near and dear to my heart. Naturally, I notice among Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s 17 proposals for election law changes this coming Session her request to allow candidates to skip petitioning and buy their way onto the ballot:
9. An Act to allow a candidate to qualify to have the candidate’s name on the ballot through the payment of a fee.
a. This bill will allow an individual to have their name placed on the primary election ballot (or the general election ballot for independents) through the payment of a fee instead of through the petition process. The petition process will remain an option.
b. Any money collected through this bill would go to the state general fund [Secretary of State Monae Johnson, proposed bills for 2026 Legislative Session, presented to State Board of Elections 2025.11.18].
I suppose replacing petitions with a filing fee would save Secretary Johnson a lot of work. It would take a lot less time to deposit 200-some checks for Legislative candidates (I count 208 in the 2024 primary season) and handful more for Congress and Governor than it does to count the thousands of signatures all of their petitions contain.
But if saving administrative time is the goal, Secretary Johnson misses the big enchilada: she does not propose a comparable filing fee for ballot questions. In 2024, the Secretary of State received five ballot question petitions containing 186,201 signatures that she and her staff had to count over 38 workdays. Let sponsors of initiatives and referenda write checks to the state instead of collecting tens of thousands of signatures, and the SOS could spend a lot more time at the lake helping county auditors run elections smoothly.
But but but but but! Even if the Secretary wanted to let sponsors of ballot measures buy their way onto the ballot, the Legislature likely couldn’t oblige, not with a mere statute. Petitions for initiated amendments are explicitly required by the South Dakota Constitution:
…An amendment proposed by initiative shall require a petition signed by qualified voters equal in number to at least ten percent of the total votes cast for Governor in the last gubernatorial election. The petition containing the text of the proposed amendment and the names and addresses of its sponsors shall be filed at least one year before the next general election at which the proposed amendment is submitted to the voters… [relevant excerpt from South Dakota Constitution Article 23 Section 1].
The Legislature can’t replace petitions with filing fees for initiated amendments. (If you want, Speaker Hansen, I’ll also argue that the Legislature can’t require a filing fee on top of the petition for a constitutional amendment, because Article 23 Section 1 doesn’t authorize additional requirements.) And maybe the state constitution is too sacred to allow its aspiring tinkerers to access the ballot with mere filthy lucre.
However, that sacred unlucrable document may allow us to replace petitions with filing fees for mere statutory initiatives and referenda. The constitutional language authorizing initiative and referendum does not mention petitions:
…the people expressly reserve to themselves the right to propose measures, which shall be submitted to a vote of the electors of the state, and also the right to require that any laws which the Legislature may have enacted shall be submitted to a vote of the electors of the state before going into effect, except such laws as may be necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety, support of the state government and its existing public institutions. Not more than five percent of the qualified electors of the state shall be required to invoke either the initiative or the referendum [relevant excerpt from South Dakota Constitution Article 3 Section 1].
“Not more than five percent of the qualified electors of the state shall be required to invoke either the initiative or the referendum”—we’ve operationalized that requirement with petitions via SDCL Chapter 2-1. But we could just as constitutionally permit 17,508 voters to put a measure to a statewide vote by dropping pennies in jars at the county auditors’ offices or forming a mob outside the Secretary’s office and shouting “Invoke! Invoke! Invoke!”
And note that Article 3 Section 1 doesn’t require 5% of voters to invoke I&R; it requires not more than 5%. Instead of setting the signature threshold at the constitutional ceiling, the Legislature could say, “O.K., we’ll let one qualified elector invoke the initiative or the referendum, by paying a filing fee.”
How much should that filing fee be? A penny per signature required by the alternate petition rule, $175.08? A nickel per replaced name—$875.40? A dime—$1,750.80? Give me a really good initiative or the chance to block a really bad Legislative bill until the voters have their say, and I’d consider writing that check myself (and I’m notoriously cheap!). Bump it to a buck per replaced signature—$17,508—and I’d have to do some fundraising. But that’s still a lot cheaper than any quote you’ll get for collecting 21,000 (current minimum + 20% cushion) petition signatures.
Whether anyone should get to buy a spot on the ballot, for a candidate or a proposed law, is another debate (and another blog post! Stay tuned!).
But all this constitutional cogitation assumes that, in calling for a ballot-access filing fee, Secretary of State Monae Johnson would have sense of maintaining equity in ballot access for candidates and ballot-question sponsors alike. The exclusion of ballot questions from her filing-fee proposal suggests that Secretary Johnson is like the rest of her Republican Party, seeking to ease her party pals’ path to the ballot while keeping as many ballot barriers as she can for the regular citizens who might want to exercise their constitutional right to put measures to a vote.