On Sunday I discussed the inconsistency of Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s proposal to allow candidates to skip petitions and pay filing fees to get on the ballot while denying ballot question committees the same favor for their initiatives and referenda. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
But are filing fees good for anybody, and for democracy?
Republican big-money stooge Pat Powers looks at all the other states that allow candidates to buy their way onto the ballot and shrugs, “Why not?”
33 states.. That’s 2/3, and it actually puts us in the minority of states for rejecting that as an option and going with petition signatures only.
In South Dakota, 50 signatures for state legislative candidates is not a heavy lift. But then again for most legislative candidate a fee of $250 would not be a heavy lift either.
So, why not offer either option? [Pat Powers, “33 States Allow for Candidate Filing Fees in Lieu of Petitions? Why Not SD?” Dakota War College, 2025.11.23]
The radical election denier and petition hater running elections in Minnehaha County doesn’t care what other states do; she doesn’t want to give money more pull in elections:
“If a candidate has a lot of money, they can run for office, they can also run a lot of ads,” Minnehaha County auditor Leah Anderson said.
Anderson says a candidate who pays the fee would then be able to sidestep the legwork needed to help voters make an informed decision.
“I know when I ran my campaign, I did it on a shoestring budget and I just went out and door-knocked and got the signatures and talked to the people,” Anderson says.
Money collected from the filing fees would go to the state’s general fund.
“And I don’t think the state should be making money from candidates getting on the ballot, either,” Anderson said [Perry Groten, “County Auditors Oppose Candidates Paying Filing Fees,” KELO-TV, 2025.11.21].
The saner Republican running elections south of 57th Street doesn’t see any practical need to replace petitions with a filing fee:
Allowing a candidate to pay a fee instead of collecting petition signatures would save election officials time and effort in validating those signatures. But the Lincoln County auditor says that has never been a problem with her office.
“Change the requirements for how many signatures you need to get rather than putting a monetary value on it,” Lincoln County Auditor Sheri Lund said.
Lund says she’ll reach out to the Secretary of State’s office to learn the reasoning behind the filing fee proposal. But she says she’s unlikely to change he mind.
“I just don’t think paying to get on the ballot is the right way to go,” Lund said [Groten, 2025.11.21].
Every campaign costs money. Even the highest filing fees among the states using them—Alabama parties have set their filing fees at just over $1,000—are an affordable fraction of what serious candidates will spend in competitive Legislative races and a trivial amount in any serious statewide campaign.
But on principle, I’m siding with Lund and Anderson and urging the state to require petitions for everyone seeking a spot on the ballot. Our sacred ballots express the voice of the people, plural. Every choice on that ballot, candidate and ballot question, should express the desire of at least some of the people, not the whim of one guy who writes a check. With a filing fee, a candidate says, “I want to run.” With a petition, 50 voters say, “We want this person to run.” Even the very first small step in the race for elected office should involve the people the candidate seeks to represent.
Becoming a candidate should be more than a financial transaction. It should be a political interaction, citizen to citizen, candidate to constituent. Every campaign for political office should start the same way as the Constitution itself, with “We the People,” not “I the Candidate”, to help keep aspiring representatives of the people’s voice in the proper, democratic frame of mind.