Rookie anti-government Representative Travis Ismay (R-28B/Vale) files the first individual House bill of the 2026 Session, House Bill 1004, in which he takes another swing at allowing voters to recall their county commissioners.
Citizens interested in recall power should ask Rep. Ismay three questions about HB 1004:
- Why don’t you extend recall power to include every elected official, including legislators and the Governor?
- Why would you make it easier to recall county commissioners than city council members?
- Why does HB 1004 have any more chance of passing than your largely identical county-recall bill from last year?
House Bill 1004 acknowledges that recall is a reasonable element of checks and balances in a political system. Initiative and referendum allow citizens to call for votes to get rid of laws that aren’t working; recall allows us to get rid of elected officials who aren’t working. Sure, regular elections provide that check as well, but sometimes elected officials are so bad that the public can’t wait another year or more to boot the malfeasants from office and themselves and their institutions from further harm.
However, South Dakota law (SDCL 9-13-29 through 9-13-35) authorizes recall only of elected municipal officials. If recall is a reasonble power for voters to exercise, why shouldn’t it apply to all elected offices? Why should any elected officials be immune from the wrath of voters roused by their officials’ misconduct, malfeasance, nonfeasance, crimes in office, drunkenness, gross incompetency, corruption, theft, oppression, or gross partiality (the grounds for municipal recall in SDCL 9-13-30, which Ismay includes in HB 1004)? HB 1004 doesn’t even provide the consistency of allowing recall of all elected county officials; voters would get to recall commissioners, but corrupt sheriffs, auditors, and treasurers could hold their posts without fear until the regular election.
House Bill 1004 also fails to provide consistency in recall rules. Municipal recall requires 15% of city voters to sign a petition to trigger a recall election. HB 1004 would require only 5% of county voters to sign a petition to trigger a recall vote on a county commissioner. Recall may be a reasonable check, but it should only be exercised in extremis, when an elected official’s behavior is so bad that an unusual number of voters are willing to sign a petition and call for the trouble and expense of a special election. Requiring Ismay and his grumpy neighbors to collect 1,041 signatures instead of 347 to recall whatever county commissioner has torqued them off is a reasonable bar to prevent too small a minority from throwing county government into constant turmoil, and it is consistent with the 15% bar we’ve set for city recall.
HB 1004 strangely does set a 15% threshold for recalling commissioners who represent districts within counties. Ismay thus can’t even keep his signature thresholds consistent within his own proposal, not to mention with existing law. (That’s just as strange as the absence of any provision in current law for district-specific recall petitions for city council members who serve districts within their cities, as is the case in Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls Northeast District Councilwoman Miranda Basye could be recalled by a petition signed by people from all around Sioux Falls, including people from the other three corners of the city who can’t vote for her.)
These inconsistencies may signal that Rep. Ismay is not practicing good general political science but merely grinding his axe against his Butte County Commission. These inconsistencies may also be why Ismay’s attempt to create county recall went nowhere last year. His 2025 House Bill 1087 died on first contact with committee on a 3–10 vote. Resolving the inconsistencies I’ve outlined might improve the chances of passing HB 1004, but Ismay seems to think he can just keep trying the same thing and get a different result.
We probably can’t count on Rep. Ismay to broaden his perspective, but I encourage House Local Government or House State Affairs to take the reins and hoghouse this bill into a broad and consistent expansion of recall: change HB 1004 to allow the recall of all elected officials in South Dakota, from sanitary district board member up to legislator, Secretary of State, and Governor, by petition of 15% of registered voters in the jurisdictions that elect them.
n February, 2024 white Republican Newell High School spectators attacked Tiospaye Topa School student athletes with hateful racial epithets then after the Butte County basketball game they physically assailed the visiting Native American team and parents. But sure, migrants fleeing oppression and seeking asylum in the United States are criminals according to Butte County Sheriff Fred Lamphere who also accompanied Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson at the State of the Union address. Western South Dakota is a de facto portion of the American Redoubt where Earth hating white christianic Republicans like Travis Ismay are holed up for the End Times.