The first bill affecting initiative and referendum is in the hopper, and surprisingly, it is not an attack on direct democracy. Instead, Republican (!) Senator Mike Rohl (R-1/Aberdeen) offers the seemingly friendly (!) Senate Bill 5 to require that every ballot question include a disclosure on the ballot that states whether it came from citizens or the Legislature.
Think of SB 5 as country-of-origin labeling for laws. You ought to know whether your beef comes from America or Argentina; you ought to know whether your laws come from citizen effort or the Legislative sausage grinder.
This measure might not make much difference in how voters would mark their ballots. Labeling 2024’s abortion rights initiative as a citizen-led effort probably wouldn’t have flipped any votes. But labeling Legislative proposals as such on the ballot would help check the bogus claim Republicans make that citizens put too many issues on the ballot, which Republicans then morph into silly claims of voter fatigue, which Republicans use to justify their ongoing effort to take away citizens’ right to initiate and refer laws.
Republican (!) Senator Rohl has some reasonable co-sponsors on SB 5, including rookie Senator Amber Hulse (R-30/Rapid City), who did good work last year in promoting the helpful 2025 SB 91 to reform petition requirements for initiatives, and rookie Senator Erik Muckey (D-15/Sioux Falls), who as a Democrat we should be able to count on to defend direct democracy from the predations of the Legislative majority.