Word Choice: SB 33 Changes a Few Persons to Individuals

Along with its unnecessary digression into a redefinition of petition circulator that would land South Dakota in court again, Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s Senate Bill 33 also diverts from its core purpose of changing candidate petition signature requirements with a curious and inconsistent effort to replace person with individual in a smattering of election laws.

Senate Bill 33 changes the word person to individual in seven instances. Since Secretary Johnson is not tuned in to fine semantic points, I suspect these changes come from the Legislative Research Council, which is charged in part with using policymakers’ proposals as vehicles to style-and-formalize statute into technical perfection.

The legal basis for changing person to individual may lie in the idea that, in the law books, person can include corporations and other non-human legal entities. Individual appears to refer to a natural person, flesh and blood, not organizations and other legal fictions.

But LRC left several instances of person un-individualized in SB 33. Amidst changes to definitions in SDCL 12-1-3, SB 33 leaves untouched the term person in charge of an election. In the definition of elector, SB 33 changes one person but not the second: “(5) “Elector,” a person an individual qualified to register as a voter, whether or not the person is registered”. In the definition of registration officials, other persons remain authorized to assist in voter registration. In Section 2, SB 33 retains reference to national and state party chairpersons rather than rechristening them as chairindividuals.

Likely unbeknownst to LRC and Secretary Johnson, the discussion of person versus individual could spark a religious debate, in which we could engage some theocratic crusaders to contend that saying individual instead of person denies humanity’s holy relational nature and advances evil selfish secularism:

Where some Catholics may see the Dobbs decision as a victory for human rights and the dignity of the individual, others may argue that human rights ideology and the individualism it presupposes are themselves the root of abortion project, as well as of many other modern pathologies. This latter view is the one pretty clearly implied in Properties of Blood: The Reign of Love, a new volume by classicist Thomas Fleming.

Delving into the etymology of the word individual, Fleming notes that the Latin individuum formerly called to mind much more technical and metaphysical concepts, such as “the Trinity, as an indissoluble and undivided entity,” and “it was not until the 18^th century that it began to be used as a colloquial substitute for person.” Lest the reader think he is merely quibbling, Fleming explains the issue at stake in the language:

It would lead to less confusion if we began to speak of persons, rather than of individuals. The word ‘person’ does not imply radical independence or complete self sufficiency. If such creatures as liberal individuals ever existed, they would be entirely powerless, incapable of banding together to resist the growing power of the despotic state. Statists and collectivists understand this reality, which is one of the reasons they make war on the family and the Church, which are independent sources of authority capable of protecting the interests of the members.

In contrast to the self-contained individuum, which is independent of everything else, the relationship-oriented term persona suggests a finite role in some bigger narrative – as in the “personae” of a dramatic presentation. Emphasis upon the individual undermines human-scale associations, fraternal societies, and above all, families, each of which are indispensable for resisting the encroachments of centralized government power. In the long run, then, the politics of individualism only benefits those bureaucrats who – consciously or no – pursue a policy of Divide et impera.

The decay of language must be examined even further, however, as it may also be misleading to say that the family can provide us shelter from the consolidated superstate. Even among Catholic conservatives, the word “family” usually only refers to the nuclear family. As Fleming points out, most human cultures for millennia have deemed the family to be a much larger, more extended network of relationships. It is only relatively recently that family’s embrace has shrunk to include only parents and children [Jerry Salyer, “Persona vs. Individuum,” The Catholic World Report, 2022.09.26].

Replace person with individual in SB 33, and next thing you know, dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria!

Changing a few persons to individuals probably won’t spark a First Amendment court challenge the way Secretary Johnson’s redefinition of petition circulator will. But, if we’re going to go rooting out words for the technical legal reasons, we should root them out with strict consistency… and try not to create a semantic disaster of Biblical proportions.