Yesterday was a noteworthy day in initiative trivia (initiatrivia?) in that it was not noteworthy. Speaker Jon Hansen and his fellow South Dakota Republicans, who generally hate initiatives and other assertions of the popular will over their clubby Legislative privilege, wanted yesterday, February 9, to be the deadline for submitting initiative petitions for the November 2026 election. If Hansen had had his way, Secretary of State Monae Johnson yesterday would have declared petitioning over, revised her Potential Ballot Questions webpage to announce which initiative petitions had been submitted and which had not, and started validating whatever petitions she had received.
But none of that happened. The Secretary of State made no announcements yesterday. Neither of the two active sponsor groups—Dakotans for Health and Abolish Property Taxes SD—made mad dashes to Pierre with any of their three petitions. Those groups can continue to circulate petitions and collect voter signatures for another three months, until May 5, thanks to initiative advocate Rick Weiland’s ceaseless efforts to protect democracy. After Governor Larry Rhoden signed Speaker Hansen’s 2025 House Bill 1184, which set the initiative petition deadline back three months into the dead of winter, Weiland sued the state, arguing that the February deadline, nine months before the election, unacceptably restricted core political speech the same way that the state’s previous twelve-month deadline did. The state and Speaker Hansen struggled to come up with any good arguments for taking away this petition time, and at the beginning of September, U.S. District Judge Camela C. Theeler told the state the nine-month deadline violates the First Amendment. The court ordered the state to continue accepting initiative petitions until May 5. Thus, even though the state is appealing to the Eighth Circuit, February 9 has come and gone with no effect on ongoing petition circulation.
I say yay for ongoing democracy… and strangely, the 2026 Legislature is not saying boo. While Speaker Hansen and other Republican legislators proposed ten measures last year to hamstring initiative and referendum, the Legislature this year has fielded only one bill openly hostile to state ballot questions. That bill, HB 1087, came from fringe radical and inattentive rookie Representative Travis Ismay (R-28B/Vale), who for the second year in a row tried and failed to ban paid petition circulators, a proposal that the court would have killed as fast as Hansen’s February deadline.
No other legislator has filed any new bill to attack initiative and referendum. Republicans tried and failed to place a measure on the November ballot to repeal the Medicaid expansion that voters approved by initiative in 2022, but in a departure from last year and several preceding Sessions, no other bill has been filed to attack the initiative and referendum process. The only other measure in the hopper dealing with statewide ballot measures is Senate Bill 5, which harmlessly (and perhaps helpfully for citizens inclined to vote for grassroots ideas over proposals from the Legislature) requires that the ballot tell who put each initiative and referendum on the ballot, citizens or the Legislature. (SB 5 was the first bill to clear the 2026 Legislature; Governor Rhoden signed it on February 6.)
Legislators could still sneak-attack initiative and referendum by hijacking some bill with wild amendment (I’ll be watching the hoghouse report!).
But so far for direct democracy, so good. Could it be that Republicans in the Legislature are tired of losing ballot question cases (and lawyer fees) in court to liberals like Rick Weiland and me? Could it be that Republicans read the powerful analysis in last summer’s South Dakota Law Review showing that the Legislature has been waging war on initiative and referendum since 2017 and decided they had to do something prove authors Nesiba, McNary, and Heidelberger wrong? See the empty hopper? We’re not attacking initiative and referendum!
You know, legislators, if you really want to make us think you’ve called off your war on initiative and referendum, you could kill the one big attack on direct democracy looming over our heads this year: Amendment L, which the Legislature placed on this year’s ballot via last year’s 2025 HJR 5003. Amendment L would raise the threshold for enacting constitutional amendments from simple majority to 60%. Legislators, why not take a step beyond declining to introduce new attacks on initiative and referendum and end that old 60% attack? Pass a resolution this Session rescinding 2025 HJR 5003. Take Amendment L off the ballot. You’d make Brandei less fatigued on Election Day, and you would show that you are content to leave the people’s right to govern themselves alone for another year.