I’ve noted how even the opponents of Senate Joint Resolution 508, the Senate’s proposed ballot question to strike from the South Dakota Constitution the Lieutenant Governor’s role as President of the Senate, express contempt for democracy. But proponents of SJR 508 also deserve scorn for cloaking their desire to expand their arrogant privilege in a false concern for the voice of the people.
Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr, who started this fight last month with his attempt to declare the Lieutenant Governor’s tie-breaking role in the Senate unconstitutional (a position the Supreme Court handily dismissed) suggested in floor debate Tuesday on SJR 508 that letting the Governor’s right-hand man vote to break Senate ties disenfranchises an absent member’s district:
“When a member is absent, the lieutenant governor’s not merely breaking a tie, they’re essentially exercising a proxy vote for that absent member’s constituents,” Karr said.
…“Should an executive officer, potentially at political odds with a specific district, be the one to decide a district’s will on the Senate floor?” Karr said. “That is the current reality of the Senate” [John Hult, “South Dakota Senators Endorse Resolution Asking Voters to Rein in Lieutenant Governor’s Authority,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.02.24]
Hold up, Chris: the Constitution doesn’t put the Lieutenant Governor on the podium to represent any particular district. The Constitution provides a backup mechanism for advancing motions when one of the 35 members fails to show up to represent his district. The Senator who skips work leaves an entire district without a voice; the Lieutenant Governor, an elected public servant casting votes only to break ties, exercises a minimal quantum of Executive power to check a failure of Legislative responsibility to do the people’s business.
The people’s will is served better by an active Lieutenant Governor than by an absent Senator.
From the end of the Republican spectrum opposite Karr’s mainstreamery, radical right-winger Senator Kevin Jensen (R-16/Canton) supported Karr’s disenfranchisement tack by delegitimizing the Lieutenant Governor’s elected status:
But Sen. Kevin Jensen, R-Canton, returned to the issue of representation. Until a change that passed the Legislature in 2023, the lieutenant governor was chosen by parties at the state convention. Now, candidates for governor choose their running mate.
“Yes, they will have to be on the ballot with the governor,” Jensen said. “But in most cases, people don’t vote for the lieutenant governor. They vote for the governor. So in essence, the lieutenant governor is appointed or hand picked, and the people really have no say” [Hult, 2026.02.24].
First, I have to correct Mr. Hult: the 2023 bill (2023 SB 40) removing L.G. from the convention’s purview failed; the Legislature put the L.G. pick legally in each gubernatorial candidate’s hands in 2025 (2025 HB 1164). Jensen voted for the 2023 bill when he was in the House but changed his mind his mind when he moved to the Senate and voted against the 2025 bill.
But Senator Jensen’s contention that SJR 508 would spare the voters some newfound gross disenfranchisement at the hands of the Governor’s closest crony is nonsense. The 2025 change only codified what has always happened: candidates pick their running mates. And people do have a say: if the candidate picks a knucklehead for L.G., the people can have their say in November. The people can say (as many did in the 2008 Presidential election), “We don’t want that idiot a heartbeat away from the big chair!” and vote for the other candidate, the one who picked someone sensible and qualified for the job.
The people elect the Lieutenant Governor. The Lieutenant Governor can express and must answer to the people’s will as much as any Senator.
Senators Jensen, Karr, and the 17 colleagues who advanced SJR 508 to the House this week seem to be making a mountain out of the tie-breaking molehill. The Lieutenant Governor exerts the tie-breaking power rarely, in unusual circumstances. If the Lieutenant Governor breaks a tie to advance a Senate bill that an absent Senator’s district opposes, that district’s House delegation can still do its job and fight the bill in House committee and on the House floor.
If SJR 508’s proponents were really concerned about exertions of Executive authority disenfranchising entire Legislative districts, they would be tackling far greater Executive checks on Legislative power. The Governor can stamp much more authority over a district’s representation by appointing cronies to fill vacant Legislative seats. Why not amend Article 3 Section 10 to call for special elections or let the Legislature decide how to fill vacancies in its ranks? (Jensen supported a measure to that effect in 2021—2021 HJR 5002—but he kept his name off two milder 2024 measures—2024 HJR 5002 and 2024 HB 1188—that would have given his cherished party poobahs a role in filling Legislative vacancies.)
Better yet, why not eliminate the Governor’s veto power? With the stroke of a pen, one elected official can negate the will of almost two-thirds of South Dakota voters as expressed by their legislators.
Vetoes and vacancy-filling do far more to usurp the voice of the voters than the Lieutenant Governor occasionally rising from his seat to break a tie in a situation caused by an absent Senator. But Senators aren’t challenging those drastic checks. They’re asking to take up voters’ time with what boils down to a petty question of Speaker envy.
Senators Karr, Jensen, and the backers of SJR 508 aren’t worried about your voice in the Legislature. They just don’t want another elected official being boss of their club.