We appear to be escaping this Legislative Session without any major whacks to initiative and referendum. But the Senate last week gave final approval to cutting petition time for candidates.
House Bill 1095 originally sought to move the nominating petition deadline for partisan candidates from the last Tuesday of March to the second Tuesday of March. Depending on the quirks of the calendar, that would have reduced the time candidates for Congress, Governor, and Legislature have to collect signatures on their nominating petitions by two or three weeks. House State Affairs gave us back a week, amending the deadline to the third Tuesday in March.
HB 1095 went to the House with an emergency clause that would have put the new deadline in effect immediately, changing this year’s candidate deadline from March 31 to March 17. That emergency clause required a two-thirds vote to advance the bill, but in its first floor vote in the House, HB 1095 didn’t even win a simple majority. Sponsor Rep. Rebecca Reimer (R-26B/Chamberlain) moved to reconsider, and the House amended out the emergency clause, leaving the bill to take effect July 1. As amended, HB 1095 will not affect this year’s statewide and Legislative candidates, but its new third-Tuesday-in-August deadline for local elections coinciding with the November general.
Removing the emergency clause flipped 33 nays, and the bill passed 64–4. The only nays on the emergency-less deadline change came from right-wingers Schaefbauer, Mulally, Lems, and Speaker Hansen. Note that Hansen and Lems are running mates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor and that Hansen has contended that more time for circulating initiative petitions is really bad.
HB 1095 skated through the Senate unchanged. Senate State Affairs approved it unanimously, and last Tuesday, the full Senate approved the deadline change 26–8.
Reducing the time people have to decide to run for office and win access to the ballot is an antidemocratic change, but the only Democrat to vote against this erosion of democratic participation was Senator Red Dawn Foster (D-27/Pine Ridge).
HB 1095 now awaits Republican Governor Larry Rhoden’s signature.
Hansen knows what’s good for ALL South Dakotans. Really, don’t think twice about it.