Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Ahlers of Dell Rapids will have no primary challenger. Robert Arnold of Pierre announced his bid for governor last July, eight months before Ahlers entered the race this February, but Arnold, a 20-year-old Oglala Lakota college student, was unable to translate that long head start into petition success. Secretary of State Monae Johnson estimated by random sample that only 1,119 of the 1,407 voter signatures on the nominating petition that Arnold submitted were valid, 113 short of the 1,232 required for Democratic candidates to make this year’s statewide ballot.
Arnold’s signature validity rate was 79.5%. With roughly one out of five signatures invalid, Arnold would have needed to submit 1,550 signatures to survive the Secretary of State’s random sampling and qualify for the ballot. That’s a 25% cushion; at 1,407 signatures, Arnold’s cushion was only 14%, and he would have needed 87.6% of his signatures to be valid.
Ahlers qualified for the ballot with a 93.3% validity rate—1,818 signatures deemed valid out of approximately 1,950 submitted.
Ahlers had the best validity rate of the twelve candidates who filed petitions for statewide office. Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Julian Beaudion and his opponent, incumbent Republican Senator Mike Rounds were the only other candidates to beat 90% validity. The only candidates with validity below 80% were Arnold and GOP gubernatorial candidate Toby Doeden, who did slightly worse than Arnold at 79.4% validity. But Doeden compensated for his relatively low validity by submitting nearly 4,700 signatures, more than twice the GOP qualification threshold.
The following table shows all filed statewide candidates’ petition stats. The Secretary of State reported submitted signatures only for Arnold; I have estimated other candidates’ submitted signatures by dividing the reported estimated valid signatures by reported validity rates.
| candidate | validity rate | valid sigs | submitted sigs | required sigs | valid cushion | submitted cushion | office | party |
| Dan Ahlers | 93.3% | 1,818 | 1,950 | 1,232 | 47.6% | 58.3% | Gov | Dem |
| Mike Rounds | 91.13% | 3,160 | 3,468 | 2,171 | 45.6% | 59.7% | US Senate | GOP |
| Julian Beaudion | 90.32% | 1,750 | 1,938 | 1,232 | 42.0% | 57.3% | US Senate | Dem |
| Jon Hansen | 89.61% | 4,804 | 5,362 | 2,171 | 121.3% | 147.0% | Gov | GOP |
| Nikki Gronli | 87.30% | 1,844 | 2,113 | 1,232 | 49.7% | 71.5% | US House | Dem |
| Dusty Johnson | 87.01% | 4,181 | 4,806 | 2,171 | 92.6% | 121.4% | Gov | GOP |
| Marty Jackley | 86.70% | 3,168 | 3,654 | 2,171 | 45.9% | 68.3% | US House | GOP |
| Justin McNeal | 85.06% | 3,017 | 3,547 | 2,171 | 39.0% | 63.4% | US Senate | GOP |
| James Biolata | 84.23% | 2,576 | 3,059 | 2,171 | 18.7% | 40.9% | US House | GOP |
| Larry Rhoden | 82.05% | 2,575 | 3,139 | 2,171 | 18.6% | 44.6% | Gov | GOP |
| Robert Arnold | 79.53% | 1,119 | 1,407 | 1,232 | -9.2% | 14.2% | Gov | Dem |
| Toby Doeden | 79.4% | 3,722 | 4,690 | 2,171 | 71.4% | 115.9% | Gov | GOP |
The Secretary of State received roughly 39,100 signatures from these twelve statewide candidates and estimated that 33,734 signatures were valid. That yields an 86.2% validity rate. So if you use this year’s candidate petition season as a benchmark for planning a petition drive, you should plan to collect at least 16% more signatures than required to qualify for the ballot. But if you’re feeling careful, keep collecting until you have 20% to 25% more signatures than the minimum required.
That goes in spades for any independents who may be collecting signatures to make this year’s ballot. No independents have filed for statewide offices yet. Anyone interested in running for Governor, US House, or US Senate without party affiliation has until April 28 to submit 3,502 valid voter signatures.
p.s.: The average validity rate on Democratic statewide petitions this year is 88.2%. The average for Republicans is 85.8%.