Secretary of State Monae Johnson is not good at reading election law. As I noted Wednesday, SOS Johnson is incorrectly telling people circulating referendum petitions that their circulator handouts must include “a fiscal note (if applicable).” Johnson’s written guidance on referring state laws is stamped “Last Updated: December 12, 2025“, but that update failed to notice 2025 Senate Bill 91, signed by the Governor on March 25 and enacted July 1, 2025, which removed the requirement that circulator handouts include fiscal notes.
The Secretary’s referendum guidance also appears to ignore another 2025 law changing the ruyles for ballot question petitions. In Point #13, Secretary Johnson gives this guidance:
Signers must sign their name, but a circulator may fill in any of the other information. A circulator may fix any errors a voter may have made (such as writing their date of birth instead of date of signing). The date, address, county of registration, and printed name may be added by the circulator prior to the petition being filed. Ditto marks may not be used [SD Secretary of State, “How to Refer a State Law,” updated 2025.12.12, p. 3].
This guidance appears to contradict SDCL 2-1-1, to which Speaker Jon Hansen’s 2025 House Bill 1256 added this language:
When signing a petition to propose a measure or an amendment to the Constitution by initiative, or to refer a law to a vote of the electors of the state, an individual must provide the individual’s name, signature, address at which the individual is currently registered to vote, the county in which the individual is registered as a voter, and the date of signing [SDCL 2-1-1, excerpt, added by 2025 HB 1256].
I’d like to read that statute the way SOS Johnson apparently does: “provide” can mean the voters says, “I’m registered to vote at 912 N 1st Street, Aberdeen Brown County” and the circulator can write that down on the petition. But as I noted when 2025 HB 1256 took effect last summer, Speaker Hansen’s bill amended but retained language directly stating that circulators may fill in the printed name, address, and date of signing for voters who sign nominating petitions. Speaker Hansen, who is also a lawyer and thus should be paying close attention to the words he puts into law, included no such language saying circulators of ballot question petitions may provide such assistance. On ballot question petitions, Hansen’s law refers only to signers providing their information.
A close reading of Legislative intent, as well as Speaker Hansen’s history of treating initiative and referendum petitions differently from candidate petitions, indicates that SOS Johnson fails to understand what 2025 HB 1256 means for ballot question petitioners. Circulators filling in addresses and dates for signers of an initiative or referendum petition invite a legal challenge from ballot question haters like Jon Hansen, who has rigged I&R law with legal traps to prevent measures from going to a vote of the people.
I don’t know how a judge would read 2025 HB 1256, but neither does Monae Johnson. Heck, her incorrect statement about the fiscal note she can’t even read the plain language of an election statuyte, let alone predict a judicial opinion.
So circulators, don’t let Secretary Johnson’s dubious guidance lead you into Hansen’s HB 1256 trap: Make sure your signers fill in all six boxes on their petition line—signature, printed name, voting address, voting town, date, and voting county, all in their own hand.
Hansen knows what’s best for all South Dakotans, just ask him.