South Dakota now excludes 5,735 registered voters from participating in the selection of governor, legislators, judges, county commissioners, and other state and local officials and ballot questions, just because they don’t have their proof of citizenship handy. South Dakota Searchlight has found mistakes on the federal-only voter list:
South Dakota Searchlight purchased a list of the state’s federal-only voters from the Secretary of State’s Office as of Oct. 6 and emailed county auditors about voters whose registration information — including their original registration date or mailing address — raised questions about whether they belonged on the list. In three instances, auditors said the voters had been mistakenly designated as federal-only and corrected their status [Makenzie Huber, “South Dakota’s Federal-Only Voter List Grows to Nearly 6,000, Surprising Some Who Are on It,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.10.13].
And as one might have expected from policy driven by Trumpublican election paranoia, the “federal-only” restriction of voter rights is disproportionately suppressing non-Republican voters:
About 40% of federal-only voters are either independent or non-politically affiliated (meaning they left the affiliation portion of the form blank), 38% are Republicans, and 21% are Democrats. Libertarian and “other” registered voters make up 1% of federal-only voters [Huber, 2026.10.13].
The percentage of Democrats on the non-federal list matches their 21.5% share of South Dakota’s general electorate. But indy/NPA voters make up only 25% of South Dakota’s voters, while Republicans make up 52.8%.
The deadline for registering to vote in the November 3 election is this coming Monday, October 19. Huber reports that the Secretary of State’s online Voter Information Portal doesn’t say up front whether you’ve been moved to federal-only status; you have to click on your sample ballot to see if it includes Rhoden/Ahlers and Amendments I–L or, better yet, just call your county auditor, who probably has her poop in a far better group than your lame-duck Secretary of State.