Coronavirus didn’t kill the payday-lending-cap petition in Nebraska. Petition sponsors submitted more than 120,000 signatures Thursday, well above the 85,200 required to make the November…
Tag: initiative
SD Dems exec Pam Cole says coronavirus killed Dems’ chances of getting a U.S. House candidate on the 2020 ballot: But, Cole said, the biggest…
Campaign finance reports are finally in from all ballot questions committees that circulated petitions in 2019. Let’s compare the successful petition drives with my own…
Economist and Senator Reynold Nesiba (D-15/Sioux Falls) is winding up for a one-two counterpunch to the Republican war on initiative and referendum. This morning I…
Senator Reynold Nesiba (D-15/Sioux Falls) is doing the people’s work in Pierre. Yesterday he filed two bills, Senate Bill 102 and Senate Bill 112, to…
Our victory in SD Voice v. Noem II (and that’s not the editorial we—the judge’s ruling in my favor was a win for all South…
“It’s a bad day for the rule of law in South Dakota,” whimpers Representative Jon Hansen, as if, as Trumpists like to claim, a Constitutional exercise of checks and balances against overreach by one branch of government is really some extralegal coup.
The U.S. District Court ruling Friday overturning Hansen’s 2019 House Bill 1094 did make for a bad day, not for the rule of law, but for the unchecked rule of lawmakers like Hansen who crave absolute power and hold in contempt the voters and their First Amendment rights.
[I proceed now into heavy quoting of a legal ruling, which itself is rife with quotes within quotes and complicated legal citations. I omit the judge’s internal citations and simply put any text I take from the ruling in quote marks (for short passages) or blockquotes (for longer passages). To see whether the words come from Judge Kornmann or from cases he cited, please see his original document.]
Judge Charles Kornmann makes clear from the first page of his ruling in SD Voice v. Noem II that he acts with the utmost respect for the law and the proper place of the judiciary in evaluating it:
I’ve said many times I won’t exert myself heavily for or against marijuana policy. But now that we have to vote on two pot initiatives,…
One—one!—initiative petition has qualified for the 2020 ballot. On Thursday, Secretary of State Steve Barnett validated his first petition, the medical marijuana measure proposed by…
Posts on SD Voice v. Noem II Trial: Harassment by Petition Blockers in 2015 Shows HB 1094 Circulator Registry and Badges Dangerous, Misguided Secretary of…