Law journal article proves that citizen ballot questions are under attack

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3 hours ago

If you've ever suffered from that nagging feeling that the Legislature is systematically trying to undermine your right to petition something onto the ballot, you're not alone. I've had it, too.
We need to start trusting that gut feeling. It turns out we weren't wrong. That's exactly what the Republican majority in the Legislature has been trying to do. It has just been proven by three authors of a South Dakota Law Review article: 'Have Recent Legislative Changes in South Dakota Made Using the Initiated Measure Process More Difficult?'
It seems the answer to the question in the title of the article is yes, and how.
You can find the article on the Law Review's website. Be warned: at 40-some pages, it's not an easy read. There are footnotes strewn about and readers may struggle with some of the world's ugliest charts. However it still tells a compelling tale of how, since 2017, the Republican super-majority in the Legislature has been whittling away at the rights of citizens to petition measures onto the ballot.
Republicans may scoff at the article as so much whining from the left as two of the authors are well-known Democrats: activist Cory Heidelberger and former State Sen. Reynold Nesiba. While a Republican byline would have been nice for the sake of balance, there's no disputing the truth of the facts they have compiled. These bills were filed and are there for anyone to look up.
Their paper gets particularly interesting when it goes about listing the Legislature's 14 worst bills designed to cut back the rights of citizens to petition an initiative onto the ballot. Those range from insisting on a larger font size on petitions to make them unwieldy, to allowing petition signers to later withdraw their names after the petition has been submitted, and a couple of attempts to raise the vote total needed for passage of the initiative beyond a simple majority.
Some of these attacks on our rights were defeated at the ballot box; some were challenged in court where they fell short of being entirely constitutional. Sadly, some were enacted into law. At least now, through the work of the article's authors, the grim history of the war on ballot initiatives in South Dakota is summed up in one place.
Unfortunately, while that history has been chronicled, the siege still continues. The authors go on to mention seven petition-related bills and five constitutional amendments submitted in the 2025 legislative session, 10 of which, they say, sought to curtail the rights of citizens to initiate ballot measures.
When legislators want to amend the state constitution themselves, they have to convince a majority of their colleagues to send the amendment to voters. This legislative quest to get on the 2026 ballot through constitutional amendments comes from the same party that tries to curtail voter access to the petition process by claiming that voters have ballot fatigue with so many issues to decide on Election Day. This ignores the fact that in each case, more than 17,000 South Dakotans applied their signatures to petitions, a sure sign that there are plenty of people who think the ballot issue is something that should go before voters.
This years-long attempt to curtail the initiative process is nothing more than a means for the Republican super-majority to solidify its power by cutting off people they don't agree with from access to the ballot. Republican efforts aren't trying to make the process better or more secure. They're just tired of beating back attempts to legalize marijuana and abortion.
The irony here is that in the Statehouse, no piece of legislation is ever blocked. Sure, there may be some arm-twisting that could lead to a bill being tabled or withdrawn, but each bill is handled in the light of day. These same Republicans who are so upright and transparent with legislation are working overtime to have darkness descend on the ballot box.
Their attempts to slow or stop citizen access to the ballot initiative process is a sign of the power that citizens wield. The recent law journal article has proven that this notion that our rights are under attack is more than just a gut feeling. We now have a historic record that spells out the way Republicans have been trying to take away the power of citizens to petition their government.
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Law journal article proves that citizen ballot questions are under attack