Good News for Our Signature Drive!
We have some good news from Pierre! During the most recent legislative session, South Dakota lawmakers enacted a bill (SB 113) that establishes a concrete deadline for submitting completed initiative petitions to the South Dakota Secretary of State.
In July 2019, Cory Heidelberger, on behalf of SD Voice, filed a lawsuit to overturn South Dakota’s restrictive ballot initiative petition deadline. In December 2019, the U.S. District Court of South Dakota heard arguments on the case. In August of 2021, Judge Kornmann ruled that the state could justify a twelve-month deadline for petitions for constitutional amendments but could not do so for statutory initiatives. The deadline for statutory petitions was therefore set to six months before the election (May 2022) and the deadline for constitutional amendments remained the same (November 2021).
Heidelberger appealed the court’s decision for constitutional amendments and oral arguments took place in October 2022. In February of this year, the Eighth Court ruled in favor of Heidelberger again and deemed the twelve-month deadline unconstitutional for both constitutional and statutory initiatives. At the same time, the court left the decision as to the precise deadline date in the hands of the South Dakota Legislature.
For a little under a month, we were left without an answer as to when our petitions were due. Thankfully, the legislature answered that question when they passed SB 113 to establish the deadline for constitutional amendment petitions as the first Tuesday in May – which is in line with the court’s ruling. SB 113 passed the Senate 22-2 and passed the House 65-5.
To summarize, our petitions will now be on May 7, 2024 – that gives us six more months to circulate than what we would have had in 2022.
This deadline extension will undoubtedly help our signature drive but we still need volunteers! To volunteer with South Dakota Open Primaries, please visit the volunteer page on our website.
