The South Dakota Senate State Affairs Committee has introduced SB 69, which moves the petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties from March to February. The bill was introduced at the request of the State Board of Elections and the Secretary of State.
These state officials probably don’t remember that in 1984, South Dakota’s Attorney General and Secretary of State admitted that a February petition deadline for a newly-qualifying party is unconstitutional, and the legislature then moved that deadline to April. This admission was made after the South Dakota Libertarian Party sued the Secretary of State. That case is reported at 579 F Supp 735 (1984). However, the only decision the judge had to make in that case was that the wording on the party petition was unconstitutionally restrictive. The judge didn’t need to adjudicate the part of the case that challenged the February deadline, because the state admitted it was too early.
SB 69 also moves the deadline for primary petitions from March 1 to February 1. Newly-qualifying parties in South Dakota, like all qualified parties, must nominate by primary for most, but not all, partisan offices. Other states whose party petition deadlines have been held to be too early have provided that newly-qualifying parties need not participate in a primary. States that made that change after their deadlines were invalidated include Arkansas, California (but only for presidential status), Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wyoming. Also after North Dakota’s deadline for newly qualifying parties was held too early, the state made it possible for independent presidential candidates to have a partisan label printed on the ballot; and when Hawaii was being sued over its party deadline, it settled the case by also letting independent presidential candidates have a partisan label.
During the last eight years, the South Dakota legislature has made ballot access steadily worse, year after year. In 2007 it removed the ability of independent candidates to have a partisan label other than just “independent” on the ballot, and made it more difficult for members of a small qualified party to get on their own party’s primary ballot, and moved the petition deadline for new parties from April to March. In 2013 the legislature moved the non-presidential independent petition deadline from June to April. South Dakota is the only state in the nation in which it is impossible for a newly-qualifying party to have its name on the November ballot (at least for President) unless it qualified in time to have its own primary.
Every election continues to be NEW —
regardless of ALL moron lawyers and judges.
—
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
EQUAL ballot access tests for ALL candidates for the same office in the same election area.
This is insane. It is brutally cold in February in South Dakota.
The Senate hearing on this bill is Wednesday, Jan. 21. Does anyone know if Emmet is still the state chair and if he still lives in South Dakota? Someone told me he now lives in Colorado. If he isn’t the LP state chair, who is? Thank you.
In 2014, South Dakota had 188 candidates seeking 105 legislative positions (1.79 per position).
In only 12 of the 72 districts, would a Top 2 primary have reduced the number of candidates to the general election.
South Dakota has 35 legislative districts, each of which elects a senator. 33 of the legislative districts elect 2 representatives at-large, and 2 of the legislative districts are divided into subdistricts which elect 1 representative.
Only 5 of the 35 senate races had so many as 3 candidates. Only 6 of the 33 2-seat representative races had 5 or more candidates. One of the four one-seat representative races had 3 candidates.
If South Dakota were to adopt the Top 2 Open Primary system with a September primary, there would be no need for party qualification, solving the concerns of both Richard Winger and Andy.
Mathematically Top Two is a far superior system for electing an alternative to the two major parties.
It creates a scenario where two candidates receiving 33.33% (plus one vote) or more are guaranteed to advance to the general election and a third candidate receiving 33.33% will not advance.
However when additional names are on the ballot (usually from major parties?) that causes a “split vote problem” in plurality elections and then the maximum needed gets lowered from 33.33% (plus one vote) with each additional candidate.
I see Top Two as a slightly improved way for voters to unite behind one candidate and to break the stranglehold that the status quo has on elections over what was before.
Top Two gives the limelight to the unifier who advances to the runoff in single-winner elections.
While I oppose all single-winner elections, they are considered the norm in US-style plurality elections.
Fortunately, the only at-large national election district in the USA is a two-member district (even though it’s seen as another single-winner district.
In 2012, I ran for POTUS on a United Coalition with Roseanne Barr [Green Tea] and I won the only state primary for Libertarian candidates which fell before their national convention in Las Vegas.
I would have posted more information during 2012 but for some reason I wasn’t permitted to post in BAN.
But in 2015 we’re going stronger and smarter than ever. Won’t you join us?
http://usparliament.org/usap-wp
I won the 2012 Missouri Libertarian Party primary with 52.7%. Not 50%. 52.7%.
Gary Johnson was also on the Missouri ballot – as a Republican campaigning as “the answer to the two-party system”. But I have yet to hear how he is the answer other than his claim that by electing his name, the issue of the lack of representation for the people would be resolved.
It is not true that James Ogle was ever denied the ability to post on BAN. He may have had computer problems that created a problem, but I never prevented him from posting.
James Ogle says top-two shakes up the status quo. The facts say otherwise. There were 25 minor party and independent candidates elected to state legislatures in November 2012, all from non-top-two states. There were 23 minor party and independent candidates elected to state legislatures in November 2014, all from non-top-two states.
The reason independent gubernatorial candidate Mike Myers had to file a lawsuit to change his running mate in 2014 is that no legal provision existed to let him do so. The reason for that, which South Dakota’s political journalists have completely ignored, is that independents never used to have to finalize their candidacies until the beginning of August, on the same date as the parties.
When I ran for Congress as a libertarian-leaning independent in 1996, my petitions weren’t due until August 6. Since then I believe our Republican state legislature has moved the date forward at least three times: first to two weeks after the primaries, then to the day of the primaries, and finally to the current date in April.
When the legislature first moved the date from August to June, Ralph Nader sued and won, forcing the state to move the deadline back to August, but the ruling only applied to presidential candidates.
When the legislature tried to move the date from June to April in 2009, Secretary of State Chris Nelson warned, “At some point, an independent’s going to challenge that. Their question to the court is going to be, what is the state’s compelling interest for compelling … an independent candidate to file so early?”
Nelson added, “The state doesn’t need to know who independent candidates are until August, when we begin putting the ballot together.” The 2009 bill, which was cosponsored by Jason Gant, was defeated.
In 2012, the same bill was reintroduced. Secretary of State Jason Gant testified in support, and the bill passed. Shantel Krebs voted in favor of the bill.
There are clear legal precedents declaring independent and minor-party early petition deadlines invalid. Myers shouldn’t have settled for a ruling that merely lets independent candidates for governor change their running mates. He should have sued to have the filing deadline returned to its original date in August.
The only interest in an earlier date for independent candidates is not a state interest but a partisan one.
Emmett (with two t’s) has moved to Colorado. I don’t know whether he’s still the SDLP chair.
Thanks to the South Dakota ACLU, it seems I will be permitted to testify by telephone on January 21, Wednesday (tomorrow). I will propose an amendment which would say that parties that qualify by February of an election year would use the primary, but parties that don’t submit their petition until late June would still be on the November ballot, but they would nominate by convention. South Dakota already has procedures for all parties to nominate candidates for certain offices by convention, so this wouldn’t be a complicated idea to implement. The idea is based on Nebraska’s code, which says that parties that submit a petition by February nominate by primary, and parties that don’t submit a petition until August 1 nominate by convention. Rhode Island has a similar provision.
Richard, Scott Bartlett of the SD Constitution Party emailed me in response to this saying, “Emmet and I had lunch a couple of months ago – He was still living in SD then. There are a few people working on this.” FYI.
Do you have lists of those minor party and independent candidates?
Do you include Nebraska in your statistics?
You are also cherry-picking the data since Louisiana does not have legislative elections (other than special elections) on the dates you chose.
Yes, those candidates are listed in print issues of Ballot Access News. I sent BAN to you for a while, but then you said on the phone sometimes you didn’t even open the envelope, so after a year or two I stopped sending it. But you can see back issues on the web page. The January 2015 issue says that my earlier issues, which listed all the 2014 independent legislative winners, failed to include one from New Hampshire.
Thank you. As I expected most of the independent and minor party winners were from smaller states (AK, ME, RI, VT, and NH) have 8 congressmen and 13 independent or minor party legislators.
That, Louisiana a medium-sized state has independent candidates is noteworthy.
The other two independents were elected under exceptional circumstances.
Rusty Kidd was first elected to the Georgia House in a special election in 2009. As you probably know, Georgia special elections use the same format as in California and Texas – with all comers on the ballot, and a runoff if no candidate has a majority.
Kidd received about 44% of the vote in the 2009 special election, and advanced to the runoff against a Democrat. Two Republicans split the vote enough to permit a Democrat to win. Kidd easily defeated the Democrat in the runoff, and has since been re-elected in general elections with no Republican opponents.
The other 2009 special election runoffs in Georgia all featured either DD or RR contests.
Harri Anne Smith in Alabama was more or less expelled from the Republican Party. She had been elected to the Senate as a Republican three times, when she ran for the Republican nomination for US Representative. After losing the primary runoff, she endorsed the Democratic candidate for Congress, who went on to win the seat, which had been held by a Republican since 1964.
Smith was prevented from running for re-election to the senate as a Republican in 2010, but was narrowly re-elected as an independent over a Republican opponent. She was re-elected in 2014 as an independent.
Her election should be considered illustrative of the failure of the partisan primary nomination scheme.