On January 26, South Dakota filed this reply brief in the Eighth Circuit in Dakotans for Health v Johnson, 25-2940. The issue is the February deadline for initiative petitions. The U.S. District Court had invalidated it. The state’s brief says that the state needs the early deadline because sometimes individuals challenge a decision that the initiative has enough signatures, and if there is such a challenge, every signature must be checked (the initial determination of whether an initiative has enough valid signatures uses a random sampling, which doesn’t take nearly as long as checking every signatures does).
A February deadline is terrible, especially in a cold weather state like South Dakota. When I worked initiative petitions there way back in 2006 the deadline was in May.
Why would there need to be a date specific deadline? Don’t most states simply create a deadline after the initial paperwork is submitted and approved based on the allowed length of time to gather signatures and the proposal is placed on the ballot at an available opportunity after and if everything is successful to do so?
No, most states don’t have initiatives, as they shouldn’t.
Of the ones that do, most require signatures for a specific election by a specific deadline, and the proponents must start over if they fail.