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.
