The South Dakota Secretary of State has determined that the referendum petition concerning this year’s ballot access bill has enough valid signatures, so the voters will vote on the bill on November 8, 2016. The bill, SB 69, was signed into law earlier this year. It makes ballot access worse for newly-qualifying parties, independent candidates, and candidates seeking a place on a primary ballot.

Because the referendum petition has enough valid signatures, the law it challenges won’t go into effect for 2016. The AFL-CIO and the South Dakota Democratic Party did most of the work of collecting the signatures. The requirement was 13,871 signatures, and the campaign submitted 16,819.

Coincidentally, the ACLU is suing over one provision of SB 69, the part of the bill that moves the petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties from March 29 to March 1. It seems somewhat likely that the state will now try to persuade the judge to put a freeze on the lawsuit until after the November 8, 2016 election. However, there is at least one precedent from Ohio that says challenged ballot access restrictions are ripe for a court decision, whether that law has been subject to an upcoming referendum or not.

It is also possible the 2016 session of the South Dakota legislature will amend or repeal SB 69. In the recent past, the Arizona and Ohio legislatures repealed restrictive election laws after the legislators learned that the voters had forced a referendum. The legislators in those two states preferred to repeal their own laws rather than face the possibility the voters would reject those laws.

As already noted, today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state initiative process can be used to change laws affecting congressional elections. Rick Hasen notes today that Article II, which describes the presidency and presidential elections, also says, “the legislature” shall pass election laws concerning presidential elections. It says, “Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…”. Hasen notes that it now seems obvious that state initiatives can also amend state laws concerning presidential elections.

This is good news for the National Popular Vote movement, which has been trying for years to get state legislatures to pass the National Popular Vote Plan. The group has had some success, but is still not close to meeting the legal requirement that states holding a majority of the electoral college must sign up before the plan goes into effect. No state has passed the plan during 2015. The National Popular Vote organization has been mulling over using the initiative process to approve the plan in certain states. Now the group can feel confident that it is constitutional to use the initiative to advance its idea. Michigan is a state that has the initiative process, and which has a fairly large number of electoral votes, and in which the voters might plausibly approve the plan.