In 2006, South Dakota had an initiative on the ballot to ban virtually all abortions. An anonymous donor had contributed $750,000 to get the initiative on the ballot and to carry on the campaign for it. The measure lost, 46% to 54%. Also in 2006, the South Dakota Secretary of State had sued the campaign committee set up to promote the initiative to learn the identity of the committee’s donor.

Technically, the anonymous donor had contributed $750,000 to a corporation, Promising Future, Inc. The anonymous donor owned all the shares of the corporation, but he or she was not the agent of the corporation. The corporation, in turn, had contributed $750,000 to the ballot question committee “South Dakotans for 1215/Vote Yes For Life”. South Dakotans for 1215/Vote Yes For Life had then filed campaign reports saying it received its money from Promising Future. However, the Secretary of State felt that the intent of the law was to force the initiative proponents to reveal the identity of the anonymous person who had set up Promising Future. But, on August 10, 2007, the Circuit Court in Minnehaha County had ruled that the law didn’t require that kind of disclosure. The Secretary of State had appealed. On December 30, 2008, the Supreme Court had ruled unanimously that the lower court had mischaracterized the law, and had remanded the case back to the lower court for a new decision.

However, on November 6, 2009, the lower court had ruled that because the State Supreme Court’s characterization of the campaign finance laws was a new interpretation, one that could not have been known by the anonymous donor at the time of the anonymous donation, it would be unconstitutional to apply the new understanding of the campaign finance laws retroactively. On November 25, 2009, the State said it would not appeal the case again. In the meantime, the legislature has changed the law to make it clear that if this situation occurs in the future, the campaign laws clearly require anyone in the shoes of the anonymous donor to be revealed. The case has been called Secretary of State Chris Nelson v Promising Future, Inc., no. 2008 SD 130 in the State Supreme Court, and CIV 06-4319 in the lower court.

In the United States, it seems there is almost an infinity of reasons why petitions can be challenged. States that require petition sheets to be notarized open the doors for additional types of challenges. Determined challengers may realize that the petition itself has enough signatures of registered voters, so then the challengers try to find something wrong with the paperwork involving notarization.

A group in Maine recently submitted 56,107 valid signatures, to force a referendum on a tax overhaul that the legislature passed earlier this year. Opponents of the referendum petition say that it should not be on the ballot, because at least two of the notaries public who notarized certain sheets got married, and didn’t ever notify the state office that keeps tabs on notaries that their surnames had changed. Because the Secretary of State certified the petition anyway, one challenger sued the Secretary of State to remove the referendum. The lawsuit is Johnson v Dunlap, Kennebec Superior Court, AP 09-56. The case will probably be decided by January 1, 2010.

December is the prime month during which activists should look for state legislators to introduce bills in next year’s legislative sessions. More progress improving ballot access laws comes from persuading state legislators to ease these laws, than via lawsuits. But many states have very early deadlines for legislators to introduce bills. For example, in Indiana, all bills considered in 2010 must have been introduced by the first week in January 2010.