Protect the people’s power!
We are the Voter Defense Association of South Dakota
Our top priority is protecting the constitutional ballot initiative rights of South Dakota voters. Right now, those rights are under attack!
House Bill 1169 would have severely restricted the ballot initiative process in South Dakota by implementing an extreme geographic distribution requirement on proposed constitutional amendments.
Thanks to the Governor’s veto, the legislators who voted to sustain the Governor’s veto, and the South Dakota voters who contacted their legislators, the deeply flawed and misguided bill will not become law.
The Governor’s Veto of House Bill 1169 was Sustained!
“Simply put, this bill is designed to institute tyranny of the minority. With this bill, a single district will have veto power over the entire state. Petition sponsors could collect the required statewide total and the required district total in 34 of 35 senatorial districts and an initiated amendment would be barred from the ballot. As an example, if a signature drive failed to gather the 454 required signatures from District 23 but collected 40,000 signatures statewide, that petition would fail to qualify for the ballot. HB 1169 is a blatant attempt to strip South Dakotans of their constitutional ballot initiative rights and arrogate even more power to the legislature.”
Read on our report on HB 1169!
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About the VDA
The Voter Defense Association of South Dakota is a nonpartisan political organization established in 2023. Our mission is to defend the ballot initiative rights of South Dakota voters and ensure that laws and regulations governing electoral processes in South Dakota are reasonable, fair, and transparent.