Recap of the SD Senate State Affairs Committee Hearing

Today, the bill to allow signature withdrawal from petitions, House Bill 1244, was amended and passed in the Senate State Affairs Committee. In its amended form, the bill is substantially less harmful to the initiative process when compared to the original version – signatures can no longer be withdrawn via email, the withdrawal form must be notarized, and the window to withdraw a signature was diminished (but still extends beyond the deadline to submit petitions). Despite the improvements to the bill, I testified in opposition alongside a coalition of other groups coordinated by the South Dakota League of Women Voters.

Proponents of the bill continue to take aim at a specific petition and the alleged improper practices of its circulators, focusing exclusively on the petition to restore access to abortion in South Dakota. In practice, this is either missing the forest for the trees (HB 1244 would affect every petition) or a deliberate attempt by legislators to focus on a single issue while acting to weaken the whole initiative process. In fact, virtually every word of proponent testimony was related to the issue of abortion.

Adding to the bill’s flaws, HB 1244 contains an emergency clause meaning the bill will take effect the moment it is signed by the governor and cannot be referred to the ballot via petition. This element of HB 1244 is both anti-democratic and unnecessary, changing the state’s initiative laws very late in the process with no opportunity for redress through the democratic process. The “emergency” in question, alleged improper practices by petition circulators, is not really an emergency at all and the clause should have been stricken from the bill.

Sadly, House Bill 1244 passed the Senate State Affairs Committee on an 8-1 vote along partisan lines. Sen. Nesiba of Sioux Falls was the only committee member to voice opposition to the bill, along with proposing further amendments, including removing the emergency clause. Sen. Nesiba’s amendments were quickly dismissed by the rest of the committee.

Signature withdrawal is bad policy for South Dakota. This specific version of the signature withdrawal bill not only threatens the initiative process, but undermines our ability as South Dakotans to stop legislative meddling with our constitutional rights. Once again, our legislators are firm in their opposition to direct democracy in South Dakota. In a silver lining for direct democracy in South Dakota, the amended version of HB 1244 is far superior to its original form – requiring hard copy and notarization for withdrawals is far more responsible than the bill's original allowance of unaccountable email withdrawals and an unreasonable length of time to withdraw signatures.

So, while signature withdrawal will very likely become law in South Dakota (we fully expect Governor Noem to sign the bill), the final outcome is still a partial success – a terrible bill became simply a bad bill. Given the current political climate in Pierre, that’s a win for South Dakota.

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