Ballot Access Bills: Drew and Brock Don’t Fear Party Competition

At Saturday’s crackerbarrel in Aberdeen, I asked our legislators to weigh in on two competing bills dealing with ballot access. House Bill 1286 defines “alternative party” status, allows new parties to organize by July 1 of an election year, and allows new and alternative parties to nominate candidates for statewide and Legislative offices after the primary for that year’s general election ballot. House Bill 1259 takes away the ability of any political party to nominate any candidates other than its pick for lieutenant governor… assuming the party has fun a candidate for governor through the petition/primary process.

As I blogged when these two bills were introduced, HB 1286 is the superior legislation. It promotes the creation and activity of new political parties and offers voters more options. It also gets the state out of dutch with the Libertarians and Constitutionists, who are suing the state for its likely unconstitutionally burdensome ballot access rules. HB 1259 only makes our ballot access rules more burdensome and protects major parties and big money candidates from election competition.

Here’s my question to our legislators, followed by their responses:

Rep. Drew Dennert (R-3/Aberdeen) and Senator Brock Greenfield (R-2/Clark) appear ready to vote for easier ballot access for alternative political parties. Rep. Dennert said straight up he’s a YES on 1286 and a NO on 1259. Senator Greenfield was surprised to hear and a bit cautious about Section 7, which gives new parties that brief post-primary window to organize, but he said he’s generally in favor of HB 1286. He said he tends to oppose HB 1259’s changes to the convention system and doesn’t see that that system is broken. Senator Greenfield noted with surprise, as did I, another instance where we agree: “I think once again, Cory, we find ground that we tend to agree on. So, yeah, I think there’s a little tremor under our feet. The earth is quaking.”

Rep. Lana Greenfield (R-2/Doland) sounds like she’s just the opposite. She called HB 1286 “a funny bill” and then resorted to Speaker G. Mark Mickelson’s trope about knotheads forming one-person parties. “I just don’t see where it’s an effective type of bill.” On HB 1259, Rep. Greenfield only said “I haven’t studied that much.”

Senator Al Novstrup (R-3/Aberdeen) ignored HB 1259. On HB 1286, Novstrup said he’s in favor of parties and welcomes additional parties to form if the major parties don’t meet people’s needs. However, he, too, resorted to the Mickelson party-of-one bogeyman:

Everybody would love to run for Governor. Go out and get three signatures and get to run for Governor, and now all of a sudden we’ve got 800 people running for Governor and you’ve got to look through those 800 people to find your candidate….

I’m in favor of doing what we can for our smaller parties, but we sure don’t want to clutter up the ballot to the point of being ridiculous [Sen. Al Novstrup, response to crackerbarrel question about HB 1286 and HB 1259, Aberdeen, SD, 2018.02.10].

Lana and Al both argue against a bogeyman. HB 1286 does not allow one person to form his own party with three signatures. Section 7 says that a new party can organize by July 1 if it submits a petition bearing signatures equaling at least one percent of the last total gubernatorial vote. Currently that’s 2,775 signatures, the same number required of an independent statewide candidate. So if some loner really wants to create his very own Iconoclast Party and run for Governor by himself every year, three measly signatures won’t make that happen. The Iconoclast candidate will have to first get 2,775 registered South Dakota voters to sign a petition, then win at least 2.5% of the total vote each year to keep that party status alive.

I get the feeling Al and Lana are just nervous about seeing more alternatives to their big R on the ballot. Drew and Brock expressed no such fear and appear to be headed toward correct votes—NO on HB 1259, YES on HB 1286—to invite more people and parties to participate in South Dakota’s political process.