House Bill 1094, the unnecessary and possibly unconstitutional proposal to make South Dakotans get approval from the Secretary of State before exercising their First Amendment petition rights, got some gentle press last week, as James Nord of the Associated Press got sometime petition circulator De Knudson to opine that making circulators register with the state wouldn’t impact her petitioning efforts:
De Knudson, who was part of an unsuccessful campaign to get a measure on last year’s ballot that would have had the top two primary finishers advance to the general election, regardless of party, said she doesn’t think the bill would affect her ability to find circulators. The requirements are basic, she said.
“I believe that some potential circulators may not be comfortable with all of these requirements, but I myself am fine with them,” she said [James Nord, “Bill Would Create Online Ballot Measure Circulator Directory,” AP via Rapid City Journal, 2019.02.27].
My friend De underestimates the impact of a circulator registry that requires posting more personal information on an online database, state approval, and the printing and delivery of official badges will have on recruiting real grassroots volunteers to help with petition drives. Consider how circulating works:
Suppose I’m manning a petition table at the Brown County Fair come August. It’s Saturday morning, I’m working my People Power Petition table, and signers are coming in droves. One signer is so inspired that she offers to take a couple petition sheets and get signatures at her campsite and from her friends and co-workers back in Mobridge.
Now if you’ve done any volunteer organizing, you know that when someone says, “Can I help?” the next words out of your mouth should be, “Yes, here’s how, go to it!” In the old days (i.e., over a hundred years of ballot question petition practice), that’s exactly what I could do: hand this volunteer a few petition sheets, explain the rules, and let her jump into participatory democracy.
Under HB 1094, when someone says, “Can I help?” I have to say, “Well, yeah, but first, I need your name, email, phone number, home address, driver’s license, and occupation. I’ll send that info to Pierre on Monday, the Secretary of State will put all that info on a public database, and then a few days from now you’ll get a badge from Pierre, and then you can start circulating!”
Even if my volunteer is willing to submit to that bureaucracy and wait for that badge, she misses the chance to go to work right now, when she’s immediately excited at the prospect of helping. She misses the chance to help at the table, to get signatures at the fair.
Not being able to capitalize immediately on volunteer enthusiasm is deadly to grassroots organizing. HB 1094’s circulator registry quashes volunteer energy and does serious damage to genuine grassroots ballot measures.
Besides, as short as the circulating window is (a mere 90 days for referenda, and due to all the delays the state has already built into the process, often not much longer for initiatives), losing five good circulating days is an enormous burden to collecting enough signatures to make the ballot.
On the other hand, a petition circulator registry will be a relatively minor paperwork burden for billionaires, corporations, and other big-money interests who are hiring mercenary circulators to fill their ballot question petitions. The big-money sponsors will simply add the registry and badge distribution to their W-4’s and other hiring paperwork and be off and running with their hard-sell tactics.
The end result of HB 1094 is fewer grassroots organizers circulating petitions and an initiative and referendum process further dominated by big-money interests… the very folks measures like HB 1094 are supposedly trying to check.
House Bill 1094 deters South Dakotans from participating in civic affairs. Call your legislators (HB 1094 is near the top of Monday’s Senate calendar) and tell them to vote No on HB 1094.
