PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — The battle over Constitutional Amendment H that South Dakota voters will decide on Tuesday is the latest in a series of disputes about how political candidates should be chosen in the state.
H calls for all candidates seeking an office to be on one primary ballot that all voters would receive, with the top two finishers moving on to the general election. It’s an attempt to counter a trend that has seen the Legislature and every statewide elected office in South Dakota come to be dominated by Republicans whose perspectives are more conservative.
State lawmakers in recent years have dealt with the state’s first-ever impeachment and removal of Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, who was nominated by delegates at the 2018 South Dakota Republican convention. Four years later, challenger Monae Johnson took the Republican nomination away from the incumbent secretary of state, Steve Barnett, at the 2022 convention.
So it was no surprise that legislation was proposed in 2023 to move the nomination process for attorney general and secretary of state to the June primary elections. The issue badly split Republican lawmakers and eventually ended in a deadlock. That left the nominations in the hands of convention delegates, who are elected in the primaries by voters, rather than have voters directly decide who should be nominated.
Meanwhile Republicans brought and passed a separate piece of legislation that banned the South Dakota Board of Elections from adopting what’s known as ranked-choice voting. The ban’s lead sponsor, Sen. John Wiik, is now chairman for the South Dakota Republican Party. On Amendment H, the South Dakota Republican central committee has taken an official position of opposing it. Wiik wrote the ‘no’ statement in the ballot-measures guide. The South Dakota Democratic central committee also opposes H.
The South Dakotans who are funding the Amendment H campaign are for the most part prominent names from the Sioux Falls area who are current or former Republicans. Their vote-yes committee’s mid-October report showed $690,725.06 of income and $503,208.01 of spending.
South Dakota doesn’t limit the amount that can be contributed to a ballot-measure committee. The yes side is putting big money into trying to convince voters to pass H. Its mid-October report showed about a dozen contributions that, by South Dakota standards, were unusually large:
- $150,000 from Joe Kirby of Sioux Falls;
- $100,000 from Mark Merrill of Santa Monica, California;
- $78,400 from Tom Heinz of Dakota Dunes;
- $75,000 from David and Deana Knudson of Sioux Falls;
- $50,000 from Jennifer Kirby of Sioux Falls;
- $50,000 from Matthew Paulson of Sioux Falls;
- $25,000 from Jane Heinz of Dakota Dunes;
- $25,000 from Dana Dykhouse of Sioux Falls;
- $25,000 from Nathan Peterson of Sioux Falls;
- $24,000 from Dan Kirby of Sioux Falls; and
- $10,000 from Kevin Schieffer of Sioux Falls.
Since then, the committee has received additional large contributions of $50,000 from Joe Kirby, its chair, and $10,000 from treasurer Deana Knudson.
Merrill, the California donor, is co-chair of a group called Unite for America, a federal-level political action committee based in Denver that’s helped financially to move H forward. Its website describes the organization as “a philanthropic venture fund that invests in nonpartisan election reform to foster a more representative and functional government.” The vote-yes committee in its mid-May campaign filing reported receiving $451,150 from Unite for America.
Meanwhile another group, Article IV, based in Arlington, Virginia, has been spending even more in support of H. Its website says the organization is “strictly nonpartisan” and claims that two-party competition “has collapsed…As a result, closed, primary elections are often the only contests that matter.”
South Dakota has traditionally been Republican, especially in the Legislature and state government offices. Currently, the 105-member Legislature has Republican supermajorities of 31 senators and 63 representatives, and every seat is up for election this year. In June, Republicans had primaries for 18 of the 35 Senate districts. With each district having two House seats, there were Republican House primaries in 26 of the districts.
Democrats, by comparison, had one primary, and that was for a Senate seat.
In South Dakota, independents can vote in Democratic and Libertarian primaries, but Republicans allow only voters registered as Republicans. This year, that meant, in all but one instance, voters in the legislative primaries had to be registered as Republicans.
The results are that 17 Republican candidates for Senate won’t have a general-election opponent on Tuesday. In the House, 35 Republicans are guaranteed seats, because their districts didn’t have at least four candidates competing for the two seats.
What’s further happened is that Republicans have been nominating legislative candidates who in many cases tend to be more politically conservative, and they often go on to win, especially because Democrats frequently haven’t fielded candidates.
When it comes to ballot measures, South Dakota also has no limit on how much outside groups can spend on communications with voters, so long as they don’t send the money through the ballot-measure committee. That’s on display this year with Amendment H.
Through Sunday, state-level filings show that Article IV had spent $1,020,672 on mailers and online ads trying to convince voters to support H.
The pro-H groups have, so far, dominated paid media and have financially overwhelmed the Vote No on H committee that Ezra Hays, a Republican from Piedmont, first organized on July 30. His side’s mid-October campaign report showed $86,276.25 of income, including $50,000 from James Koehler of Aberdeen, and total spending at that point of $18,480.96.
The no committee reported among its contributions $5,000 from the South Dakota Freedom Caucus political action committee; as well as a total of $7,250 from 11 county-level Republican organizations and $1,000 from South Dakota Canvassing, which describes itself as an election-integrity group.
The no side’s report also reflected donations of digital ads worth $5,000 that were purchased by the Minnehaha County Republicans organization and yard signs valued at $500 from the Lawrence County Republicans group.
