South Dakota’s newest resolutions are part of a nationwide initiative to stop citizens from making their voices heard.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
After suffering a string of stinging defeats at the ballot box when Americans were given the opportunity to vote directly on issues like reproductive rights and Medicaid expansion, Republicans across the country have been trying to prevent their constituents from engaging in this kind of direct democracy — primarily because the outcomes so consistently show how unpopular their own policies are.
The latest example of this anti-democratic power grab comes from South Dakota, where GOP efforts to make it more difficult for voters to have a say are especially historically significant.
South Dakota was the first US state to make ballot measures — which allow for legislation to be enacted or rejected by a popular vote — part of its constitution. But South Dakota Republican lawmakers recently voted to advance two resolutions that could subvert the will of their constituents and make it harder for their voices to be heard. And they’re not stopping there.
The first is a ballot initiative that would require South Dakota’s Medicaid expansion, which voters approved in 2022 with a 56.2 percent majority, to be contingent on receiving 90 percent federal funding. This comes as congressional Republicans have advanced a budget proposal that would cut Medicaid spending.
The other measure to be put before South Dakotans would replace the simple majority currently needed to pass ballot initiatives with a requirement to clear a 60 percent threshold in the future. Ironically, this measure would pass with a simple majority.
Pro-democracy organizations, however, are vowing to fight what they view as a power grab by GOP lawmakers who are irked that voters support policies they oppose.
“South Dakota’s out-of-touch politicians are once again working to give themselves the power to completely ignore the will of the people,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, an advocacy group that tracks ballot measures across the US and promotes those that protect reproductive rights, health care access, and similar policies.
GOP lawmakers have gone about their project of limiting the power of ballot initiatives in a way that is not helping their cause.
Rep. John Hughes, a Republican representing Sioux Falls who sponsored the resolution, said it is necessary to ensure that “only amendments with overwhelming public backing are adopted” without explaining what’s wrong with a simple majority of South Dakotans prevailing.
While Hughes is trying to put a positive spin on his resolution, Fairness Project’s communications and digital director, Alexis Magnan-Callaway, put the intention of the initiative more bluntly. She told WhoWhatWhy that it would “effectively enact minority rule” and pave the way to shut constituents out of the decision-making process.
Magnan-Callaway cited a 2024 Florida ballot measure that would have enshrined the right to abortion in the state’s constitution as an example of how a supermajority requirement can subvert the will of the people.
“A majority of Floridians voted to pass reproductive health care access and the minority won, because there was a 60 percent threshold in place and they were just shy of that threshold,” she explained.
She argued that South Dakota Republicans are aiming to accomplish the same thing with this resolution: Stop popular policies from going into effect because they don’t personally agree with them.
“Extremist legislators are trying to roll back voters’ rights as a tactic to stop popular progressive ballot initiatives from becoming the law of the land, following a year of remarkable wins,” the Fairness Project said about the new South Dakota resolutions.
South Dakota Republicans have been clearly upset about voters expressing their opinions. In February, former South Dakota Republican lawmaker Brian Gosch, an advocate for groups who oppose reproductive rights, said: “There are things being put on the ballot that they can’t get through the Legislature,” adding, “They’re trying to bypass that process, to go around it and then get their way through some other means.”
But that “other means” has been a fundamental part of the state’s constitution since 1898.
South Dakota is far from the only state where anti-democratic legislation is taking hold: Many other states are considering similar bills that would suppress democracy. These include bills proposing stricter rules on gathering signatures, increasing the requirements for the signatures themselves, and requiring a specified number of signatures from every district in a state.
Magnan-Callaway told WhoWhatWhy that the Fairness Project is tracking more than 150 bills like these across 20 states, almost all of them Republican strongholds.
“This is a very widespread and coordinated effort, we think, to degrade direct democracy and [impede] voters’ abilities to pass policies themselves,” Magnan-Callaway said. “It’s definitely part of something bigger, and it’s something that we’re seeing all over the place.”
“This is such an insidious way to undermine democracy,” she added.
She believes the Republicans who introduced and are backing these resolutions “are counting on some level of voter fatigue to succeed.” Political jargon can sometimes make such alterations seem unimportant, she explained. But that language is part of how Republican lawmakers are able to gradually degrade the will of the people. Over time, anti-democratic resolutions like the ones previously described make it “harder to qualify for the ballot,” and can eventually shut voters out of the process altogether.
Magnan-Callaway fears that resolutions like these will allow Republican lawmakers to “get rid of the ballot measure process in a state altogether by putting so much red tape around it that nobody can get to it.”
Ballot measures are much more important than Americans think, she noted.
While many voters “really think about elections as being about voting for people, voters have much more power than that,” Magnan-Callaway concluded. “They can vote on policies directly, and it is the most pure form of democracy: direct democracy. You’re cutting right through the representatives.”
That is, of course, if Republicans will let them.
