Red state, blue ballot: Dems use direct democracy to flip states

With 64-6 and 32-3 majorities in the South Dakota House and Senate, Republicans alone have the power to advance or block their agenda. Yet, Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden’s veto of a key initiative petition reform bill hands Democrats an opening to continue pushing their agenda through the state’s highly manipulated ballot initiative process.

In the Mount Rushmore State, the Democratic Party is slightly less popular than herpes, which forces progressives to rely on massive outside funding to place their proposals directly on the ballot. Although the electorate leans conservative, ballot measures are often complex and confusing — one reason the nation’s founders rejected direct democracy in favor of a representative system.

It’s astonishing how, across red states, only the Freedom Caucus seems willing to stop the left from using ballot initiatives to shift policy in purple and blue directions.

This is especially true when it comes to constitutional amendments. At the federal level, amending the Constitution requires approval from two-thirds of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states. Yet at the state level, well-funded left-wing groups are trying to change constitutions with a simple 51% majority and carefully crafted ballot language — turning red states blue, one vote at a time.

A commonsense safeguard

Last year, liberal groups gathered enough signatures to place several controversial proposals on the South Dakota ballot: codifying abortion as a right, legalizing marijuana, and eliminating partisan primaries. Voters rejected all three, but these efforts reflect a growing trend. In other red states, similar campaigns have succeeded, using direct democracy to bypass conservative legislatures. Why continue to leave this pathway open — allowing progressives to rewrite the state’s constitution through tactics they could never achieve in the Capitol?

House Bill 1169 offered a commonsense safeguard. The bill would have required petition circulators to gather signatures from all 35 state Senate districts, totaling at least 5% of the votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election. This district-level requirement would have supplemented the existing statewide threshold of 10%, already mandated by the state constitution.

Across the country, progressive groups are steering major policy questions directly to the ballot, often collecting most of their signatures from the most liberal population centers. In South Dakota, that means relying on Sioux Falls and Rapid City, rather than seeking broad statewide support.

“This bill would have finally given people in small towns and rural counties a voice in the petition process to amend our constitution,” House Speaker Jon Hansen (R) lamented after the governor’s veto. “If you live in a small, rural community, chances are you’ve never been approached by a petition circulator. That’s because most proposed constitutional amendments are placed on the ballot by paid circulators in Sioux Falls and Rapid City — without input from smaller communities. If you live in a small town, you rarely get a say in what amendments reach the ballot.”

The measure passed the House by a wide margin along party lines and cleared the Senate by a narrower 19-15 vote. Rhoden vetoed the bill earlier this week.

Absurd excuses

In his veto message, the governor hid behind concerns that the bill would not survive legal challenges. He suggested he supported the idea in principle but believed the measure would ultimately backfire — arguing it could empower, rather than restrain, well-funded special interests.

“The additional burden of collecting signatures from each of the 35 senatorial districts, each on a separate petition sheet, risks creating a system where only those with substantial financial resources can effectively undertake a statewide petition drive,” Rhoden wrote. “This undermines the bill's intent by putting South Dakotans at a disadvantage to dark money out-of-state groups.”

The argument is absurd. In a hypothetical scenario where rural districts lean as liberal as urban areas, Rhoden’s claim — that a uniform signature threshold across all districts would burden grassroots groups more than big-money interests — might hold water. In reality, South Dakota’s rural districts remain largely immune to left-wing campaigns. Passing HB 1169 would likely halt nearly all liberal petition efforts in the state.

That’s precisely why former state Sen. Reynold Nesiba, a Democrat from Sioux Falls, said he planned to launch a referendum to repeal the bill. “It will effectively end the constitutional amendment process initiated by citizens in South Dakota,” he warned.

That’s the point. Why would a Republican governor want to give the left a back door to influence state policy?

The idea that the bill would hinder conservative petitions doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, either. If a proposal has genuine conservative support, it should have no trouble passing through the Republican-controlled legislature. Conservatives only turn to the initiative process when liberal Republicans like Rhoden turn a supermajority trifecta into a uniparty circus.

Letting the left win

It’s astonishing how, across red states, only the Freedom Caucus seems willing to stop the left from using ballot initiatives to shift policy in purple and blue directions — just as it did in Alaska. In Missouri, GOP leadership has repeatedly dismissed Freedom Caucus efforts to rein in initiative petitions, even after the left used that very process to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called a special session earlier this year to address widespread petition fraud. But legislative leaders ignored his request and have been slow-walking reform legislation during the regular session.

This reluctance among Republican leaders to limit ballot initiatives reveals a troubling truth: Many of them quietly support certain left-wing goals but don’t want their fingerprints on the results. They’re fine with legalizing recreational marijuana, weary of the abortion fight, and unwilling to oppose Medicaid expansion.

By allowing Democrats to exploit the initiative process, these Republicans effectively outsource controversial policy changes to the ballot box — letting the left win while they avoid tough votes.