South Dakota
Ballot Security
What Politicians Say
While Governor and Trump loyalist Kristi Noem has complained about “rigged election systems,” the biggest fight over elections law in the state has nothing to do with 2020.
Hoping to get around the state’s Republican leaders, advocates for expanding Medicaid proposed a voter referendum on the issue for November. Similar ballot measures have passed in six other states.
The legislature pushed back, putting an amendment on the June 7 primary ballot that would require ballot measures with higher price tags such as Medicaid expansion to get 60% of the vote in order to pass.
The amendment failed on a nearly 2-to-1 vote.
A recent lawsuit found the state violated federal law on voter registration, while new laws passed since 2020 have sped up ballot counting and barred private donations to run elections.
Ease of Voting
In May, a federal judge in South Dakota ruled that multiple state agencies had failed to follow voter registration standards required under federal law.
The lawsuit brought by a Native American voting rights group and two tribes argued that the violations made it hard for Native Americans, who make up about 9% of the state’s population, to register to vote.
Ballot Security
A 2021 law allows local elections officials to meet before polls close on Election Day to begin processing, but not counting, mail-in ballots.
Another new law requires local elections administrators to continue counting votes without leaving until they are done.
Both changes could speed up the process of counting ballots and certifying elections.
A 2022 law bars private donations to help run elections, such as the grants local elections administrators in the state requested and received from Meta Platforms Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.
Read More: Zuckerberg’s Election Aid Spurs GOP Drive in 30 States to Ban It
How Politicians Responded to the 2020 Election
Two days after the 2020 election, Noem tweeted that Trump “has been fighting the establishment, the mainstream media, and now rigged election systems.”
Although she attended Biden’s inauguration, she declined to say whether the 2020 election was fair at a news conference in late January 2021, saying only that “there’s a lot of people who have doubts” that the US has “fair and transparent elections.”
Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg signed on to the Texas lawsuit before the Supreme Court. In explaining the decision, his chief of staff said the office was responding to “thousands of calls and emails” from concerned citizens.
Ravnsborg was impeached and removed by the state legislature in 2022 over his handling of a car accident in which he killed a pedestrian.