Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Post hoc ergo propter hoc....

Monday I complained that Secretary of State Jason Gant was asleep at the switch again, this time denying the public useful information about the 2014 election schedule. One commenter felt such piffling details shouldn't be a priority for the Secretary of State and that we should just all haul our lazy keesters down to the courthouse to do our own research.

But another commenter notes that Secretary Gant's priorities appear to have realigned more toward mine. Unlike Monday, when the Upcoming Election page linked to information about the 2012 election, as of today the Upcoming Election page has been updated to reflect information about the upcoming election. Some of the updates are purely cosmetic: for example, the "How to circulate a statewide ballot question petition for 2014" link still points to the old 2012 flyer, complete with 2012 deadlines. And we still don't have 2014 election calendars with those yummy deadlines that got us thinking about this website in the first place. But at least someone's getting on the task.

How very, very nice... and how very, very coincidental that the update happens just a couple days after a concerned citizen hollers.

Thank you, Secretary Gant!

A commenter gets me wondering just what the deadlines are for submitting nominating petitions for the 2014 primary in South Dakota. Answer: March 25, 5 p.m.

I found that date by paging through South Dakota Codified Law to statute 12-6-4. I enjoy my almost daily trips through our law books (and I deeply appreciate the Legislative Research Council's accurate posting of those laws online). But it's usually a lot easier just to go to the Secretary of State's Upcoming Elections page and look at the handy-dandy election calendar...

...easier, that is, when the Secretary of State's Upcoming Elections page has been updated with information about the upcoming elections. I check the SOS website this morning and find Secretary Jason Gant asleep at the switch again:

Upcoming Elections webpage, South Dakota Secretary of State, screenshot, 2013.04.08

Five months after the 2012 general election, and you still can't get a 2014 election calendar from the Secretary of State's website.

Thinking about the 2014 election in April 2013 isn't just sport for blogospheric hullaballooists. Foresightful candidates may well be looking ahead and planning their work schedules to accommodate their public plans. Committees may be getting ready to launch petition drives to place initiatives on the 2014 ballot. Those citizens seeking to place names and laws on that ballot expect the Secretary of State to provide quick and easy access to that information.

But five months later, Secretary Gant is apparently still too tuckered out from the 2012 election to do more than post a few Tweets a month, trundle down to the country club in Yankton to speak to the Rotarians, and make plans for Lincoln Day dinners.

Do your job, Secretary Gant. People count on you for information. That information should have been up five months ago. Get it done.

Stephanie Strong has filed an appeal with the South Dakota Supreme Court. The appeal doesn't tell us much we don't know: Strong simply thinks that every judge who has ruled against her in the past several months is wrong.

Strong's inability to follow the law and focus her arguments in a timely fashion on the points of law Secretary of State Jason Gant and Rep. Brian Gosch violated have reduced the chances of holding those public officials accountable. Her appeal to the Supreme Court will likely do more to fuel the politics of personal destruction played by the conservative lobe of the South Dakota blogosphere.

Strong will not win any redress from the Supreme Court. But if the justices will hear her, and if she can restrict her appeal to discussion of the very dry points of law laid out in her filing, we can perhaps hope that a Supreme Court hearing on Strong's complaints will at least require Gant and Gosch to explain themselves and admit that they didn't respect notary law.

So far, everyone in the South Dakota House but yahooligans and Ron-Paulite gold backers Reps. Dan Kaiser (R-3/Aberdeen) and Elizabeth May (R-27/Kyle) agrees that the Gosch clause in House Bill 1018 is a good idea. That's the election reform statute that clarifies that notarizing one's own candidacy petition is illegal. Speaker Brian Gosch (R-32/Rapid City) notarized his own candidacy petitions last spring, and even he voted for HB 1018 Friday. Most of us recognized the impropriety of Gosch's self-notarization the moment it was brought to light, but Secretary of State Jason Gant needed it spelled out for him. The House has done that; the Senate will shortly follow suit.

Speaking of Secretary Gant, how's he doing? He hasn't tweeted anything over a month; I'm  worried he might be depressed. He does appear to be losing track of time, as apparent by the date stamp on this campaign finance report:

Clip from All South Dakota PAC 2013 year-end campaign finance report

Secretary Gant stamps this 2013 year-end finance report, submitted Janaury 8, 2013, with the date "Jan 11 2012." Same on this year-end report for the No on P committee filed January 8 and this 2013 termination report for the No on P committee filed January 9.

Funny—Secretary Gant's stamper was working fine the day before, when he marked Rep. Scott Parsley's financial interest statement "Jan 10 2013." Maybe the impending Inauguration caused Secretary Gant a pang of longing for the days when Rick Santorum had more than a single-digit chance of winning the GOP Presidential nomination, and he spun the numbers back to make himself feel better.

The date is a small detail, but the Secretary of State's office is all about attention to detail. Whether it's dates, use of the notary seal, or any other statutory obligation to preserve the public trust, Secretary Gant's office is just plain sloppy.

Secretary of State Jason Gant has finally done some good. Through his boundless incompetence in office, he has inspired two bills to reform the Secretary of State's office.

First, Senator Stan Adelstein offers Senate Bill 81 to prohibit the kind of politicking that Secretary Gant and his minions have happily performed while bearing the sacred duty of keeping our elections clean. SB 81 says that the Secretary of State and any of his employees involved in running elections may not...

1. Endorse any candidate for election to congressional, state, or legislative office; or
2. Work for, volunteer for, or otherwise assist any candidate for election to congressional, state, or legislative office; or
3. Advise or consult with any candidate for election to congressional, state, or legislative office.

All of the above have happened under Secretary of State Jason Gant, casting doubt on the Secretary of State's ability to run a fair election. Senator Adelstein, a vociferous critic of Sec. Gant's stubborn and stupid malfeasance, wants to restore the public trust with a bill that a better Secretary of State would not have inspired.

Secretary Gant also inspires Senator Adelstein to advocate an interesting electoral reform. His Senate Bill 82 calls for non-partisan election of the Secretary of State. SB 82 would put the Secretary of State candidates on a separate ballot and prohibit any party from nominating or endorsing a candidate. But the most interesting provision of SB 82 is the last line, Section 9:

The nominees for the office of secretary of state are the two persons receiving the highest number of votes in the primary election.

Ooooo! Automatic run-off voting! That could be fun!

That could also be Senator Adelstein's way of keeping an inferior, unqualified Republican who manages to finagle his party's nomination from winning the Secretary of State's office in November just because he has an R next to his name. The non-partisan election allows a qualified heavy-hitter from the GOP bench to have a shot at protecting the Secretary of State's office from someone like Gant in November. (Teresa Bray, got your campaign buttons handy?)

Both of Senator Adelstein's reforms are worth discussing. Senate Bill 81 deserves immediate passage to address Secretary Gant's demonstrated abuses of the public trust. Senate Bill 82 would not directly change the daily operation of the Secretary of State's office, but it would be an interesting electoral experiment.

Rep. Brian Gosch will likely become Speaker of the South Dakota House today. I remain convinced that he gained his office illegally by notarizing his own nominating petitions last winter. Former Secretary of State Chris Nelson agreed last summer that candidates should not notarize their own petitions. Current Secretary of State Jason Gant has whimpered that he doesn't know what the law says on the issue of self-notarization and wants clarification to the law.

Gant and the State Board of Elections have thus proposed House Bill 1018. Along with many minor revisions to election law (he and him get changed to gender-neutral phrases), Section 3 of HB 1018 adds the Gosch Clause:

The verification by the person circulating the petition may not be notarized by the candidate whom the petition is nominating.

Notary law already makes this prohibition clear, since notaries are not supposed to fix their seals to any documents to which they are principal parties. But since Secretary Gant has trouble reading, we need to spell it out for him with the Gosch Clause.

I look forward to hearing the debate on this bill... and I look forward to seeing whether Speaker Gosch votes to declare his own notary behavior inappropriate.

David Montgomery says Secretary of State Jason Gant's new campaign finance system still gives him fits. Yes, it's an improvement over the old paper system, but it's still a pain in the neck for users, especially for the candidates who count on this system to file their legally required data.

Roy Lindsay likely feels that way this fine election morning. The Democratic District 8 House candidate did not have a campaign finance report on file by the October 26 deadline. Secretary Jason Gant himself said that he had received no pre-general campaign finance report from the Lindsay campaign as of yesterday morning. Team Lindsay swore to me last week that they had filed it.

It's there now, dated yesterday, November 5. Lindsay has $8,687.81 on hand, mostly his own money, after spending a meager $1,792.19 so far. At least $250 of that will go to Secretary Gant as the penalty for not filing on time.

But it's hard to tell if the screw-up was really Lindsay's or the system's. Consider this cotemporaneous tale of Gant-tastic computer adventures:

I hear another person who runs a PAC (runs it? I think he is a PAC... but that's a whole nother blog post) was trying to file a supplemental report yesterday. PACs and other committees have 48 hours to file those reports from the time of the receipt of big chunks of cash; if they fail to meet that deadline, they face a Class 1 misdemeanor penalty, which can be a year in jail and a $2000 fine.

So PAC-man's clearly motivated to file that paper pronto. He logs into his account on the Secretary of State's website. He's looking for the button to file "Supplemental." Button, button, button... no button. I haven't filed reports on the new system, so I don't know if there's a supplemental report button or not. But PAC-man says there was one and that it disappeared from his account. He's got a time-sensitive document and the button that would have allowed him to file it has gone poof? That's a hair-raiser!

PAC-man called and got help: the Secretary of State's office advised simply printing a form and faxing it in, as apparently have other committees with last-minute contributions to report. There's just one more flaw in Secretary Gant's online jalopy: during the busiest time of the campaign, the system does not allow online filing of the most time-sensitive document required by the campaign finance system.

With all but eight precincts reporting, Democrat Barack Obama may win a historic victory in South Dakota, leading the South Dakota presidential race by 224 votes over the surprising second-place Constitution Party Goode-Clymer ticket. In the U.S. House race, incumbent Kristi Noem clings to a 310-vote lead over challenger Matt Varilek...

...or so you would conclude from the state's official election results website, where Secretary of State Jason Gant is apparently conducting software tests out in the open:

Also leading in Sec. Gant's dry run are Libertarian Public Utilities Commission candidate Russell Clarke and current PUC member Chris Nelson. Gant obviously harbors no hard feelings toward his superior predecessor.

Expect recounts in all races.