I've spoken with Curtis Strong online. I've met wife Stephanie Strong. They're radical conservatives who view me and my Marxist ilk as a menace to society. I want to believe they and their fellow Constitution Party members are just decent people who want the same thing we all do: a free, safe, prosperous, and fairly governed South Dakota.
But when it comes to getting on the ballot, Curtis and Stephanie are failures. Two years ago, Stephanie failed to gather enough valid signatures to primary Rep. Kristi Noem. This year, Curtis tried to get on the ballot to run for Governor. He could have done like Lora Hubbel and run in the Republican primary. Curtis chose an arguably easier route by running under the Constitution Party banner. Where Stephanie and Lora each needed 1,955 (there's a number etched in my brain this week) signatures from Republicans, Curtis needed just 250 valid signatures from South Dakota's small cadre of Constitution Party members*.
250 valid signatures? Holy cow; Jason Ravnsborg can get that many signatures by himself in two weeks.
But Curtis can't. Refusing to learn from his wife's example, he submitted 262 signatures, a mere 5% cushion, which is never, never, never enough. Secretary of State Jason Gant said he found only 238 valid signatures.
A San Francisco observer says Strong could make a case that the 250-signature requirement is unconstitutional:
It is probably unconstitutional for South Dakota to require so many signatures when there are only 441 eligible signers. In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that courts should examine the number of signatures divided by the number of eligible signers, and if the resulting percentage is much above 5%, the law is unconstitutional. Storer v Brown, 415 U.S. 724. In 2010, the South Dakota Constitution Party, which was then the only ballot-qualified party besides the Democratic and Republican Parties, also failed to get its gubernatorial candidate on its own primary ballot. It sued, but the U.S. District Court ruled that none of the plaintiffs had standing. This is because the party’s gubernatorial candidate in 2010 refused to join the lawsuit as a plaintiff. However, the U.S. District Court when on to say that even if the plaintiffs did have standing, the 250-signature requirement is constitutional. The U.S. District Court based this on the fact that 250 seems like a very small number. The U.S. District Court also said that no case similar to this had ever resulted in striking down the number of signatures to get on the primary ballot. That was incorrect; in 1985 the Consumer Party of Pennsylvania had won a very similar case, and the court ruled that requiring a Consumer Party candidate to obtain 2,000 signatures of party members, when the party only had 7,000 members, was unconstitutional [Richard Winger, "South Dakota Constitution Party Gubernatorial Nominee’s Primary Petition Rejected by Secretary of State, Ballot Access News, 2014.03.28].
I guess Curtis can spend the rest of the month going to court, but wouldn't it have been easier to just get twelve more signatures?
Alas, nothing is easy for the Constitution Party. A few hardcases spout and speechify and spuriously cite South Dakota law, but nobody seems capable of organizing the "party" into a real political machine.
Curtis Strong and fellow CPer Lori Stacey gripe that it's unfair that state law (SDCL 12-5-1.4) requires fledgling parties to field 250 signatures to nominate a candidate when the party is so small that 250 represents more than 50% of its members. But instead of griping about being so small, Curtis and Lori and the other CP wingnuts should put the horse back in front and start pulling a bandwagon that makes their party viably big. You aren't a party just because you say so. You're a party when you can get enough people to give a darn, make a difference, and sign a simple petition properly. That's a fair price of entrance to the political arena.
*Hey, Constitution Party members! What's the proper adjective for your party? Constitutionalists? Cons? Constipartiers?
"Constipartiers"? What? Do they need a little Ex-Lax?
You read it the same way that I did, Deb, but on a reread, you left out the first r.
The sad part though Cory, is, in how many of the legislative districts did the two major parties fail to field a candidate? I don't think it is apathy, but more a state of giving up on ever changing the political landscape in this State.