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North Dakota Moves Petition Deadline Up 30 Days for More Review Time

The Walker and Bosworth petition frauds suggest the need to change our election calendar to allow more time to review nominating petitions. Our North Dakota neighbors just voted to change their calendar for ballot measure petitions. In last week's primary, North Dakota voters approved a ballot measure moving the deadline for submission of ballot measure petitions up on month, from 90 days before the election to 120. The Secretary of State's office will still have 35 days to certify those petitions; citizens will now have until the 75th day before the election to challenge the Secretary's ruling on a nominating petition.

Lead advocate for this change was Secretary of State Al Jaeger himself:

Jaeger approached lawmakers about the changes prior to the 2013 session. He said the idea was to provide time to ensure that petition signatures are validated and adequate time for appeal is available.

"It protects the rights of the petitioners," Jaeger said. "It's also ... about the rights of everyone else" [Nick Smith, "Voters OK Changing Ballot Deadlines," Bismarck Tribune, 2014.06.10].

In stark contrast to South Dakota Secretary of State Jason Gant, North Dakota's SOS Jaeger seems keenly interested in having time to do his job and root out petition fraud:

Prior to Tuesday's election, he'd sought to make the case that if multiple groups bring in petitions at the 90-day mark it can make it difficult to determine the validity of signatures and allow time for a potential appeal.

All appeals are subject to review by the North Dakota Supreme Court although there is no set timeline as to when it has to rule on the case.

Jaeger pointed to 2012 when a ballot petition was rejected by Jaeger after thousands of illegitimate signatures were discovered. The sponsoring committee unsuccessfully sought relief two days after Jaeger had certified the ballot.

Jaeger called the 2012 incident an example of why Measure 1 was needed [Smith, 2014.06.10].

Jaeger disqualified two ballot measure petitions in September 2012. It didn't take challenges from citizens to provoke these actions; Jaeger and his staff scrutinized the petitions and the voter registration rolls, identified the bogus signatures, and passed the evidence on to the Attorney General for prosecution.

Now we are talking electoral oranges and orangelos here. North Dakota is changing its deadlines for ballot measure petitions; South Dakota's fracases this year have involved candidate nominating petitions. North Dakota strikes a better balance on both fronts. The main complaint about moving the ballot measure petition deadline in North Dakota is that interested petitioners must now circulate and submit their petitions before the North Dakota State Fair, which is a great signature-gathering event. But they at least get to work the summer before the election. South Dakota requires that petitions for initiatives and constitutional amendments be submitted a full year before the election. That full year gives the Secretary of State and citizens months to review petitions for fraud, study the issues of the ballot measures themselves, and campaign yea or nay. But it's also an absurdly long delay, especially considering that legislators can hoghouse a bill run brand spankin' new legislation through Pierre with zero notice.

North Dakota voters made no changes to their candidate nominating petitions, which is where all the excitement has been in South Dakota this spring. In North Dakota, petitions are just one way to get a name on the ballot. A candidate can circulate petitions or obtain the endorsement of a party to make the ballot. Endorsements and petitions may be submitted starting January 2; the deadline is 64 days before the primary. This candidates had until April 7 to get themselves on the primary ballot, two more weeks than South Dakota candidates had.

North Dakota's Secretary of State is right to want more time for his staff and for citizens to properly and thoroughly review petitions. South Dakota voters should ask Legislative candidates this fall where they stand on reforming the petition process and expect legislation to make petition review more open and effective next session.

2 Comments

  1. Tim 2014.06.17

    Please Cory, you don't expect the party in power here to allow for such things? They never know from one election to the next when they may have to save one of their real candidates. It was easy for Jackley to toss Bos and that other dude under the bus, they don't count, but what if Rounds or Daugaard would have tried a stunt like Bos did? There is no way the results would have been the same and you know it.

  2. Donald Pay 2014.06.17

    Ehhh. The over-bureaucratization of petitioning and validating petitions is a problem because we have elected partisan hacks as Secretaries of State and incompetent AGs, and because we value oligarchy over democracy.

    First, there is no reason why initiative and referendum petitions need to be submitted a full year ahead of the election, as they do in South Dakota. It serves absolutely no purpose, other than to delay the Constitutional rights of citizens. I think such rights delayed, are rights denied. South Dakota has a Legislature that is bought and paid for by the special interests, and they have always wanted to neuter the initiative and referendum. That's the only purpose of this sort of needless delay.

    But even North Dakota's delay, while far more reasonable than South Dakota's, is needless.

    Petition irregularities result from two reasons: (1) paid circulation of petitions, usually by hacks who have no connection to the issues, causes or candidate, and (2) candidates or circulators who are criminals.

    Here's what you do. First, stop allowing petition circulation by paid circulators. Second, prosecute circulators who commit fraud. Third, follow the Constitution by not using voter registration lists to check petition signatures. Fourth, put all petitions up on a website for citizens to check. Fifth, have both a minimum and a maximum number of petition signers required in order to encourage quality of petition gathering over quantity.

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