The South Dakota Libertarian Party is inviting all interested parties to participate in their hastily called convention on August 9. What must one do to participate? The SDLP offers this guidance on its homepage and on a Facebook event page created by Emmett Reistroffer:
You're invited to the South Dakota Libertarian Party State Convention! Join us for this exciting opportunity to nominate candidates and discuss liberty in the Rushmore state. Our convention will be at the downtown main library in Sioux Falls on August 9th at 10am (200 N. Dakota Ave, Sioux Falls).
RSVP on this page or e-mail Bob Newland to register to attend.
Anyone who is a registered Libertarian voter in South Dakota* or who is a member of the U.S. Libertarian national party is an eligible voting member of the SDLP. You may register to vote at the convention. You may attend the convention without being a voting member [South Dakota Libertarian Party, convention announcement, downloaded 2014.07.15].
(Updated and corrected, 21:59 MDT): The national Libertarian Party charges $25 in annual dues for official membership. Send $1,000 and you get lifetime membership. However, at the state level, the original text posted to the Libertarian websites suggested there was no membership fee. Bob Newland of the SDLP subsequently informed me that the SDLP charges members $30 in dues to vote at convention. Thus, the original assertion that one need not spend money to vote at the SDLP convention was incorrect... and outsiders with money to burn may have an advantage in buying convention attenders and stacking the votes.
The SDLP also heads their website with this statement of principle:
No one—neither a mugger in some alley nor a group of suits in some capitol—no one has the right to initiate force or commit fraud to achieve personal or political goals.
If the SDLP adheres to that expectation of all of its members, they've effectively excluded one alleged candidate (see mortgage-flipping, raffles, frame-ups, unpaid wages and bills, and trick loans). We'll see how strictly they adhere to their principles.
The SDLP says it will vote on nominations for four state offices:
- Secretary of State
- State Auditor
- Attorney General
- Commissioner of School & Public Lands
Oddly absent from that list are state treasurer and public utilities commissioner. The PUC is the only statewide office for which the Libertarians have posted a candidate (Russell Clarke, 2012) in the last three elections.
To nitpick, the SDLP says its candidates will stand in the general election on November 8. The 2014 general election is Tuesday, November 4. I thought maybe this was just a cut-and-paste issue from recycling a previous year's convention announcement, but I don't think we've had a statewide biennial general election on November 8 since 1994, in which year Libertarians ran for three statewide offices:
- Nathan Barton and Brian Liss ran for Governor and Lieutenant Governor and got 4.12% of the vote.
- Bert Olson ran for Attorney General and got 3.05%.
- Jim Christin ran for PUC and got 5.16%.
- Bonus! Bob Newland ran for District 30 House as a Libertarian and placed fifth.
While I'm thinking of it, in 2002, Bob Newland ran for attorney general and got 3.72% of the vote. That beat the Libs' 2006 AG candidate Randy Ristesund, who got 2.78%. Newland, Ristesund, and Olson are the only Libertarians ever to run for AG in South Dakota. The SDLP has yet to run an AG candidate who is licensed to practice law in South Dakota.
*Update 21:59 MDT: South Dakota Libertarian Party organizer Bob Newland clarifies that one must pay some money to vote at convention. Newland says state dues are $30.
Addiitionally, potential Libertarian candidate Kurt Evans says Bert Olson may have been a former state's attorney.
I simply made a mistake on the date and forgot about the other 2 offices, thanks for clarifying.
The real mystery however is will Haber pay day laborers or kids off the street to attend on his behalf? Because I don't believe he has any real crowd of enthusiastic supporters expected to show up.. At least I still haven't seen a single Facebook RSVP who wasn't directly invited by me.
Thanks for making those corrections, Emmett! (I love crowdsourced proofreading. People do it to me here all the time. :-) )
Real crowd of supporters? Maybe some patients from the clinic? But keep in mind, a lot of folks who might show up for Annette won't stick their necks out for Chad.
Do we have candidate names yet, Emmett?
Cory Heidelberger wrote:
>"... at the state level, there appears to be no membership fee. The 'or' between the 'registered Libertarian voter' and 'member of the U.S. Libertarian national party' tells me one need not spend any money to vote on nominations and other party business at the convention."
Actually the national and state parties do have separate membership fees, so the minimum requirement for becoming a voting member of the state party is to register Libertarian and pay state party dues, which I believe are $25.
>"The SDLP has yet to run an AG candidate who is licensed to practice law in South Dakota."
I'm pretty sure 1994 nominee Bert Olson was a former state's attorney.
>"Do we have candidate names yet, Emmett?"
Emmett and I had a 45-minute phone conversation today. We now have four potential attorney general candidates with actual law degrees, and I'm confident enough that at least one of them will decide to run that I'm announcing my candidacy for commissioner of school and public lands.
I am not sure where the information about voting at the convention came from in the topic for this thread. However, it omitted that state LP membership dues must be paid before anyone an vote. The dues are $30.00. All this info has been updated at https://www.facebook.com/events/654189318008579/ and http://www.sodaklp.org
Sorry, Bob: I was working from the text provided on the SDLP website and the Facebook notice, which said that one could vote if one was a registered Libertarian or a member of the national party. I can register Libertarian any time at the courthouse for free. The notices I read, quoted, and interpreted above did not mention state dues. I shall asterisk that quote above and correct the mistaken information.
The dues paying situation does not differ from other parties. If I recall correctly, delegates attending the GOP and Dem state conventions pay registration fees.
Now let me verify, Bob: must one pay state dues and be officially registered with the state as a Libertarian? Or can I keep my Democratic registration but pay the South Dakota Libertarian Party $30 and get to vote at convention?
And can I vote at convention by proxy? By phone? By other means of remote communication?
Kurt, where and when did Bert Olson practice law?
Bob, is Loy still a dues paying member?
Wait: this Bert Olson, who was state's attorney for Deuel County? He faced a 2- or 3-year suspension of his law license for various legal and ethical misconduct during that 1994 election; the state Supreme Court finalized the suspension at three years on August 30, 1995. So had Olson won, he'd have ended up spending nearly all of his AG term unable to practice law. Kurt, do you know if he came back to practice law following his suspension?
And thanks, Kurt, for that candidates' update! If those lawyers would like some press, I'd be happy to interview and profile each one of them.
Cory Heidelberger wrote:
>"Now let me verify, Bob: must one pay state dues and be officially registered with the state as a Libertarian? Or can I keep my Democratic registration but pay the South Dakota Libertarian Party $30 and get to vote at convention?"
I'm obviously not Bob, but I'm pretty sure the only way to become a voting member of the state party ($30) without registering Libertarian is to become a dues-paying member of the national party ($25) first. So if your conscience won't let you switch and switch back, that would be a total of $55, but national Libertarian Party membership does include a subscription to an informative newsletter. :)
>"And can I vote at convention by proxy? By phone? By other means of remote communication?"
I believe the state party's bylaws allow for written proxies only.
>"Kurt, do you know if [Bert Olson] came back to practice law following his suspension?"
No, I never heard.
>"If those lawyers would like some press, I'd be happy to interview and profile each one of them."
Thanks, Cory. I'll pass the word.
Kurt, I know you fellows are open to most people, given Bob's hat fettish and all. And I can respect that. Will a new Libertarian with oddly stumpy arms be accepted by your party? A man who can barely comb his own eyebrows?
Wait a minute: I can vote at the Libertarian Party convention without being a registered voter? Could a registered voter from Texas pay the SD and national dues and vote at the SDLP convention?
Grudz, the personal insults won't help.
Cory Heidelberger wrote:
>"Wait a minute: I can vote at the Libertarian Party convention without being a registered voter?"
I'm pretty sure you could if you were a dues-paying member of the national party.
>"Could a registered voter from Texas pay the SD and national dues and vote at the SDLP convention?"
Now that's a good question. I honestly don't know whether there's a residency requirement.
Cory Heidelberger asked:
>"Could a registered voter from Texas pay the SD and national dues and vote at the SDLP convention?"
They're not eligible to become party officers, but after further review, it looks like the SDLP does allow nonresident members.
This is Article 2, Sec. 1, of the SDLP by-laws, available at http://sodaklp.org/platform.htm: "Anyone who is registered in South Dakota as a Libertarian or who is a member of the U.S. National Libertarian Party is eligible to become a voting member upon payment of membership fees."
If you have a current Nat'l LP card or evidence of having registered LP in SD, you may vote at the convention if your SDLP dues are current. You can register LP and pay dues at the convention.
Hmmmmm. It does appear that a non-resident of SD who is a Nat'l LP member could vote at the SDLP convention. I believe that is an oversight on the part of our crack rules committee.
Bert Olson was Deuel Co. States Atty back in, oh, '92 or thereabouts. He wrote on a styrofoam cup containing cannabis being grown by a friend, "Immunity granted by Deuel Co. State's Atty." After a raid on that house, the cup was presented as evidence that led to his being removed from office and charged with some crime. He was eventually disbarred, primarily because he told the Supremes of SD that "marijuana is not addictive, unlike cigarettes," and refused to tell the SC that he would refrain from cannabis use.
A thought occurs. If you think the SD Libertarian Party is a side-show, continuously putting up laughable candidates, cast yer gaze on the candidates supplied by the Rs and Ds.
I mean, really, Bill Janklow, four terms as governor?
Or Jason Gant, or Mike Rounds, or Marty Jackley.
Now there's the Libertarian opposition spirit I like to hear. Who's to say Bert Olson's infractions were any more egregious than Bill Janklow's abuses of power? Go get 'em, Bob!
I can tolerate membership dues or registration fees at a convention... although if we're talking about fulfilling statutory procedures for nominating candidates for public office (and statute does not make clear how one becomes a candidate for AG, SOS, etc. without going through a party convention), predicating voting rights on payment of money seems problematic.
But that's a separate debate from the question of whether out-of-state voters can participate in selecting in-state candidates. As an individual not yet eligible to vote on SDLP matters, I humbly suggest that the SDLP rules committee discuss this matter at convention and debate an amendment to Article 2, Section 1, to require that voting members of the SDLP convention be registered to vote Libertarian in South Dakota. This measure would bolster the integrity of the party and state elections, as well as promote the number of registered Libertarian voters in South Dakota.
I guess you'd better come to the convention, Cory, and help us out.
Heck, we may end up with more people on the ballot than the Dems.
Libertarians, let's Awake the State!