A South Dakota House panel is defeating two proposals dealing with constitutional amendment.
One would ask voters to let the legislature have final say over these amendments. The other would outright remove the ability of citizens to amend the state’s constitution.
Ultimately, if passed by both chambers, the concepts behind House Joint Resolutions 1007 and 1008 would have been subject to the vote of the public.
Speaker of the House Mark Mickelson is the prime sponsor of the resolution that would remove the ability for South Dakotan’s to amend the constitution. Mickelson says the resolution was a conversation starter.
He says the constitution is a document that protects the minority population in the state.
“There are a lot of minority rights, the right to practice a religion of your choice, the right to free speech, that are put in the constitution at the state level to protect unpopular religions and unpopular points of view from the will of the majority," Mickelson says. "So, it’s very unusual for a state to allow a simple popular vote to amend its constitution.”
South Dakotan’s first gained the opportunity to amend the constitution in 1972, until 1988, those amendments required legislative approval.
The other resolution voted down would have reinstated that legislative approval process.
Sister Lynn Marie Welbig is with the Presentation Sisters of Aberdeen. She opposes the resolutions. She says South Dakotan’s reserve the right to change the constitution.
“When it gets down to an initiated measure, or an initiated amendment to the constitution, ultimately those people out of state don’t vote. It’s the people who vote,” Welbig says. “What I hear from the legislators who object to that is that money buys votes and that the people of South Dakota are really being driven by that money. I don’t believe that.”
House State Affairs did pass a resolution that requires one subject per amendment.