Yankton Press & Dakotan. April 15, 2024.
Editorial: ‘Election Integrity’ And The Basics
A Republican candidate for the District 17 House today finds himself on the outside looking in on the June GOP primary after his candidacy was decertified Friday because it was determined that he didn’t have enough valid signatures on his petition.
The candidate, Carson Merkwan of Vermillion, fell short of the required number because he was misinformed by the Secretary of State’s office regarding how many signatures he needed. According to the Vermillion Plain Talk, he was told he needed 39 signatures on his petition to make the GOP ballot, but in fact, 50 were required. He turned in a petition with 50 signatures, eight of which were disqualified, but apparently still leaving him with enough room to spare to make the ballot — or so he thought.
On Friday, a circuit judge in Pierre ruled Merkwan ineligible for the June GOP ballot, even though the Secretary of State’s office pleaded for his certification by noting that he fell short through no fault of his own. But the judge disagreed …
This might be dismissed as an unfortunate lapse by the Secretary of State’s office, except it sounds a little familiar.
South Dakota Searchlight reported late last month that some officials in the Secretary of State’s office had unintentionally misled some independent legislative candidates into believing they needed hundreds more signatures on nominating petitions than the state law requires. The law states the number of signatures needed must equal at least 1% of the votes cast within the district in the last gubernatorial race.
In a way, this represented the opposite of what happened to Merkwan, but it still carries potential ramifications. “There may already be people who looked into running as independents for the South Dakota Senate and House who abandoned the idea after looking at the onerous signature requirements,” said retired Rapid City attorney Jay Davis, who said he was seeking the information for a prospective candidate.
So, that’s two missteps in the nominating process that are attributed to the office of Secretary of State Monae Johnson, and therein lies some irony.
Johnson won the Republican party nomination for secretary of state in 2022 by successfully ousting incumbent Steve Barnett at the state convention. Her big talking point was “election integrity,” which has become a code phrase in some GOP circles for people who may have doubts about the 2020 presidential election. In fact, she managed during her campaign to avoid clearly stating whether she thought Joe Biden was the legitimate presidential winner in 2020, according to Searchlight.
Since coming to office, she has carefully tried to pivot away from some “election integrity” crusaders — who were alienating county auditors — while at the same time talking about paper ballots and the lack of online voting, Searchlight reported.
These two recent missteps raise other questions about “election integrity.”
If we wish to take that term literally, it’s important to acknowledge that such integrity applies not only to voting, voter registration and the vote-counting process but also to the candidates and the process they must go through to make the ballot.
Putting out inaccurate information about how many signatures independent candidates need could be seen as a simple mistake, as could misinforming a candidate how many signatures he needed to make the primary ballot. But those two missteps together begin raising questions about how integrity, at least in regard to these basic steps in the process, is being handled, other than to pander to certain suspicions.
Fortunately, these mistakes can be overcome by the candidates impacted. The independents who may have been put off by the high signature counts they thought they needed could change their minds, and Merkwan could still file as an independent for the fall general election.
But that doesn’t mean all’s well that ends well. Ironically, the person who championed election integrity (real or imagined) in order to become secretary of state may be making election integrity an issue by her office’s own mistakes.
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