Vote NO on Amendment C !

Preserve our citizen right to majority rule
in South Dakota!

Vote NO on Amendment C.

• Initiative and referendum are cherished rights in South Dakota, the first state to have them. Amendment C interferes with our rights as citizens.

• South Dakotans use the ballot to take action when the state legislature and governor don’t. For examples,

We the people raised the minimum wage. Without a ballot initiative, it would still be sitting at $7.25 !

We put a cap on the previously outrageous interest charged by payday lenders!

We may need to use these citizen rights in the future to enact measures for the common good. Bread for the World -SD has a strong interest in preserving them, because our work on hunger and poverty sometimes means we need a vote of the people.

• Majority rule has worked for South Dakota voters since 1898.
(Legislators themselves are elected with a simple majority!)

• Save our people power! A new 60% requirement would hand our citizen power over to a minority. In other words, only a 40% minority could override the will of the majority on important ballot measures.

Should we change our state motto to

“Under God the minority rules.”?

NO!

We can vote NO on Amendment C to save majority rule!

• Amendment C is a power grab by the legislature explicitly designed to make it harder to pass Medicaid expansion and possibly other good initiatives too.

Even if you have no other reason to vote on June 7,

ALL voters should go to the polls on June 7 to

Vote on NO on Amendment C.

• Need more reasons to vote No on C?
Here's one: No Constitutional amendment should be voted on in a June primary election, when few people vote and not all parties have primaries. A change to our State Constitution should be a vote in a general election in November. It was a sneaky trick by state legislators to put this on the June ballot. Let's surprise them and come out and vote No.
Here's another: It is foolish to put a particular amount of money ($10 million, in this case) in the Constitution, where it won't adjust for inflation and cannot be changed without the whole process of amendment the Constitution.

And another: Amendment C violates the two subject rule. It is about both taxes and expenditures. That's 2 subjects.

And another: What about the argument by some state legislators that because they must have 2/3 to pass spending bills, the public should have a higher threshold too? (1)The logic for their higher vote threshold is based on the fact that their bills can often pass super quickly, even a matter of a day or two, with little time for consideration. But the public has a whole year, even up to two, to deliberate ballot measures, with both sides having plenty of time to make their case to the public. (2)What those legislators fail to mention is that about 90% of their spending passes with only a simple majority in their annual budget bill. Thus, it would be extremely unfair to require more than a simple majority for voters' ballot measures.

Attached are mini-handouts you can give out wherever you go between NOW and June 7. Carry some with you to share.
(At the moment, the second one seems to be working better for quicker understanding.)

How to download them: The little pop-out symbol in the corner will bring up a
pdf version that you can download.

Thanks for helping to spread the word!

from Bread for the World-SD, www.BreadSD.org, 5/9/22