PIERRE, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – Secretary of State Monae Johnson announced that her office had validated a submitted petition for an initiated amendment on Wednesday.
The ballot question, titled Constitutional Amendment G, would establish a right to abortion in the Constitution of South Dakota.
An initiated amendment currently requires 35,017 valid signatures to appear on the ballot. Based on the results of a random sample of the petition signatures, 46,098 were considered valid.
More information on specific ballot questions can be found on the Secretary of State’s website.
Campaign Chair and Sponsor Rick Weiland released a statement on Wednesday night, which can be read below.
Two long years after we began, the South Dakota Secretary of State today certified that the people of South Dakota, not the politicians in Pierre, will be the ones to decide whether to restore Roe v. Wade as the law of South Dakota.
After an organized Decline to Sign campaign mercilessly harassed our young petition circulators, we are on the ballot with over 11,000 more valid signatures than required.
After Right to Life’s ‘Life Defense Fund’ shoved their lies in the faces of citizens trying to sign our petition, we are on the ballot with over 54,281 submitted signatures.
Even after the so-called ‘Petition Integrity Committee’ tried to trick petition signers by implying they were from the Secretary of State’s office and pressuring them to take their names off our petition, we have 46,098 valid signatures, and they have exactly 19 yet-to-be-validated requests for removal.
If there is anyone out there who still wonders whether abortion rights will be on the ballot in South Dakota this Fall, today is your answer.
Yes, today says, the people want women, not politicians, to have the right to decide.
Yes, today says, nobody should be required by law to carry the result of rape to term or to have their doctor be too afraid to give them the reproductive health care they require.
So today the fight begins. We hope there can be a civil discussion about deeply held moral beliefs leading to a reasoned decision balancing the rights of us all. That is democracy.
We must be prepared for a lavishly financed Right to Life campaign to smear our Abortion Rights amendment with lies about its effect. That is today’s world.