MITCHELL S.D. (MITCHELLNOW) Secretary of State Monae L. Johnson announces that a petition submitted for an initiated constitutional amendment was validated and filed by her office today. This ballot question would amend the Constitution of South Dakota to establish top-two primary elections. The title for the ballot question will be Constitutional Amendment H, and it will appear on the 2024 General Election ballot on November 5, 2024.
An initiated amendment requires 35,017 valid signatures to appear on the ballot. As outlined in SDCL § 2-1-16, the Secretary of State’s Office conducted a random sample of the petition signatures and found 84.47 percent to be valid. Based on the results of the random sample, 36,350 signatures were deemed valid.
Upon the filing of an initiated amendment, any citizen may challenge the Secretary of State’s validation of the initiated amendment under SDCL § 2-1-17.1. Citizens challenging the validation must submit an original, signed affidavit listing out each specific deficiency to the Secretary of State’s Office no more than 30 days after validation. Affidavits submitted electronically will not be accepted. For this initiated amendment, the deadline to file a challenge is Thursday, June 20, 2024, at 5:00 pm central time.
A top two primary system throws every candidate for a particular office into the same primary, regardless of primary, with the top two finishers facing each other in the general election – regardless of party. Top two primary systems in other states have often featured general election contests between two people of the same political party.