YANKTON, S.D. – Authorities in Yankton County South Dakota have located the body of a man who went missing in late May.

According to the Yankton County Sheriff’s Office, on June 2 shortly before 4 p.m., they received a call from a Nebraska boater that they saw a body in the Missouri River along the South Dakota shoreline.

The Yankton County Sheriff’s Office responded a short time later and located the deceased individual approximately a quarter mile to the east of the exit mouth of the James River. Emergency personnel recovered the body, which law enforcement identified as 22-year-old Phillip Snoozy of Yankton, SD.

Police still consider this an open investigation in conjunction with the Ceder County Sheriff’s Office in Nebraska

 

PIERRE, S.D. – The South Dakota Secretary of State announced Monday that the proposed initiated measure to legalize cannabis, sponsored by the leaders of South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws  has officially qualified for the November 5, 2024 ballot.

The petition required 17,508 valid signatures from registered South Dakota voters in order to qualify. The final tally from the Secretary of State, based on a random sampling, was 22,558 valid signatures.

Qualification for the ballot is the just the latest chapter in South Dakota’s years-long debate over cannabis policy. In 2020, South Dakota became the first state in the country to legalize medical cannabis and adult-use cannabis on the same ballot. Following the election a lawsuit was brought that ultimately repealed the legalization law.

 

MCINTOSH, S.D. – A Sturgis man has been convicted by a Corson County Jury of 11 counts of felony crimes involving five different children.

Lance Long, age 40, was convicted of one count of Second Degree Rape, one count of Third Degree Rape, one count of Fourth Degree Rape, three counts of Aggravated Assault, and five counts of Abuse of or Cruelty to a Minor.

Jurors returned the verdicts Friday night. Sentencing is scheduled for July 29. Long faces multiple life sentences.

The charges occurred between March 2015 and July 2017 when the defendant lived on a Corson County ranch.

Long had previously served time in prison for similar child abuse crimes that occurred in Minnehaha County. The Corson County case was prosecuted after the child victims disclosed the abuse to law enforcement in Sioux Falls.

The Corson County case was investigated by the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI). The Attorney General’s Office prosecuted the case.

 

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Stu Whitney / South Dakota News Watch) – Support for a 2024 ballot amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution is growing, reflected by a nearly 20-point margin between residents who said they are for the measure and those who oppose it, according to a scientific poll co-sponsored by South Dakota News Watch.

The statewide survey of 500 registered voters, also sponsored by the Chiesman Center for Democracy at the University of South Dakota, showed that 53% of respondents support Constitutional Amendment G. If passed, it would reverse a state abortion ban enacted when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The measure is opposed by 35% of those polled, with 11% undecided.

That’s a big swing from a News Watch poll conducted in November 2023, when 46% of respondents said they were for the measure and 44% were against it.

Perhaps most notable is the fact that 46% of Republicans polled in the most recent survey said they support codifying legal abortion in South Dakota, with 41% opposed and 14% undecided.

Rick Weiland, co-founder of Dakotans for Health, a grassroots organization sponsoring the amendment, said the poll indicates more people are paying attention to an issue seen as one of the key dividing lines in 2024 national and state elections.

“I really believe that more people are tuning in to this,” said Weiland, a former Democratic U.S. House and Senate candidate. “(South Dakota) is operating under one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country, and there’s been a backlash. People want common-sense reproductive health care options in a state where that freedom has been taken away.”

The co-founders of Life Defense Fund, an anti-abortion group formed to provide organized opposition to the amendment, said in a statement to News Watch that more information will lead to shifting opinions on the issue.

“The devil is in the details, and the more people learn that this extreme amendment approves late-term abortion and bans physical health protections for mothers, the more they will reject it,” Republican state legislator Jon Hansen and longtime anti-abortion advocate Leslee Unruh said in the statement.

‘Complex or confusing language’

Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy conducted the survey May 10-13. Those interviewed were selected randomly from a telephone-matched state voter registration list that included both landline and cellphone numbers. Quotas were assigned to reflect voter registration by county. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

South Dakota is currently under a 2005 state trigger law activated in June 2022, when the Supreme Court left it up to states to determine reproductive rights with its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The law makes it a Class 6 felony for anyone “who administers to any pregnant female or prescribes or procures for any pregnant female” a means for an abortion, except to save the life of the mother. South Dakota is one of 10 states that has banned abortion and does not include exceptions for rape and incest.

The constitutional amendment would prevent the state from regulating abortions during the first trimester (0-13 weeks). During the second trimester (14-26 weeks), the state could regulate the abortion decision, but any regulation must be reasonably related to the physical health of the mother. During the third trimester (27-40 weeks), abortion could be prohibited except if it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman, according to her physician.

The fact that 11% of respondents are still undecided on such a prominent issue could be a sign that voters have questions about specifics of the proposal, said Julia Hellwege, an associate political science professor at USD and incoming director of the Chiesman Center.

“Finding compromise on abortion access rather than strict laws in either direction can make for complex or confusing language,” said Hellwege. “For a lot of people as the campaign progresses, the details will matter.”

‘Closely aligned’ with Roe v. Wade

Rep. Hansen has cited a lack of “safety protections” in the amendment such as parental notification, waiting periods and informed consent, adding that the measure’s language is “far more extreme than Roe v. Wade itself.”

Weiland and others pushed back on that statement by saying the amendment uses the same trimester framework as Roe, the landmark 1973 ruling in which the Supreme Court held that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to an abortion prior to the viability of the fetus.

In South Dakota, before Dobbs and the trigger law, informed consent meant that doctors were required to tell patients that women who undergo abortion procedures could experience depression and suicidal thoughts and that the procedure would “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

These state restrictions were not permissible under Roe v. Wade.

They were passed after Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the basic tenets of Roe but overturned the trimester framework and used a more flexible standard as to whether state-imposed restrictions were constitutional.

Based on this, supporters can be taken literally when they say South Dakota’s abortion amendment is an attempt to codify Roe v. Wade, according to Hannah Haksgaard, a professor at the USD School of Law.

“The proposed amendment is very closely aligned with the original Roe v. Wade framework,” Haksgaard told News Watch in 2023. “The language mimics the trimester framework of Roe v. Wade and nothing in this amendment indicates any abortion rights more extreme than that.”

Tiffany Campbell of Dakotans for Health (right) stands next to a security guard at a press conference May 1, 2024, at the downtown library in Sioux Falls, S.D. Campbell helped lead a petition drive for a ballot amendment to enshrine the right to abortion in the South Dakota Constitution. (Photo: Stu Whitney / South Dakota News Watch)

Data show late-term abortions are rare

Hansen also contends that the amendment, if passed, would allow abortions “up to nine months” because of the measure’s language. After the second trimester, the state would be permitted to prohibit abortion except in cases when a doctor determines it is necessary “to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman.”

Hansen said that the words “or health” could include mental health, “however severe or however mild,” and that “preserve” means to keep something as it is.

“So the abortion amendment isn’t even about abortion to relieve existing mental health issues,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “The abortion amendment legalizes late-term abortion up to the point of birth if the stated reason is to avoid stress, anxiety, or adjustment issues, however mild, even before these issues ever occur.”

Most states with health exceptions limit those exceptions to physical health concerns such as “serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” (Arizona, Florida, Ohio, Wyoming, Indiana) or risk of “serious, permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ” (Kentucky and Louisiana).

No such declaration exists with the proposed amendment in South Dakota, keeping in line with the original Roe wording. Hansen and other anti-abortion advocates view that as problematic.

“We cannot allow abortion through nine months of pregnancy to be written into our state’s founding document,” Hansen said in a video on the Life Defense Fund website. “The results would be completely devastating to life in our state.”

Weiland calls that interpretation a “scare tactic” and notes that late-term procedures occur in very rare circumstances in states where abortion is legal.

Fewer than 1% of U.S. abortions in 2020 took place at 21 weeks or later, compared to 93% up to 13 weeks and 6% at 14-20 weeks, according to abortion surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Men, women show similar support

There was not much difference between the attitudes of men and women in the most recent poll, with male voters supporting the abortion measure by a margin of 54% to 36% and women supporting it 53% to 35%.

The November 2023 survey showed just 41% of women supporting the measure compared to 50% opposed. Men were in favor by a margin of 51% to 37%.

Weiland said stakes have been raised for South Dakota women because of the 2024 presidential election and the Supreme Court weighing a case involving the accessibility of mifepristone, the primary drug used for medication abortions.

South Dakota News Watch: About the poll

News Watch has reported that several hundred South Dakota residents have traveled to Minnesota for online consultations and prescriptions to terminate pregnancies since South Dakota’s ban went into effect. A crackdown on mail-order abortion pills could close another door for those seeking reproductive health care.

“This is a state that prides itself on touting its freedom and that people should come here to enjoy those freedoms,” said Weiland. “When it comes to being a woman, though, they’ve had 50 years of reproductive health care freedom taken away from them, and I think that resonates with the majority of people.”

Abortion on ballot in other states

Life Defense Fund has worked tirelessly to try to keep the measure from reaching the November ballot, mindful of a national trend of progressive groups using the initiative process to gain ground on abortion rights.

Election wins have come in conservative states such as Ohio, where 57% of voters approved a constitutional amendment in November 2023 that ensured access to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care.

In Kansas, voters overwhelmingly rejected a 2022 constitutional amendment that would have allowed the Republican-led Legislature to tighten restrictions or ban abortion outright, with 59% voting against the amendment.

This year, abortion rights are slated to be on the November ballot in Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Colorado and Nebraska, with petition efforts still under way in a number of other states.

In South Dakota, voters have a track record of rejecting near-total abortion bans at the ballot box.

In 2006, the Legislature passed a law to ban all abortions except those done to save the life of a pregnant woman. The measure was signed by then-Gov. Mike Rounds, but opponents gathered enough signatures to refer it to the ballot, where it was defeated with more than 55% percent of the vote.

Two years later, voters rejected by a margin of 55% to 45% a ballot initiative that would have banned all abortions in the state except in cases of rape or incest or “to preserve the health or life of the woman.”

Certification challenge expected

Dakotans for Health petition circulators occasionally clashed with anti-abortion demonstrators and reached a settlement with Minnehaha County over public access during the signature gathering process.

The group’s friction with Hansen and the Life Defense Fund spilled over into the ballot certification process.

On May 16, South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s office certified the measure for the Nov. 5 ballot as Amendment G, saying that a random sample showed 46,098 signatures were deemed valid, well over the threshold of 35,017.

Hansen formed a campaign finance committee called South Dakota Petition Integrity that contacted petition signers by phone, asking if they wanted to revoke their signature as allowed by a Hansen-sponsored state law passed this year by the Legislature.

Complaints from call recipients led Johnson to alert law enforcement about a phone scam from callers “claiming they are with the Secretary of State’s office” and “trying to pressure voters into asking that their name be removed from the Abortion Rights petitions.”

Hansen denied that callers had claimed to represent the secretary of state’s office, and Attorney General Marty Jackley declined to press charges.

But Weiland pointed to the episode as proof of “desperate measures” being used by abortion opponents to try to keep the measure off the ballot.

Hansen has said his group will file a challenge to the certification and that he expects the matter to end up in court. The deadline to file a challenge is June 17.

“We are continuing to review the signatures and will announce a challenge at the appropriate time,” Hansen told News Watch.

Young voters supportive of measure

The News Watch/Chiesman poll showed young voters to be most supportive of Amendment G, with 57% of respondents ages 18-34 saying they are for the measure, compared to 39% against. Only one of the age groups (50-64) registered less than majority support, with 49% for the measure and 40% opposed.

Geographically, the most support came from the East River/North region, including cities such as Aberdeen, Brookings and Watertown, with 57% of respondents supporting the measure. That was followed by Sioux Falls Metro at 53% and East River/South and West River both at 52%.

Based on presidential preference for 2024, respondents who said they preferred Democratic President Joe Biden supported the abortion amendment 61% to 28%. Registered voters who support Republican nominee Donald Trump were 53% for the amendment and 42% against it.

Nationally, according to the Pew Research Center, 63% of Americans have said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% said it should be illegal in all or most cases.

“(Anti-abortion) factions have been very organized and cohesive through the years, with very little compromise on this issue,” said Hellwege. “But public attitudes haven’t always been as unyielding, which could explain some of the numbers in this poll.”

 

SOUTH DAKOTA, Undated (Makenzie Huber, South Dakota Searchlight) – On Tuesday, when voters in three counties decide whether to ban tabulator machines in future elections, it will be the culmination of a statewide citizen group’s multi-year movement to switch South Dakota elections to hand counting.

The votes – in Gregory, Haakon and Tripp counties – were forced by citizen-initiated petitions. Proponents of the ban claim that tabulator machines lack transparency, that election officials are breaking a state law that dictates where ballots can be counted, and that hand counting ballots is cheaper than machine counting. County auditors — the elected officials who oversee local elections — say machine counting is accurate, transparent and more efficient, and they worry a switch to hand counting could be more expensive.

Whatever the outcome, members of the South Dakota Canvassing Group plan to continue their push for hand counting.

“There’s a fire going here and will not be going out soon,” said Steve McCance, one of the lead petitioners for the Gregory County ballot question.

The nonprofit organization is part of a nationwide movement that started after the 2020 election, motivated in part by claims that the election was “stolen” from former president Donald Trump. Trump filed more than 60 lawsuits contesting either the election or the way it was administered. None of the cases succeeded, and he’s currently under criminal prosecution for allegedly attempting to subvert the election.

Polling by South Dakota News Watch and the Chiesman Center for Democracy shows that 67% of South Dakota voters accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, but only 20% are “very confident” that American election results reflect the will of the people.

Robert Tate, one of Tripp County’s lead petitioners, said it’s important that Americans have confidence in elections.

“If we elect an elected official and he’s not doing a good job, then we complain about him for four years and then we can vote him out,” Tate said. “But if we don’t have confidence in our elections and then our governor or our president isn’t doing a good job, we complain about how they stole the election. We don’t want that. That’s not good. ”

Several tabulator ban petitions were circulated at the county level across the state earlier this year, with some counties — including Lawrence, McPherson and Charles Mix counties — rejecting them. Officials in some counties said the petitions could conflict with federal election requirements, according to their legal counsel.

Push for hand counting focused on transparency

Aside from concerns about accuracy, South Dakota Canvassing President Jessica Pollema said the group is dedicated to transparency.

“The elections belong to the people, but they’ve been contracted out to a third party that’s blacked out an audit trail. People don’t trust that,” Pollema said. “Once there’s full transparency, people will possibly be able to trust the system again.”

South Dakota county auditors contract with Election Systems and Software, known as ES&S, a national company based in Omaha, to lease and operate tabulator machines. The company “doesn’t sign an oath,” Pollema said, and the group’s members have not been able to audit the system themselves through public records requests.

Tate said he and other members of South Dakota Canvassing asked for cast vote records and were told they “did not exist.” Activists nationwide requested such records.

A cast vote record is the electronic representation of how a voter voted (without personally identifying information), which is not a public record in the state and is only able to be produced with certain software in a few counties, officials said.

Will Adler is the associate director of the Elections Project with the Bipartisan Policy Center, which advocates for election policy reform approved by a task force of election officials aiming to make elections more secure, fair and trustworthy.

Adler said allowing cast vote records and images of marked ballots to be public records would “improve transparency a lot.” Two bills introduced during the 2024 legislative session that would have made cast vote records public — one introduced by the Secretary of State’s Office and one by Sen. Tom Piscke, R-Dell Rapids — failed to pass out of committee.

“In general, that’s a more promising avenue to move towards that would allow members of the public to understand why they can trust the tabulations,” Adler said.

State law allows for several forms of transparency in elections, including the use of poll watchers to observe the election process and public test runs of tabulators before each election to check for accuracy. Petitioners in Tripp County held a hand counting seminar the same day as the county’s tabulator test on May 30.

In 2023, the South Dakota Legislature addressed transparency by passing a bill to require  post-election audits. County auditors must randomly audit at least 5% of ballots cast in voting precincts after the primary and general elections. South Dakota was one of the last few states to implement audits.

Some counties have decided to audit more than the required 5% after the primary, including Tripp, Haakon and Gregory counties.

Adler said post-election audits are a step in the right direction, though he said some other states are implementing “risk limiting audits,” which can change the audit amount based on the closeness of the race.

“This allows you to have really high confidence in a really efficient way and leveraging that human insight,” Adler said. “That allows you to have quick tabulation and quick comprehensive audits.”

Petitioners, auditors differ on cost estimates

In Haakon County, Auditor Stacy Pinney and the county state’s attorney estimates hand counting could cost more.

“I plan and prepare for the worst, but I work for the best outcome,” Pinney said.

The worst case scenario, for Pinney, is that it could take up to 15 hours for paid election workers to count the ballots, making mistakes and having to recount. County commissioners set election worker rates at the beginning of an election year. Precinct workers are required to be paid, according to state law.

The three county auditors’ estimated budgets for machine counting vs. hand counting vary, depending on how long it could take workers to count ballots. At their quickest possible pace, hand counting would be cheapest, though auditors don’t expect that.

“Honestly, we know it would never take just an hour,” said Tripp County Auditor Barb DeSersa. “Some precincts are larger than others, so it’s hard to judge how many hours it would take. It also depends on the voter turnout.”

South Dakota implemented machine tabulators in the early 2000s. Mark Nelson, one of the lead petitioners in Haakon County, was an election worker over 40 years ago and said hand counting back then “wasn’t that difficult.”

But even if it is more expensive to hand count, that money stays within the county by paying residents rather than an out-of-state corporation, said South Dakota Canvassing’s Pollema.

Pollema said hand counting can be cheaper, especially if using a specific kind of tally sheet that her group has determined can be used to count 250 ballots per hour with up to 11 races on one ballot with a trained team.

Adler said that even if auditors used the tally sheet South Dakota Canvassing Group is proposing, hand counting could still have a higher risk of error and costs.

“Regardless of how you implement it, the fact is humans are extremely bad at repetitive tasks like counting ballots,” Adler said, referencing studies on human error in different industries. “I think there’s just no way around it.”

Tripp County hand counted ballots for the 2022 election. DeSersa was awake for 40 hours straight between Election Day and the day after, with a significant amount of that time supervising hand-counters. Several races had to be recounted, sometimes three or four times that night.

Group alleges elected officials breaking law

Pollema and petitioners also claim that ballots must be counted within the precinct boundaries where they were cast, and doing otherwise is unlawful. But that statute only refers to hand counting ballots, not tabulating, said Sara Frankenstein, a Rapid City lawyer who specializes in election law.

“With the advent of automatic tabulating systems, we have a chapter in our South Dakota code that governs when those machines are used,” Frankenstein said, referencing a statute regarding the auditor setting up a central counting location (which is usually the courthouse or the county administration building) and keeping the process open to the public.

Frankenstein said the allegations are “reckless.”

“Ballots absolutely can and are required to be taken to the central location the county auditor deems,” Frankenstein said, referring to elections that include tabulator machines. “So they aren’t doing anything illegal by following those very laws.”

Whether the bans pass or not, South Dakota Canvassing will continue pushing for hand-counted elections, attending state Board of Elections meetings and supporting legislative efforts that align with their values, Pollema said.

“The people need to have the government under their watchful eye. That’s why we’re in this mess,” Pollema said. “We’ve been a little apathetic to our approach of watching our government. Now the people realize what’s going on and have decided to participate at all levels.”