EDITORIAL ROUNDUP

Feb. 20 Yankton Press & Dakotan (S.D.)

Messing with absentee voting

Democracy is not a spectator sport; it invites (and needs) participation from everyone, and the rules on voting have generally evolved to accommodate the lifestyles and preferences of those voters.

Recently and in many places, we’ve seen efforts to move the process of voting away from what works for the voters and toward the desires and designs (whatever they are) of others. There are efforts to restrict voting, to limit participation and to generally make the process more difficult, all in the name of “safeguarding” that function.

For instance, a bill in South Dakota that made headway last week — House Bill 1217 — would reduce the window for absentee voting in the state from the current 46 days to just 30 days. It was approved by the House Local Government Committee and now moves on to the full House.

According to KELO, the bill was introduced as a means of “cleaning up” the election process in the state.

“Absentee voting has become too easy,” said Rep. Scott Odenbach (R-Spearfish). “We now have an election month or election quarter.”

So, by all means, let’s make this process harder for the voters.

While Odenbach claims the current system is proving to be a growing burden on county auditors, three county auditors testified last week against the measure. …

And yet, lawmakers advanced the measure by a 7-5 vote.

Many of these recent “election integrity” efforts have sprung from the 2020 presidential election and Donald Trump’s debunked claims of voter fraud. This has led several states to introduce new reforms that are said to protect that integrity.

But this is a double-edged sword, for these measures also infer that there are problems with election integrity in South Dakota, for instance, even though no such problems have been reported. That can undermine the process as well as undercut the work currently being done by auditors to run the election smoothly.

The state’s auditors have done a good job in running the elections, and the secretary of state’s office has also done well in making this process more efficient with upgraded databases and polling centers.

For the voters, the increased convenience of the process has proven popular. We would hate to see South Dakota shift gears on this front based on dubious claims and self-serving political interests.