Drop Box Ban Passes in South Dakota House, Bill Heads to Governor

A sign directs to ballot drop boxes in Newport Beach, Calif., on Oct. 12, 2022. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

The use of ballot drop boxes has effectively been banned in South Dakota, with the state House passing the final version of an election bill on Wednesday following the Senate’s passage earlier this week containing the amendment adding drop box changes.

The bill is now headed to the desk of Republican Gov. Kristi Noem for her signature. Noem has in the past expressed support for banning drop boxes in the state.

The bill, HB1165 (pdf), is a clean-up of absentee voting laws, Republican state Sen. Jim Stalzer said prior to the bill’s passage in the Senate on Monday.

He said the bill was worked on by a number of lawmakers, county auditors, and the state Attorney General’s office.

“The idea is to make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat,” he said on the Senate floor Monday.

What’s Changing?

Some of the changes include adding to conditions under which a county auditor, who oversees elections in South Dakota counties, can remove an absentee ballot from being counted.

Currently, only absentee ballots belonging to someone who filed an absentee ballot but died before the election can be removed. The updated legislation changes the language to include those ”no longer eligible to vote due to death, felony conviction, or mental incompetence.”

Election officials must make open to poll watchers the process of sorting, validating and counting absentee ballots as well under the new legislation.

An additional change will ban groups from mailing out prefilled paperwork requesting an absentee ballot to voters in the state. The mailing of such paperwork has been reported in at least Georgia and New York in recent elections, mounting criticism by Republicans in those states.

“This prevents someone from mailing you a prefilled or prefilled out application that you can then mail in to get an absentee ballot,” Stalzer said. “It doesn’t prevent your county auditor from sending you one if you request it, but in some states, groups are starting to mail them out to one party but not the other, so this is to make that fair.”

Ballot Drop Boxes

“The last major thing [the legislation] changes is that It effectively bans unmonitored and unsecured ballot drop boxes,” Stalzer said. “... already this last year, Lincoln County has banned the use of these. We saw things in [earlier elections] where people were harvesting ballots and dropping them off at all hours of the day or night. [The changes mean] that if you are going to have a drop box, it has to be manned and monitored and generally available to normal business hours.”

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem speaks during the National Rifle Association annual convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas, on May 27, 2022. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Stalzer added the bill still allows voters wishing to vote by absentee ballot to put a stamp on it and mail it in if the voter chooses to do so.

The bill passed the Senate mostly along party lines. Of the four Democrats in the South Dakota Senate, two voted against the bill while a third voted for the bill and a fourth was not present. Two Republican Senators crossed party lines to vote against the bill while the remaining 29 Republican Senators voted to send the bill to the House.

In the House, four Republicans joined all seven Democrats in opposing the legislation, while the remaining 57 Republicans voted to approve the bill’s amendments. Two Republican members were absent from the vote. The House had previously passed a version of the bill without the Senate amendments regarding drop boxes back in February.

Drop Boxes in Other States

Other states have also curbed the use of ballot drop boxes following the 2020 presidential election.

An election bill signed by the Governor in Ohio earlier this year gives voters less time to turn in their ballots or have them mailed in and made it where each county is only allowed to designate one location for a drop box. Last year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled them illegal.

Proponents of the use of drop boxes in elections argue they offer a convenient and accessible option for voters to return their ballots.

Democracy Docket, a progressive media platform founded by top Democrat lawyer Marc Elias, states on its website that by providing a round-the-clock option, voting “becomes as easy as filling out a ballot at home and depositing it in a secure box whenever the voter has time, a much more convenient process than going to a polling place or dropping it off at an election office during their limited hours of operation.”

The organization also says they are more convenient for election officials as they allow them to collect ballots directly from voters, avoiding issues with postal services and potential delays.