BISMARCK — The North Dakota Term Limits committee submitted petitions with more than 46,000 signatures to get an initiated measure placed on a statewide ballot. The Secretary of State tossed out 29,000 of them, setting the stage for legal wrangling.
31,000 signatures were required to place the term limits issue on the ballot. The rejection of 29,000 left only 17,000 submitted signatures remaining, far too few to place the measure before state voters.
“Based on what I know so far, it leads me to conclude at this point that the rejection of the signatures is unjustified,” said Jared Hendrix, Minot, Chairman of North Dakota Term Limits. “I haven’t seen sufficient reason to throw them out. We've made two requests for additional documents and information.”
The requests were made to North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger and Attorney General Drew Wrigley. This past Thursday, Jaeger told The Dakotan that the requests are “under review and after that review is complete, we will respond.”
In a news release, Hendrix described the Secretary of State’s nullification of thousands of petition signatures as “a sloppy, keystone-cops approach to this issue,” adding that, “Our committee has complied fully with state law.”
The term limits petitions ask that terms for the governor and state legislators be limited to eight years in office. Legislators would have the option of serving two 4-year terms in both the House and Senate, for a maximum of 16 years at the State Capitol.
In addition, the petition does not affect the amount of time any existing office holder has accrued, but rather begins at the hour of enactment.
Term Limits for North Dakota has submitted a letter compiled by attorneys, Graves Garrett and Jesse Walstad of the Vogel Law Firm in Fargo, to the Secretary of State maintaining the there was “no factual basis for the Secretary of State to disqualify nearly 63% of the valid signatures submitted” and that the “signatures were submitted with notarized affidavits yet were wrongfully rejected based on various unsubstantiated allegations.”
