From the campaign
Where I Stand on Elections and Voting Integrity
In March 2025 a bill I fought for died in the South Dakota House by one vote. Thirty-five to thirty-four. That is why I do not shrug when somebody says a single ballot cannot matter.
Thirty-five yeas. Thirty-four nays.
That was the South Dakota House in March 2025, on a Shared Parenting bill I had spent two sessions fighting for. One more yea and it would be law right now.
So when somebody shrugs and tells me a single vote cannot matter, I do not argue with him. I just tell him that number. Then I follow the thread to the part nobody enjoys saying out loud, which is that if one legal vote carries that much weight, one illegal vote does that much damage. It cancels somebody real. A nurse coming off a night shift. A retired teacher downtown. A kid in North Rapid voting for the first time in his life.
That is the whole principle. Every legal vote counts. Every illegal vote cancels one that should.
I came at this sideways, if I am honest. A family court case brought my son to Rapid City and I followed him here, and for years everything I loved depended on whether the rules in one courtroom got applied straight. What that taught me was not really about courtrooms. When people stop believing a process is fair, they do not just doubt the outcome. They quit showing up. And when the people who play straight quit showing up, the process belongs to whoever is left in the room.
Elections run on the same trust, and you cannot demand trust from voters. You have to build it somewhere they can see it.
Five things I will fight for
Proof of citizenship to register to vote in South Dakota. Today you sign a line swearing you are a citizen and nobody asks for the paper. We are running the single most important qualification on the honor system.
Photo ID and a verified chain of custody for absentee and mail-in ballots. The standard you meet at the polling place should follow your ballot wherever it travels, traceable from request to return to count.
Real residency requirements, and an end to mail-forwarding abuse. A mailbox is not a home.
Geographic signature distribution for initiated measures, so a measure has to show support across South Dakota before it reaches a statewide ballot rather than renting signatures from paid crews working two big-city parking lots.
Higher thresholds for constitutional amendments. The constitution is the operating manual for everything else and it should be harder to change than an ordinary law. Right now a bare majority on a single Tuesday can rewrite it, and out-of-state money is well aware of that.
The objection I take most seriously
People tell me proof of citizenship and photo ID will keep legal voters from voting, and I do not wave that off, because the first half of my own principle is that every legal vote counts. I mean both halves of the sentence or neither one.
You already show photo ID to board a plane, open a bank account, and pick up certain prescriptions. Voting decides who governs all of that and it deserves at least the same care. When a legal South Dakota voter is missing a document, the answer is to help that voter get the document. The answer is not to lower the standard for three quarters of a million people.
Simple for citizens. Closed to everybody else. I will not accept a system that fails either half of that.
What I am not doing
Absentee voting stays. Your grandmother votes. The rancher hauling cattle votes. The college kid studying out of state votes. My position on absentee is one sentence long: the ballot that travels should meet the same standard as the ballot cast in person. Photo ID with the application and a verified chain of custody from request to count. That is not a barrier, it is a receipt, and you ought to be able to confirm your ballot made the whole trip.
I am also not coming after the people who live on the road. South Dakota has made itself a home base for them and the overwhelming majority follow the rules exactly as written. My quarrel is with a system that lets a mail slot stand in for a home. If this state is genuinely where you live, a real residency standard costs you nothing.
On the initiative, since we invented it
South Dakota was the first state in the country to put the initiative in citizens' hands, and I want it to stay a citizens' tool. That is the reason it needs guardrails rather than a reason it should not have any.
Geographic distribution means an idea has to find support across this state before it reaches your ballot. A higher bar for constitutional amendments means out-of-state donors cannot write their experiments into our founding document on a bare majority in an off year.
Yes, that makes ballot campaigns work harder, and that is the intent. An idea with real support across South Dakota can clear the bar. An idea renting its support cannot, and that is the entire distinction I am after.
One more thing about the people who run our elections
Our elections are administered by county auditors, clerks, and volunteers who take the work seriously, and strong rules are not an insult to any of them. Strong rules protect those people, because when every ballot is verifiable, nobody gets to smear the folks who counted it.
Safeguards are not an accusation either. You lock your truck on a good street. You put a smoke alarm in a house that has never burned. And rare is not a synonym for harmless: we just watched a bill die by one vote, and in a margin like that a handful of illegal ballots is not a rounding error, it is the result.
The other objections I hear on this plank are answered below.
On November 3 District 32 picks two state representatives and I am asking to be one of them. The full platform is at zac4sd.com.
Strong Families. Strong South Dakota.
Anticipated pushbacks · prepared responses
Common questions on this issue
These are the questions and concerns that come up most often. The responses below are my honest answers, not talking points.
- Q. Fraud is rare here. This is a solution in search of a problem.
- A. I want it to stay rare, and I want you to be able to prove that to your most skeptical neighbor. Safeguards are not an accusation. You lock your truck on a good street and you put a smoke alarm in a house that has never burned. Rare also is not a synonym for harmless: a bill just died in the House by one vote, and at that margin a handful of illegal ballots is not a rounding error, it is the result.
- Q. Proof of citizenship and photo ID will keep legal voters from voting.
- A. I take that seriously, because the first half of my principle is that every legal vote counts, and I mean both halves or neither. You already show photo ID to board a plane, open a bank account, and pick up certain prescriptions, and voting decides who governs all of it. When a legal South Dakota voter is missing a document, the answer is helping that voter get the document rather than lowering the standard for the whole state. Simple for citizens, closed to everybody else.
- Q. You want to gut absentee voting.
- A. No. Absentee voting stays. Your grandmother votes, the rancher hauling cattle votes, the college kid studying out of state votes. My position is that the ballot which travels should meet the same standard as the ballot cast in person: photo ID with the application, and a verified chain of custody from request to count. That is a receipt, not a barrier, and you should be able to confirm your ballot made the whole trip.
- Q. Residency rules punish people who live on the road and legally claim South Dakota.
- A. Most of them follow the rules exactly as written and my quarrel is not with travelers. It is with a system that lets a mail slot stand in for a home. The people who live under South Dakota's laws should be the ones choosing who writes them. If this state is genuinely your home, a real residency standard costs you nothing.
- Q. South Dakota pioneered the citizen initiative and you are taking it away.
- A. South Dakota was the first state to put the initiative in citizens' hands and I want it to stay a citizens' tool, which is exactly why it needs guardrails. Geographic distribution means an idea has to find support across this state before it reaches your ballot instead of renting signatures from paid crews in two cities. A higher bar for constitutional amendments means out-of-state donors do not write their experiments into our founding document on a bare majority. It does make ballot campaigns work harder, and that is the intent.