South Dakota

South Dakota has a plural executive of statewide elected officials: the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the State Treasurer, the State Auditor, the Commissioner of School and Public Lands, and the three-member Public Utilities Commission. Since the 1970s the Governor and Lieutenant Governor have run together as a single ticket; most of the others are elected independently, though a few down-ballot officers are chosen at party conventions before facing voters.

With several officers elected on their own, the Governor leads the executive branch but shares authority with colleagues who answer to the voters. The Governor appoints the heads of the executive agencies that aren’t separately elected.

The South Dakota Legislature is bicameral: a 35-seat State Senate and a 70-seat House of Representatives, with all members serving two-year terms and limited to four consecutive terms (eight years) per chamber. It is a part-time, citizen legislature, with low pay ($16,348 a year for the 2025 session, plus a per diem), so members generally hold other jobs.

The defining feature is the calendar. South Dakota’s session is among the shortest in the country: the constitution provides for roughly 40 legislative days in odd-numbered years and about 35 in even years, convening each January. Everything, including the budget, must be done in that brief window, which keeps the body firmly part-time and citizen-run.

A bill is introduced, referred to committee, and — if it advances — voted on the floor of each chamber within the short session, with differences reconciled before final passage. The Governor can sign a bill, veto it, or let it become law, and holds a line-item veto over appropriations; a veto override takes two-thirds of each chamber. South Dakota also gives its governor an unusual "amendatory" or style-and-form veto, allowing the governor to return a bill with recommended changes for the Legislature to consider.

South Dakota’s signature contribution to American government is direct democracy itself: in 1898 it became the first state in the nation to adopt the citizen initiative and referendum, letting voters write their own statutes and repeal laws passed by the Legislature. The tools South Dakota pioneered then spread across the West and beyond, and South Dakotans still use them regularly today.

The Governor appoints the heads of the non-elected agencies, proposes the budget, can call special sessions, holds emergency powers, wields a line-item veto plus the amendatory veto, and holds the clemency power (with a Board of Pardons and Paroles advising). Because the Legislature meets so briefly, the Governor’s control of administration the rest of the year gives the office substantial practical reach.

The main internal checks are the independently elected Attorney General, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Auditor, and other down-ballot officers, the two-thirds override, and — fittingly for the state that invented them — the citizen initiative and referendum, which let voters act when the Legislature will not.

South Dakota uses merit selection plus retention for its Supreme Court and elections for its trial courts. The Governor appoints Supreme Court justices from a Judicial Qualifications Commission’s list, and those justices then face periodic up-or-down retention votes; Circuit Court judges are elected in nonpartisan races. The Supreme Court of South Dakota sits at the top, above the trial-level Circuit Courts; the state has no separate intermediate appeals court, so the Supreme Court hears appeals directly.