South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson testifies before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Appropriations on Feb. 11, 2025, at the Capitol in Pierre. (Photo by John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)
Whether or not she’s a baseball fan, South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson finds herself living one of Yogi Berra’s famous sayings: “It’s deja vu all over again.”
The New York Yankees’ catcher didn’t have Johnson in mind when he said it, but her future bears a remarkable resemblance to her past.
In the summer, Johnson will find herself fighting for her job at the state Republican Party convention where some nominees for statewide office are chosen. She’s being challenged by state Rep. Heather Baxter, a Republican from Rapid City.
Former state trooper plans run as Democrat for secretary of state
In a South Dakota Public Broadcasting story about her candidacy, Baxter said she would align herself with President Donald Trump’s platform on election reform. Trump’s platform isn’t about fair play at the ballot box so much as it’s about poor sportsmanship. That can be seen in his reaction to the recent passage of Proposition 50 in California. Without evidence, Trump has decried that election as rigged. Now it will be up to various “election integrity” groups to offer conspiracy theories about shadowy forces behind the scenes that are as nefarious as they are unidentifiable.
Four years ago, it was Johnson who did the challenging at the convention, calling out incumbent Secretary of State Steve Barnett for not caring enough about the integrity of South Dakota elections. Johnson was successful and has to hope that history doesn’t repeat itself at the next GOP convention.
Johnson got some of her support at the 2022 convention from election integrity enthusiasts who took their cue from Trump’s assertions that the 2020 election was somehow rigged against him. By their tortured logic, even elections in states like South Dakota that voted heavily for Trump need to be cleaned up.
After Johnson’s election, the integrity crowd expected her to act like a fox in the henhouse, exposing all the corruption that was surely hiding behind every voting machine. Instead she started acting like, well, a secretary of state. So far on Johnson’s watch, what South Dakota’s elections have lacked in drama they have made up for in professionalism.
This has caused Johnson to run afoul of groups like the Luddites in the South Dakota Canvassing Group. They want to go back to the good old days when men were men and paper ballots were counted by hand.
Unfortunately for her, Johnson has other problems beyond the fight for her job. She was recently subpoenaed to appear before the Legislature’s Government Operations and Audit Committee.
Usually elected officials will just show up when asked to testify to legislators. The committee issued the subpoena because it said Johnson had failed to show up to testify in the past.
Johnson said she had informed the committee she was conducting county auditor training on the day the committee wanted her to show up. Committee members wanted Johnson to answer questions about the methods used for purchasing new election technology and whether the purchase was subject to the bidding process.
Johnson should probably avoid making legislators — who control her budget — as surly as the election integrity buffs. Lucky for her, the South Dakota Canvassing Group doesn’t have subpoena power.
It wouldn’t be out of character for Johnson to avoid public scrutiny. One of the first official actions she took as secretary of state was forming a 15-member group to discuss election audits and draft legislation. The topic was so important that Johnson announced the meetings would be held behind closed doors.
Fresh off a campaign in which she pledged to bring greater transparency to elections, the irony-impaired Johnson held her committee meetings in secret to discuss election integrity.
As Johnson deals with irritated legislators and an attempt to kick her out of her job at the next GOP convention, she might start quoting another saying from Yogi Berra: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
