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In re Department of Voter Registration Search Warrant 2025 SDSC 6

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In re Department of Voter Registration Search Warrant [2025] SDSC 6

Date 15th May 2025
Justices
  • Chief Justice TheLittleSparty
  • Justice Ivy Cactus
Held That serving search warrants to organizations was not provided for at the time of this Judicial Review Request’s submission, however it is now provided for by law

That unique legitimate ballots may not be used as evidence in a court of law

Ruling 2-0
Applicable precedent There is now a procedure by which ballots may be unveiled from secrecy if wrongdoing can be detected without first identifying the author of the ballot, [5.3.3]

MAJORITY OPINION by Chief Justice TheLittleSparty

(with Justice Ivy Cactus agreeing)

Introduction

[1] The petitioner is seeking to dispute the SDBI’s search warrant, which was issued to the Department of Voter Registration, on the grounds that there is no legal basis for search warrants to be issued to organizations, only to individuals, as outlined in the Executive Act 2023. Additionally, the petitioner raises the substantial concern that allowing ballots to be used as evidence likely violates Article 16 of the Constitution of SimDemocracy.

[2] It is of note that the petitioner was not forthcoming in participating with the judicial review, citing the criticism that the request was submitted some time ago. It is however still a topic of interest and as such the Court has seen fit to rule on it regardless.

Summary of the petition

[3] The original petitioner refused to participate in the case due to the Court’s delay in hearing it. As such, multiple amicus briefs were submitted, prompting considerable additional questions beyond the original core being addressed. Additionally, a new petitioner was appointed, but gave little in the way of additional information to review.

Summary of the response

[4] The respondent attempted rather unsuccessfully to illustrate why the SDBI ought to be able to directly demand that the EC and DVR turn over the SUIT and therefore identity of any individual who voted for identified terrorists. The Court found this to be a terrible illustration of a very real need for assurances that our elections remain free and fair.

Considerations

[5] Prompted by the several amicus briefs, there are three primary questions which need to be addressed in this case:

[5.1] Can warrants be served to groups?
[5.1.1] Currently, the POLICE Act provides for government departments to be served search warrants with some restrictions. This legislation was passed during these proceedings, and was prompted in part by them.
[5.2] Can SUITs, ballots, or other election data be used to pursue criminals?
[5.2.1] In the manner in question here, that being an SDBI served search warrant requesting that all ballots found to have voted for a certain candidate, as well as identifying information including the SUIT and identity attached to that SUIT, be turned over for investigation is entirely without merit, unconstitutional, and more broadly unlawful, due to it violating the constitutional right of every citizen to the secrecy of their unique legitimate ballot.
[5.2.2] To be abundantly clear, an un-unique illegitimate ballot is not protected under the constitutional provision. Refer to [5.3.4].
[5.3] How can SUITs, ballots, or other election data be legally released for the purposes of criminal prosecution, without violating the constitutional right to a secret ballot?
[5.3.1] To address this, the analogy of Matryoshka or nesting dolls comes to mind. Namely, there are layers to anonymity built into our electoral system, and the order of how these layers are unwrapped does in fact matter to the constitutionality and more broadly legality of revealing the identities behind and contents of individual’s ballots. In current law, the identity of a voter is hidden in the following manner:
[5.3.1.1] The voter submits a ballot to the EC, where a SUIT is the only identifying information. The contents of this ballot can thus be said to be enclosed within the protection of the anonymity of the SUIT.
[5.3.1.2] The EC then passes each SUIT to the DVR to ensure the SUIT is valid. As the DVR keeps a record of SUITs and attached users, the EC is isolated from actual voter identities and thus the anonymity of the ballot is further obscured by this second layer of abstraction.
[5.3.1.3] The EC and DVR thus each bear both partial responsibility, as well as a joint duty, to uphold the security of our elections, entirely on their own and without any input from either the sitting government or standing agencies.
[5.3.2] The SDBI search warrant attempts to cut through the anonymity of the election by requesting the identification of any user behind a ballot suspected of voting “wrong”. In this case, the “wrong” vote is anything greater than 0/5 for a particular user who, at the time, was suspected of terrorism, and thus violating the constitutional right to a secret ballot.
[5.3.3] For the SDBI to request the identities of users who’s ballots were cast in an effort to unduly influence an election, the following process must be observed:
[5.3.3.1] First, the SDBI notifies the EC of potential election fraud which the EC may then investigate to determine whether evidence for such exists within the contents of anonymous ballots, or the EC may independently determine there to be a likelihood of electoral fraud again by examining anonymous ballots.
[5.3.3.2] If either of the above conditions are met, then the EC may pass the SUITs attached to suspect ballots to the DVR to investigate. If the DVR concurs that the suspect SUITs show a pattern of potential for election fraud, then these identities may be passed out to the SDBI.
[5.3.3.3] At no time shall anyone whatsoever have access to both the contents of the ballots, and the identities of the users who cast those ballots. Additionally, valid SUITs are to remain confidential information restricted to the EC and DVR until after criminal proceedings have concluded and found the owners of said SUITs guilty of electoral crimes. At that time, the SUITs may be publicly noted as no longer valid in the same manner as normal invalid SUITs.
[5.3.4] This procedure does not violate the right to a secret unique legitimate ballot, because the process by which the ballot is discovered to be un-unique illegitimate, does not remove the veil of secrecy until after the ballot has already been found to be un-unique illegitimate, and thus removed from the shroud of protection afforded by the constitution.
[5.3.5] If at any point, a ballot is found to be un-unique illegitimate by first having its veil of secrecy stripped from it, that ballot must then be excluded from use as evidence in criminal proceedings in accordance with Article 13, Section 2.2 of the Courtroom Procedures Act.

Decision

[6] In regard to search warrants being served to organizations rather than just to individuals, this question has been answered by the POLICE Act’s passage.

[7] In regard to the legality of the SDBI requesting the identities of voters who voted a particular way, this is held to be unconstitutional, except when practiced in the manner outlined in [5.3.3].

[8] In regard to the legality of using ballots as evidence within trials, this decision has illustrated the distinction between a unique legitimate ballot, which cannot be used as evidence, and an un-unique illegitimate ballot, which can be used as evidence. See sections [5.2] and [5.3].

Citations

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