Brutally rejecting the people’s will, South Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature is rushing to repeal a vital ethics reform referendum approved by voters in November.

The 52 percent of voters who approved the anticorruption referendum were “hoodwinked by scam artists,” Gov. Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, brazenly insisted, as he promised to sign the repeal. The referendum called for the creation of an independent ethics commission to investigate abuses by statehouse politicians and lobbyists, a public financing option to reduce election spending and a $100 annual limit on lobbyists’ gifts to elected officials.

The Republican-dominated committee that approved the repeal bill did so under South Dakota’s “state of emergency” provision that would prevent voters from reversing the repeal with another referendum.