Here are South Dakota laws:
http://legis.state.sd.us/statutes/DisplayStatute.aspx?Statute=12&Type=Statute
Here is where the national party is required to send a letter to your state:
http://legis.state.sd.us/statutes/DisplayStatute.aspx?Type=Statute&Statute=12-8-8
“In years when a President and vice president are nominated and the national party conventions are held at such a late date as to make the foregoing provisions impossible, then, the secretary of state shall make the certification not later than seven days after nominations of such President and vice president.”
Here are more party responsiblities as to Presidential contests:
http://legis.state.sd.us/statutes/DisplayStatute.aspx?Type=Statute&Statute=12-5-3.11
“12.5
...
The nominating petition shall contain a statement indicating the candidates for delegates collective preference choice for President of the United States, if any, or that the candidates have no preference or are uncommitted. No name of any candidate for delegate or alternate may be filed in more than one slate.”
http://legis.state.sd.us/statutes/DisplayStatute.aspx?Type=Statute&Statute=12-5-3.16
“12-5-3.16. Certification of names of national convention nominees for President and vice-president—Alternate certification. The chairperson of the national convention of each political party recognized pursuant to § 12-1-3 or 12-5-1 shall certify the names of the convention nominees for President and vice-president of each political party to the secretary of state immediately following the convention. If the national certification is not received or is inconclusive, the names shall be certified by the state chairperson of that party at the request of the secretary of state.”
This is used if the convention is after the ‘normal’ date for candidate submission. Which I think is the case for 2008.
So in looking at this I do not see any requirement to sign-off or certify specific constitutional eligibility. So there was no reason to send your SOS a letter with the Constitutional eligibility language.
In Hawaii there is a specific law requiring such declaration in the document declaring the candidates for the ballot. Since the local Hawaii declaration did NOT include this the DNC letter had to be reworked to include it and the the COE, Kevin Cronin was allowed, by law, to make an decision to use the national declaration instead of the local one. When he was asked to release the documents used to validate Obama/Biden he released BOTH the local and national letters. This makes it look like he used or accepted both. But that is not the law. The law is one or the other. Obviously he had to use the national letter with full language that was not included in the Brian Schatz letter.
I have the state laws & I have discussed them with the SD SOS. But thanks for thinking I needed educating on my states election laws. There is code & there is procedure/policy that must be followed. The procedure/policy for the SOS pertaining to this is not listed in the online state code. All that is, is an abstract.
I haven't read the entire law, but it would seem logical that to accept something it has to be stamped certified that is was accepted. As far as my state, do you know how a "closed party" state works? If you noticed in our laws, the sections where the major parties & candidate swear that the candidates are eligible was repealed. This happened when our state went closed party. Those laws that were repealed are now part of the permanent policy/procedure in the SD Election Commission bylaws. That is why you do not find them in the SD Code. The SOS is the head of the SD Election Commission and thereby must abide by those bylaws as well as SD State Election code. We are working on getting the repealed law reenacted with stronger language. We failed this year. We will try again starting this fall and all the media coverage & especially the Huckmeisters comment tonight that they are not vetted by the parties for birth eligibility, we will have a stronger case for implementation.