The political parties are rewarded for polarization right now because of the way that we have
set up the system. It's said the change is the only constant, but South Dakota is stuck,
continually revisiting concerns that really aren't that concerning to most people in our state,
while real needs remain unmet. Our smartest and brightest leaving for greener pastures.
We can change that. Welcome to Change Agents and the Power of We.
Hello and welcome to the Power of We. This is Rick Knobe and this broadcast is put together by
Change Agents of South Dakota. Today we're going to talk about a ballot issue which will probably
be on the ballot in November in the state of South Dakota. The topic is changing our election laws
specifically the constitution of the state of South Dakota to allow for what's called open
primaries. I'm sure you've heard that term before. We're going to explore during this broadcast what
that really means for us. Joining me today is John Fiksdal with Media One. He is helping us coordinate
this and he's involved with the effort on open primaries. Janelle Lust is the Speaker's Bureau
person for open primaries. Drey Samuelson is also involved and this is a bipartisan effort I understand
we're going to spend a little time exploring that. Janelle, first question in 25 million words or less,
what's open primaries? What's this ballot issue about? Sure, what open primaries is is
instead of having party-run primaries every year in June you would have one primary in which every
registered voter can vote in the same primary and out of that primary the top two vote getters
go on to the general election. Is anybody else in the country doing this? Yes, absolutely. First of
all Nebraska has had it for years and years and years and it works just fine down there. Several,
at least half the states have some form of open primary system. The top two open primary system
is primarily found right now in Nebraska, California, and Alaska. So what happens to the body politic
when open primaries exist? Well there's been organizations that have studied this
who are very interested in sustaining our democracy and they have found that when states
adopt open primaries two things happen. Voter turn-up goes up because people are more engaged
in the process and they feel like their vote matters and they're not just going to the general
election holding their nose and picking the worse of two evils. And the other thing that happens is
the state tends to moderate instead of being extremely liberal or extremely conservative.
It tends to moderate the politics there and the politicians seem to get along a little bit better
because they have to appeal to a wider base. Yeah that's what I was going to ask about when you say
moderate. Okay California I view as an extremely blue state and so they're now a little bit more
purple? Well I wouldn't say they're purple but their politics are more moderate than the other
states that are around it that tend to be blue. Since they've adopted open primaries the studies
have shown that they have become more moderate than the states that surround it that have not
adopted open primaries. So I've studied California a little bit and in California passed an open
primary ballot initiative in 2010 and in 2010 the California legislature had about a excuse me about
a 14 approval rating. There was too many crazy left wingers and crazy right wingers and they
were much more interested in throwing partisan bombs back and forth than they were making good
public policy. When the open primary initiative passed in California it's now been in effect for
13-14 years the California legislature's approval rating instead of 15 percent in 2010 is now around
45 percent. So it's three times better because the California legislature actually is responsive to
to the people rather than to the ideological parties that are more much more interested in
advancing their agenda rather than advancing the people's agenda. Whose idea is it was it to bring
this issue forward? Well I would say it was a bipartisan group. We have very prominent
Republicans in our group and very prominent Democrats so I wouldn't say it was one person's
idea who's pushing an agenda. It's people that want you know I guess a little bit of kindness
back into South Dakota politics. Okay here's the question. Drey everybody that knows you knows you're
a progressive Democrat. Probably in this state you'd be considered a screaming liberal nationally
you're probably considered a moderate. So people that I know that pay attention to this stuff at
least at some level are convinced this is nothing but a Democratic effort to destroy the Republican
primary or destroy the Republican party in the state of South Dakota. Well it's yeah I've heard
that before I've heard it it's also a Republican plot to destroy the Democratic party. I'm going
to ask her that next. Well it's definitely not this is this is totally non-partisan.
Our chairman is a Republican and a lifelong Republican. We have many Republicans on our
board of directors. This is not a partisan issue at all. It's a way to make government work better.
It's a way to raise voter turnout as Janelle said. There's many other reasons for it but
there's no way that it's going to turn South Dakota into a Democratic state unless the people
of the state want to be a Democratic state and which I don't foresee anytime soon. It's just a
way to make government work better and that's what our interest is and all of us whether we're
Republican, Democrat, independent or libertarian. Okay I'm going to just do the same thing to you
Janelle. One of my female friends who does pay attention to politics won't sign the petition
because she is convinced this is the Republican party's answer to making the Democratic party
even less effective in the state of South Dakota. Well first of all I just don't see how it can get
worse for the Democratic party right now. The Republicans in this state are only a tiny bit
more than 50 percent of the electorate but they hold 90 percent plus of the seats in our state
legislature and all of the statewide elective offices. What this will do and I think every
Democrat should be in favor of it is actually get you to have somebody to vote for when it comes to
the general election because two people are going to come out of the primary which right now most of
the time only one person comes out of the primary and that's whoever won the Republican primary
election and that was voted on by only the really the Republicans who are really really interested
in showing up to a primary. Yeah the fanatics. Yes. I'll use the term you probably probably wouldn't.
John Fiksdal you pay attention to this stuff you have for years everybody knows the state of South
Dakota is extremely red and has been for many years. The upcoming election cycle now do we know
how many actual primaries there are going to be in the state there's we have 105 legislators.
What do you know about the numbers of coming up? Well what I can tell you is we just found out here
two weeks ago just to what the slates are going to look like in the legislature and it's an
unfortunate fact that 17 out of 35 Senate races are running unopposed at this point and 37 of 75
house races for the legislature are unopposed. What this means is that about half of the elections
for state legislators in South Dakota coming up this November will have been pre-decided in the
Republican primary. If you take a look back in 2020 which was the last presidential year
turnout tends to be higher on presidential years 28.2 percent of voters showed up for the primary
election. What that means is generally speaking a little over 14 percent of people in South Dakota
are able to select the legislators in the Republican primary in South Dakota.
Now Janelle mentioned just a little bit more about the Republicans being the Scosch larger.
The fact is the fastest growing affiliation in South Dakota are independents or non-affiliated
voters. There is a fairly significant suspicion that the increases and there have been modest
modest increases in Republican registrations are people who are registering as Republicans because
they understand that the Republican primary is in half of the cases for the legislature
the only election of consequence. So I can't speak to that but that it is a suggestion it's something
that we see could be happening. Anecdotally I can confirm that I have two friends who are
make Drey seem like a conservative and they have registered as a Republican because they have
figured out that that's where the decision is made and when they when they vote in the November
election the general if they feel the need they switch back over and so they go back and forth
you know etc etc. So how is this going to work? I know there was an effort of several years ago
to do basically the same thing but we're going to take the party labels off and that failed.
Are the party labels going to be on this time? Yes. Okay yeah just she's nodding up and down.
Party labels will definitely be on the ballot. We made a political mistake in 2016 by taking them
off either it's the right policy but it wasn't the right politics and doesn't do you any good
to put these things on the ballot and have them not be enacted by people so we I mean I
I absolutely believe party labels should be off but that's not we can't pass that or we don't think
we can so we're going to pass we're going to put something forward that we think we can pass
and we're confident that we can pass this. So as you look at this and it's we're early on in the
process who's come out against this idea? Well I've been at various events where John Wick who is
the head of the Republican party in the state has come out against it his response basically is if
you want to have a voice pick a party and we think that's unfair to the independents who are 25 percent
of the electorate who have decided I don't agree with either party and I'm going to register it
with my conscience which is independent I don't want to belong to a party and to have a response
that basically is if you don't like who's being elected by the Republican party join a party
so you can have a voice is just not acceptable it's undemocratic and it disenfranchises at
least 25 percent of the electorate in the state. Well and not only that I mean I although I'm a
Democrat I might want to vote for Republican sometime and I don't want to change my party
to vote for Republican because I still would want to vote for Democrats in primaries but I can't do
that my it's it's not allowed right now and it's not right to put voters in shackles of partisan
politics in my opinion. So this is a constitutional amendment let's assume a couple of things you get
on the ballot and let's assume that this wins in November by a hair or two or three. Or 10 or 15
percent. Yeah well yeah which would be wonderful from your perspective I understand that so the
legislature has been prone over the years when the voters say this is what we want to do the
legislature has demonstrated numerous times that they say well we don't think you're smart enough
to understand all this and so we're going to make some changes. Can they do that with this?
That's the reason we're have it on the ballot is constitutional amendment.
So the legislature can't mess with it. They can't they can put it on the ballot again
but they can't change it themselves so if if people voted for it once the legislature doesn't
like it they'll put it on the ballot themselves which which they can do but if the people still
want it they can't they can't eliminate it they can't repeal it. Has anybody done any research on
the state laws that the legislature may or probably will have to change to implement
this constitutional amendment? I don't believe that there are any as far as what the constitutional
amendment will do I mean because it's pretty comprehensive and it says this is going to be an
open primary so as for anything else they might want to change this ballot initiative is not
changing the way that certain constitutional offices are selected by the parties those are
those are still done at the convention and that doesn't change that so like secretary of state
attorney general etc will still be selected at the convention. Now after we have an open primary
passed would it make sense to have everybody in the open primary election probably so that may
be something that the legislature should look at changing and I think there was some movement to
change that this year in the legislature but it didn't pass. Janelle you said that the head of the
republican party has come out and doesn't like this idea has the democratic party said anything
yet? They have not taken a position. Are there any other organizations out there that are involved
in the political process at some level or another have they come up with anything pro or con? Not
that I am aware of John. Well it would be it would be easy but it would be inappropriate for me to
call attention to those that supported us back in 2016. Many major and very influential
organizations did stand behind our effort in 2016 if anyone wants to look up the history they can
see what that support was. At this point we have one job ahead of us and that is to finish our
petition drive to get it on the ballot and once we have attained the ballot access we will be
going after some of those old friends and partner organizations and seem to it that
if indeed they agree with what we're doing that the public is made aware. Do you have any idea
how much it's going to cost to to for your organization to sell this? Well let's deal with
the hard cost issue first. The legislative research council which is which serves the
legislature has done the research on our ballot measure. They need to issue what's called a fiscal
note whenever an initiated measure comes forward. That fiscal note outlines what it will cost the
state for instance the prison system etc and the only thing that they could come up with
they suggested that this will increase costs to the state of about $28,000 which frankly
is an eye blink when you take a look at the costs of our elections and the reason they figured they
needed to spend more money was because they will need to print an additional 50,000 ballots because
they said their research tells them when this passes more people will show up to vote. This is
not a negative to us. It's not a cost it's an investment. Correct. Now we've tested the
ballot language and over 60% in the mid-60s of people in the state of South Dakota are supportive
of what we're trying to do here in our early studies. That of course would mitigate the amount
of money it would take for us to sell it in. You know to run an INR campaign is a monstrous
uh undertaking. We've been just we've really had to spend to to get our petition drive done.
Open primaries doesn't have the draw and the excitement of a restore row initiative. It's
not necessarily romantic or catching when you know you bring up open primaries and you're talking
to somebody it's not unusual to lose eye contact. I gotta go to the dentist we'll see you John.
I appreciate it but we feel it's eminently it's we feel it's something we actually we have strong
evidence that this is something that the people of South Dakota are very interested in having.
When Drey when you were involved in the effort a couple of years ago and you talked about the
I mean and you talked about the strategic mistake of you know taking the party affiliations off
that effort did fail but it wasn't a landslide. No. Was it? It's 55-45
as I've heard John Fiksdal say numerous times that's only five and a half conversion points
away from actually passing it which is true. You know we we did very well actually
and you know we made the mistake of taking party labels off. We're not making that political
mistake this time and I'm very confident we're going to pass it. One of the things that that I
recall from that campaign and I was involved in that a little bit myself was you know people
people go we love to go back and talk about the founding fathers of this country and and what
brilliance they had in putting all of these documents together the constitution declaration of
independence bill of rights etc etc etc. Several of them expressed in writing concern about
the actual creation of political parties and I recall you had done some research on
you know what these people had said back when they formed the country and their concerns about it.
Do you recall any of that? I do and George Washington in his farewell address also made a
very strong point that he was very concerned about parties. He did not like parties. He thought it
would be divisive and and it was it would not be people would be making decisions on the basis of
their parties rather than on their own judgment and I think we should listen to what George
Washington had to say and I don't this wouldn't eliminate parties. Parties will still be around.
Parties can still tell their adherents who they endorse but I think the partisan partisanship in
this country has gone way overboard and I think we're divided because of it and I think this is a
move that would make diminish the impact of parties which I think is in the public interest.
As we want to get it I'm not sure if this is getting into the weeds or not but why are we
are we where we are today? Why are things so divided that you can't even you know there's
these stories about families not being able to sit down at Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter
or Fourth of July or whatever and talk about political things without it turning into
in some cases an actual fistfight or even worse. What caused that to happen in this country?
Well I can tell you what I think it is. I think the internet has played a very strong role in
dividing us. When I was growing up and if you go back in time 25 years we would get our news from
the newspaper we get our news from TV. Now people get their news from the internet and they go to
their different ideological corners and get their news so we don't even agree on the same facts
and that is a real problem because I have discussions with some of my friends they say
anything I say is fake news well I don't think it's fake news but they do and it's because that
they have had their minds we we just go to our ideological corners and that's not in the interest
of democracy and discussion in my opinion. John you're a student of politics you've been at this
for most of your adult life why are we in the mess we're in? I think Dre outlined it very succinctly
prior to the rise of cable back when the only broadcast media that we could receive was federal
administered by the FCC we had in place a doctrine called the fairness doctrine and that was the
federal government saying to media okay if you're going to tell stories here if you're going to talk
about politics you must show both sides of an issue you must represent both sides of an issue
whether they're symmetrical or not but the fairness doctrine has been rescinded and the feds really
did not have constitutional control over content in closed systems such as cable systems.
The rise of entertainment organizations that position themselves as news has been very very
damaging to our society for people to represent as fact pure innuendo is extremely damaging as
Drey mentioned people it's a process called confirmation bias when people cluster around
everybody who agrees with them or says things says things that they agree with gives them a nice warm
feeling but it does not give them a true picture of the world and what's going on around them and
this is this is driven to that polarization and Janelle alluded here just a little bit earlier
about moderation in California there was a fairly extensive study done on southwestern states in
America where a number of polarization criteria were established 20 or 30 points that were
monitored to gauge levels of polarization in southwestern United States over a period of time
over a period of time I can't remember how long those indicators were monitored and the only state
that showed depolarization was California since the institution of open primaries and that is a very
very strong strong evidence that suggests that open primaries may as my friend Nick Triano says
may be the primary solution to our problem well and I mean I also think that the political parties
are rewarded for polarization right now because of because of the way that we have set up the
system where somebody who the Washington Post did a big study about this a person who reaches out to
the other side of the aisle now is worried about when they go home they are going to get prime
quote primaried by somebody on the ideological extreme of their party when they go back and when
they have been primaried once they get through once they're back in Congress they're much more
polarized than they were before because they were worried about the you know primary from the extreme
when they went back home so what we have done is we've set up a system where our districts are
gerrymandered so we know who's going to win we've you know set up a system we're playing for playing
to the base works because the moderates you know more moderates still hold their nose and vote
along party lines but they've fired up the base and the people that can fire up the base right now
in politics are the ones that are getting through so that's why open primaries is so important and
helps with this polarization issue as an indep- I used to be a Republican for years even served on
the local Minnehaha County Central Committee back in the days when they called it the big tent the
Republicans were doing the big tent thing that shows you how long ago that was and and as over
the years I've watched the the party that party in particular be less welcoming and more controlling
and more just and there's all kinds of words I could use but I won't because I said don't cuss in
this and so I registered as an independent and I have been frustrated because I can't participate
because I can't go back I just I won't go back there I couldn't register as a Democrat because
I didn't agree with all of their stuff either and and so I think John your your point about
independence being one of the fastest growing parts of this I think that's very true I think
there's a lot of Rick Knobes out here that are don't like either one necessarily.
So I mean I think the answer is maybe we're not that polarized but our politics is polarized I
think there's a vast middle out there yeah and I and I have a tendency to agree with that okay so
you're head of the Speaker's Bureau Janelle for this and so you've helped people put together their
little stump speech I'm going to give you the final word on this and then we're going to sign
off so how do you finish up your service club presentation? Well what I normally say is if
you're tired of politics if you're tired of people screaming at each other you don't just have to
give up and wash your hands and stop voting we can change the system and we can make the system
better and frankly more like what our founders wanted they didn't want these political party
mess that we're in right now and we can give the vast majority of us who are in the middle
a chance to control the people that are elected. This has been the power of we brought to you by
Change Agents of South Dakota Janelle Lust, John Fiksdal, Drey Samuelson, I'm Rick Knobe. Pay attention
to this issue it will have an impact on your life your daily existence on the planet when this is
implemented I think you'll find your life will get a little better. Thank you for listening.
Thanks for inviting us. Thank you.