Breaking down the ballot measures

Greetings. Happy election season again! Yep, you can vote early now at your county courthouse during normal business hours. Early voting goes until Nov. 2 with regular election on Nov. 3. This election is called the General Election, meaning it’s the final election and we vote for each party’s candidates, democrat and republican. If there are independent candidates, they will also be on our ballot.

This election we have four ballot measure that the public gets to decide. I should qualify that—the public that shows up to vote—gets to decide. The four ballot measures are:

I. (I) Medicaid Expansion - conditioned on federal funding.

This protects South Dakota taxpayers from being stuck with the bill if Washington reduces its share of Medicaid expansion funding—a fiscally responsible guardrail assist an unfunded federal mandate.

II. (J) Citizenship Voting Requirement—Enshrines a common sense election integrity safeguard directly in the state constitution, closing any future gap even though current registration practice already requires citizenship.

III. (K) Unclaimed Property Trust Fund - Sound fiscal management - It reduces dependence on a volatile revenue source and stops the state from budgeting around money that rightfully belongs to South Dakotans who haven’t claimed it yet. Passed the Legislature unanimously (35-9, 69-0).

IV. (L) 60 perent Vote Requirement For Constitutional Amendments - Protects our founding document from being rewritten by narrow margins driven by well-funded, often out-of-state campaigns - reserving constitutional change for genuine, broad-based consensus.

So, how am I going to vote on each of these four ballot measures? Thought you’d never ask! Ballot measures “I, J and K” I am going to vote yes on. Ballot measure “L,” I am still undecided. Can I be that way? Sure. I can because I’m not voting until the actual Election Day Nov. 3.

Ballot measure “L” raises the bar to 60 percent yes votes to pass a ballot measure. One advantage to doing that is to make it harder for out of state special interest groups to influence our voters. I believe its trying to address the huge bombardment of advertising, be it print, radio, or TV, because special interest groups can spend big bucks in out of state money influencing a ballot measure.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican, Democrat or Independent, please vote.