Rick Weiland. Photo from Facebook
South Dakota: ‘The hotbed of political reform’
By Rick Weiland
For the Native Sun News Today
nativesunnews.today This November, South Dakota has an opportunity to lead the nation by passing three ballots measures that will dramatically reform our politics and send a message to Washington and the rest of the country. In 1898, South Dakota became the first state in the Union to allow the voters to petition their government by using ballot measures to shape public policy. Now, 24 states have some form of an initiated measure process where the citizens can legislate when they feel their elected officials will not. After years of inaction, both in Washington and in Pierre, the people of South Dakota overwhelming passed a ballot measure to raise the minimum wage $1.25, from $7.25 to $8.50, with a cost of living allowance – end-running a state legislature too beholden to special interests and their lobbyists. Contrary to the propaganda at the time, the sky didn’t fall, unemployment didn’t escalate and businesses didn’t close their doors. Unemployment in South Dakota remains among the lowest in the nation. When our state consistently ranks in the top five of states most at risk of corruption; when scandals like EB-5 and Gear-Up destroy confidence in our elected leaders and government by squandering hundreds of millions of dollars; when sweetheart government contracts, suicides, murders, lawsuits and felony charges dominate our daily news and coffee talk, then it is time for reform. Recently, in a New York Times article entitled, “Can the States Save Democracy?” South Dakota was singled out as the “hotbed of political reform” citing three ballot measure efforts on “gerrymander reform, clean money and a proposed nonpartisan primary.” Like 1898, South Dakota in 2016 can show the rest of the nation the way forward by passing a “trifecta of reform” and starting a political reform movement to take our country back from the ‘big money” special interests and the hyper-partisanship that is destroying it. South Dakota’s chance to lead and save our democracy starts by voting yes and passing Amendments T through V and Initiated Measure 22.
Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: South Dakota: ‘The hotbed of political reform’ (Rick Weiland is a small business owner, former United States Senate candidate and co-founder of TakeItBack.Org, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on reforming our political system) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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