South Dakota Voters Fight Back Against Corrupt State Legislators

I want to give you good results kind of not about candidates. Let's go to the most exciting thing in politics, which is ballot initiatives, obviously. So there had been a thing that we talked about in the Damage Report in the last couple of weeks, and it's that coming up in November in South Dakota, there are two ballot measures that people there are going to be able to vote on. One is to legalize marijuana, and then one is going to expand Medicaid access. And those are two things that some in South Dakota would prefer that the voters not get to choose on, or at least have a little bit harder of a time. So tonight, there's a different ballot measure in advance of those two, which are coming in November. And what it would do would increase the threshold for ballot measures to pass from a majority to 60%. That's all it does. In the future, any ballot measure would be more difficult for the voters to actually pass. It is an explicitly anti-democratic ballot measure. And the establishment in South Dakota really hoping that that would pass because there have been previous ballot measures to expand Medicaid access in different states, and they've passed. But I believe so far, none have passed by 60%. So this would seem to make it very difficult for that to happen. Well, I've been tracking the results of this ballot measure, the one that would raise the threshold. And it was actually just called while Cenk was speaking, and it got voted down. It's currently at 68.5%. No, people reasonably are like, no, it's really weird that you want us to have less influence in the future. And I consider these sorts of things so important, particularly because they aren't often focused on. We have all of these very specific, granular, zoomed-in political battles about trans rights, about gun control. And all of those things are important, and it's our job and our obligation, our duty to persuade people on those issues. But at the same time, we know and we often acknowledge all of the structural stuff that makes those things so much harder. So for instance, when we focus on voter suppression laws being passed in Georgia, one of the reasons we do that is that's gonna affect all the future battles. But when it does that, you won't even know that that was the thing that manipulated things. The fact that the distribution of political power in the Senate is manipulated, the fact that we have gerrymandering, all of these things are structural things designed to stop change from happening. This is an attempt where they tried to set up another one of those structural things, and there are versions of it. For instance, there are versions in California of this sort of thing designed to stop certain types of legislation from passing. A lot of state constitutions have that. Anything that would raise taxes is needlessly more difficult to pass. Well, at least in this case, they didn't succeed in raising the threshold in South Dakota. So let me tell you the history of that in South Dakota, and you'll see why we're indisputably right about the disconnect between the voters and how they vote, and how money and media in the middle create that disconnect, okay? So in South Dakota, a bunch of years back now, I forget if it was four, six years ago, they passed a great ballot measure, and it was against corruption. They didn't want their politicians taking money from lobbyists, and it had a bunch of provisions in it, and it really cleaned up South Dakota politics. The legislature, in its infinite corruption, got together after the ballot measure, they're like, we don't like that ballot measure. We like being corrupt, so we're going to ignore it. We're now voting to get rid of the ballot measure. Well, you can't get rid of a ballot measure, and they're like, yeah, we can, we're just not going to do it. And then they posed with pictures from gifts that they got from lobbyists. Totally brazen, to rub it in their people's faces. They're like, it doesn't matter, the media's on our side, money's on our side. We don't care about democracy. That's why they then, the corrupt sons of bitches in South Dakota, in this case, Republicans, then said, why don't this ballot initiative is a pain in our ass with this democracy? And it turns out, if you just ask the voters issue by issue, they're super progressive, even in South Dakota. Man, they hate corruption, and Republicans love corruption, right? So they're like, all right, then let's pass a ballot measure. Making other ballot measures really hard, so we can kill all of democracy. And look at what the voters did there. Not only is it a resounding no, but hey, it's past your 60% margin. Even if it was in place, they're like, no, we actually like democracy, and we hate how corrupt you are. By the way, the voters of South Dakota, I know you're not getting this message. So if you were, you would agree with us. But stop voting for those same corrupt Republicans. They're the ones who blocked your democracy in the first place. Why do you keep reelecting them? But it's that disconnect, because they're like, yeah, I love anti-corruption. That's why Fox News told me to vote for the most corrupt Republican, and I did it. Wait, what? Okay, and of course, Fox News doesn't say the most corrupt Republican. They claim, there's a Republican fighting for you against the libs, he's gonna own them. No, what he's owning is the money from the lobbyists. That's what he's owning. So that's- I wish- Yeah, go ahead, Jessica. I wish tonight we were talking about more ballot measures. I think part of the reason we have so many races in California and so few races everywhere else is if you look up these sample ballots, or you look at the elections where there could be primaries happening, so many Democrats are running unopposed. It would be great if progressives were running in all of those places. So many people are reluctant to run for office. I think we need teachers, union leaders, just everyday Americans running for office everywhere. A lot of people feel like they're not qualified to do so. But seriously, your experience as an everyday American qualifies you to run for office more than billionaire Rick Caruso in Los Angeles. I mean, he has no idea what everyday life is like for people living in America. But if you don't wanna run for office, petition to get more ballot measures. And people are trying to make it harder to petition to get measures on the ballot, saying you have to collect a bunch of signatures in person and all of these absurd things to get in the way of it. But seriously, if you go door to door and talk to people about these issues, we can have progressive sea change if we had a bunch of ballot measures in every district. Yeah. So there's always a problem, right? And so a perfect example of what Jessica's talking about is in California, there's now going to be a ballot measure to increase the minimum wage to $18. So even though Democrats have a super majority in California, they're corporate Democrats. They're not gonna raise the minimum wage. They have every opportunity. They could do it tomorrow. They don't need the ballot measure, super majority. And the governor is the great Democrat Gavin Newsom. They're like, hell no, that would hurt our corporate donors. Are you crazy? Right? So Joe Sandberg's like, well, then I'll do it, right? You know how much he had to spend to get enough signatures to put it on the ballot? $11 million. Jesus. Who's got $11 million running, right? That's why now we're in a situation where we're like, okay, I guess we need progressive wealthy folks. Otherwise, we're screwed, right? And now he put it on the ballot measure. The good news is, you know how much it is if you increase the minimum wage to 18 bucks? How much wealth that redistributes back to where it's supposed to belong to the workers? 32 billion a year. That's just California. 32 billion a year goes to the workers instead of the executives and the shareholders, okay? But you can't do it unless you got $11 million laying around. Yeah. Yeah, you got it? Yeah, I just wanted to close on this by saying that after we talked about that ballot measure, people in some states are talking about the fact that I believe Florida is at 60%. Like I said, some states, it's not specifically a prohibition against ballot measures that raises it. But it might be legislation that, for instance, raises taxes, those sorts of things. And by the way, this ballot measure had a component of that too. It was the sorts of things that would require a higher amount or anything that would require more than $5 million to be spent over 10 years, which is literally everything at the state level. And so these are the things that we need to simultaneously grapple with at the same time that we're dealing with the news of the day. These are the things that are designed to protect the status quo from any threat to its power. And when we talk about the end of democracy, we assume because of movies that it'll come in the form of a mob of people storming the Capitol. And they're trying that too, to be fair. But the death of democracy in practice feels much more like just gradually losing your voice about still technically on paper having the capacity to translate the will of the people into actual political action. But making it so much less likely in practice to actually work through making it more difficult for people to register and to actually vote by making it so costly to engage in any of this by through the stranglehold that they have in the media, drowning out any focus on the attempt to change the system. All of like we have to fight back against these things. They are in a very real sense chains that are weighing us down as we engage in this ongoing fight.