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Richard Helppie Â
Hello, welcome to The Common Bridge. I'm your host Rich Helppie. Today we've got a guest from South Dakota, Joe Kirby. Why is Mr. Kirby here today? Well, The Common Bridge has covered many policy ideas and the specific laws about our most sacred privilege of self-governing - that, of course, is the vote. We had Rob Richie, who talked about ranked-choice voting in a two part series. I'd encourage you to listen to that, as well as Eli Zupnick about his ideas around proportional representation. Steven Hill educated our audience about election methods in other countries and Professor Derek Muller talked about election laws. Today, our guest, Joe Kirby, will tell us about the push to have open primaries in the state of South Dakota. Mr. Kirby, welcome to The Common Bridge. How are you today?
Joe Kirby Â
Thanks, Rich. I'm glad to be here.
Richard Helppie Â
Our audience likes to know a little bit about our guests so if you don't mind, maybe where did you spend your early days and what are some highlights of your career arc and what are you up to now?
Joe Kirby Â
I'm a fourth generation South Dakotan, lifetime Republican. I retired many years ago, but I never stopped working. I've kept working on trying to make my little world a better place. My wife and I both are involved in that quite a bit. One project I was involved in is I rewrote the city charter for Sioux Falls and got that done back in the 90s and that's really improved the trajectory of our city. We do projects - my wife and I sponsored a dog park in downtown Sioux Falls, it has really enhanced the downtown living for a bunch of people. That's the kind of project we're involved in. My wife spearheaded an effort to bring a downtown music pavilion to our city, free housing for cancer patients; those kinds of projects. I've convinced myself I can't make the world a better place but I can leave my little world a little bit better.
Richard Helppie Â
Very much philanthropically oriented. What did you do during your work life?
Joe Kirby Â
I was involved in our family insurance company; four of us bought the company with a leveraged buyout, ultimately sold it, and then retired. I'm a lawyer, a CPA by training, and I use that to do strategic planning for nonprofits. I stay more active now than I was when I was working.
Richard Helppie Â
We've all found that to be a common affliction as well. So let's talk a little bit about open primaries and how they work. Let's just start with the basics. Suppose one of our listeners or viewers or readers had never heard of open primaries - and for fun, let's suppose the subscriber is a person that might know the law like yourself, or is an engineer or a programmer. How does an open primary system work? What's the basic design of an open primary?
Joe Kirby Â
Well, let's start with the primary system. We have an election system that evolved over the decades, it's not called out in our US Constitution. The founding fathers didn't contemplate the party system that we've got today. It evolved over the decades. The two parties, Republican and Democrat, pretty much have absolute control of the system. So in primaries, in most states, you are voting the Republican primary or the Democrat primary, and that all seemed to work pretty well for my parents, but then with the arrival of the Internet, 24/7 news, and social media, the intensity in our politics has changed. We've just got hyper-partisanship and the parties are in control of the election process. So we end up with...the people that make it to the general election in my state, the only ones that matter are Republicans because we're a very red state. Whoever the party picks is going to be my representative whether I agree with his philosophy or not, and half the people in my state are Democrat or Independent so they really have no representation. It's not a good system. With open primaries, you change the whole thing. You'd have one single state-funded primary, let's say for governor, [you] might end up with six candidates [who] want to be governor of South Dakota - let's say three Republicans, two Democrats, then the Libertarian. Every voter would get to vote in the primary and the two candidates to get the most votes move on to the general elections. We might end up with two Republicans or a Republican or a Democrat, or maybe the Libertarian or an Independent will rise to the occasion. But the important thing is everybody gets to vote in the open primary. Candidates no longer can get elected by just appealing to their partisan view, they have to appeal to all voters in the state. So it's just a better way of encouraging your candidates to represent everyone in the state and letting everybody vote in the process.
Richard Helppie Â
Well, I can see the appeal, because the growing number of people that identify as Independents and the number of people who would be excellent in elected office who won't put themselves through that primary system. We all know lots of people that said, look, the Democrats are not a good way to run the country, the Republicans are not a good way to run the country and those are my only two choices. Where are open primaries being used today? And if you can share with the readers and our listeners and viewers, what have the results been?
Joe Kirby Â
Well, according to the open primaries national organization, about half the states have some form of open primary. The true, or most pure form, I know is in existence in Washington and California, and most recently, Alaska, which adopted not only open primaries, but ranked-choice voting combined with that. So that's been a very interesting experiment that many of us in the country are keeping an eye on. It causes some of the right wing Republicans to not be electable because they didn't temper their message to appeal to all voters. They stayed partisan. People like Sarah Palin lost out. So it's encouraging that the system seems to work in states, but even Texas has a form of open primaries. I'm not sure how the system works there. But I was talking to someone there recently and they said, yes, we have an open primary.
Richard Helppie
We've discussed that on the show, in Alaska, in particular, there are those that said, look, the Republican Party got an overwhelming amount of votes, yet their two candidates split the vote, and therefore the Democrat went to the US House of Representatives. So there is a debate about whether that is a good outcome or not, of course, politics being the center of debates. Is this being designed for South Dakota to become a less Republican state? Is that the objective?
Joe Kirby Â
No, not at all. I think there's no suggestion that red states become less red with election reform or the blue states become less blue. In fact, two of the states I mentioned, Washington and California, have open primaries and they're very blue. I don't think they've gotten less blue with the advent of election reform. I think it's just a better way, though, to get maybe more moderate versions of those - blue or red.
Richard Helppie Â
Haven't we fallen into that trap already? I mean, I'm listening to your nomenclature of red and blue. I don't identify people like that and I don't identify states like that. But isn't that really giving in to this partisan mindset? We have a Republican Party, we have a Democratic Party, they're vying for attention. As we said at the top of the show, a lot of people are saying, a pox on both their houses. Are we too far past the point where reform is possible? And to your point, if California changed the system with no change in results why is this the right time and the right solution for South Dakota?
Joe Kirby Â
Well, I think my state's a good example. We're very red but the legislature is further right than the rest of us. I don't think the legislature represents average South Dakota values. We're a very conservative state and even though my Democrat friends are very conservative people, we're not going to change no matter what the election system is, but when you have a system controlled by one party - the Republican Party in this case - if any of their legislators or representatives show the slightest inclination to work with the Democrats, well, the next primary they get taken out by a more loyal Republican. And that's the way the system works; the party enforces loyalty so you end up with a legislature and other elected officials that are as far right as they can go in our state and that's out of touch with the rest of us. We notice them taking stronger stances on social issues than we might take. Then when the people use initiatives to pass something, as we did - we passed medical marijuana and recreational marijuana - they undo it. We have an inclination not to give the people what they want so I want to see our legislature be more in touch with the values of South Dakota.
Richard Helppie Â
It occurred to me that in the last midterm, the Democrats employed a strategy of using the primary system to vote heavily for very extreme right-wing Republicans in a successful effort, in many cases, to defeat them in the general election. Under an open primary system, what would happen to that tactic?
Joe Kirby Â
That was crafty of them and that's what parties will do, they'll play the game, the system, whatever it is. In an open primary you've got to make sure that your candidates are in the top two one way or the other. So I think you'd be voting for your candidates and not voting for the craziest person on the other side.
Richard Helppie Â
What offices would have the open primary system in South Dakota and what would remain on the partisan system?
Joe Kirby Â
The office of governor would go to the open primaries as with our legislature and then all the federal offices. We have two US senators and one congressman and then our county offices. That leaves out a few other statewide offices that right now, they're not elected, they don't go through the primary system. They're nominated at the party conventions because the attorney general, secretary of state and public utility commission jobs, are hard to raise money to run for those offices in a small state like South Dakota so it would put a real burden on candidates. That's been the thinking in the past but once we get open primaries for the other offices, the legislature can always decide to add those offices to our open primary system. Nothing in our constitutional amendment will limit the legislature's ability to do that.
Richard Helppie Â
It sounds like the legislature may not like this and if that's true, what are they saying against open primaries? Or what do critics in general say about the open primary system?
Joe Kirby Â
Let me give you a little background. In 2016, we made our first open primaries effort in South Dakota. It was combined with nonpartisan elections. We, the people that put the proposal together - and I wasn't one of them - were going to remove the labels so that you wouldn't know when Richard Helppie ran what party he represented. We lost that initiative because people didn't like the lack of transparency of not knowing what party each candidate was in. But that was a successful process in educating the voters of the state what open primaries are all about. We think there's a high level of awareness of what open primaries are, as far as Republicans, in the legislature right now. They are traumatized a bit by their party convention, which happened earlier, that happen in 2022, because a right-wing element came in and pretty much took over and kicked out the secretary of state, almost took out the lieutenant governor. The elected officials in the state are a bit traumatized and thinking, something does need to change here so we are not seeing much push-back or opposition to open primaries yet. We expect it will eventually develop but so far, a lot of Republican leaders are saying, I can't support you publicly but I want this to succeed.
Richard Helppie Â
I read up a little bit on your initiative, that a candidate's indicated political party designation does not constitute or imply an endorsement by that political party. They don't have to say what their party affiliation is. Why was that language included? I thought that was interesting.
Joe Kirby Â
That was recommended by the national people that we deal with. I guess it's to avoid any kind of argument about local Republican leaders claiming this is our candidate. We don't want anyone else being able to say they're Republican, or Democrat, or whichever. We leave it up to the individual candidate to claim what they are. If they're trying to mislead, then that'll come out in the campaign.
Richard Helppie Â
Great idea, then. That's very clever. Now, there are some other changes too. Ranked-choice voting; is that necessarily a part of open primaries? Because there are folks that are advocates of ranked-choice voting, they say that they like the idea of open primaries and then rank the final candidates, which is Alaska's System.
Joe Kirby Â
I like ranked-choice voting. In fact, I helped start a ranked-choice voting South Dakota group that's encouraging that we get ranked-choice voting in the future. So far, there aren't too many elections in South Dakota where we have to rank the candidates; there are usually two candidates. Ranking is not as impactful in a small state like South Dakota; it might be after we get to open primaries. But we also didn't want to do ranked-choice voting at the same time as open primaries, because it would double our education efforts and make us doubly vulnerable to attacks. Right now the Republican Party, because of what happened in Alaska, the Republican Party nationally seems to have targeted ranked-choice voting. They've got legislatures in our state and other states that are considering bans on ranked-choice voting. It's humorous in South Dakota because ranked-choice voting is not allowed by our election laws so banning doesn't accomplish anything.
Richard Helppie Â
Trying to drive that nail in a little deeper, apparently. So if we think about what might happen - and of course, nobody knows exactly - once the rules are changed, everybody will try to game it. Maybe we should look at this historically, as well. Could an open primary actually encourage additional candidates in the mix for the sole purpose of trying to stir things up, enforce a runoff?
Joe Kirby Â
With open primaries there's always the runoff - the general election - so the top two will advance even if there's only two from the open primary. I think it might encourage other candidates from other parties to at least show up for the vote because we have Libertarians run in South Dakota for all, or most, of the statewide offices already. I would think they'll participate in the primary as well.
Richard Helppie Â
There are advocates for more political parties in order to reflect a more diverse desire on the part of the electorate. So would open primaries help or would they hinder or would they be neutral to the formation of new parties?
Joe Kirby Â
I don't know, I honestly don't know, Rich, if that would change it. I don't see that it creates a problem. I do think on a side note, it's interesting that the state of South Dakota has estimated that 50,000 additional people will be voting in our primary if we get open primaries; that's part of their fiscal impact statement. So that's 50,000 people that aren't voting now that are moderate or independent or disenchanted with the party system. Those people will want a voice one way or the other and I'm not sure what their persuasion might end up being.
Richard Helppie Â
I'm trying to think that through as well. Part of me says, well, there would be an opportunity if someone came to me and said, we want you to run as an Independent, not affiliated with anybody. That's like, I might do that but I certainly wouldn't go through a primary system or be beholden to either party structure, if I were to consider - I would never consider being a candidate - but I'm just saying, hypothetically. I'm wondering how political parties might change their strategy. Would they come forward with fewer candidates or would they try to flood the zone, soak up as many votes as they could? Could a candidate with minimal support just withdraw and throw their support to a person of their party? I'm wondering how incumbents might handle this versus a challenge. Any thoughts about what you would expect if we had open primaries in South Dakota and the election was held and you looked at it. What do you think might happen? What might shock you?
Joe Kirby Â
I just don't know, Rich, I don't know what to expect. It'll be up to the candidates. I would think the parties will be less involved in picking people. In fact, they'll have less control over the people who get elected which is one of the benefits. You might get, let's say, a US senator who's a Republican who is a moderate and goes out there and listens to the Democrats and deals with them and maybe sometimes votes in directions that the national party doesn't like. As long as we support them in South Dakota, that person will continue to get re-elected. That's one of the beauties of open primaries, winners are less beholden to their parties. Parties will continue, definitely will continue, but they will be less powerful, they'll have less of a grip on the people that win or will get nominated.
Richard Helppie Â
I'm guessing this is just another disintermediation that technology has provided us. There are lots of companies that have gone out of business because their place in the economic ecosystem has been obviated by technology. Potentially some of the technology that we have...we should be voting on an app under a secure method, just by way of example. We don't need parties to organize and bring us candidates. Potentially, this could be a sign of better days ahead but I just wonder, is it possible to get our country to compromise? I think it's almost impossible to get the Democrats and the Republicans to compromise as parties but as individuals there seems to be a lot more room to meet in the middle. Any view on that?
Joe Kirby Â
Well, our congressman from South Dakota is Republican, but this is an insult - I'm going to call him a moderate. He would hate to hear anybody call him that.
Richard Helppie Â
Like, I'm trying to hear him say it, do not call me reasonable, I'm not that person. [Laughter.]
Joe Kirby Â
Well, he was attacked in his primary from somebody on the right, as was John Thune, our senator up for re-election, who was a conservative, as was Kristie Noem, our Republican, conservative governor. They all faced challenges from the right, in this last primary. That kind of craziness is in the current system, the new system will not have that. I mean, they'll all be facing people from the right and left but if they gather...on the bell curve of voters candidates will be smart to go for the middle big section of voters and become a bit more moderate.
Richard Helppie Â
Indeed, I'm still trying to wrap my head around people trying to get to the right of some of those folks that are seen as reasonable conservative people. But also this week, we had Bernie Sanders, who is to the right of Joe Biden, asked to define equality versus equity, so strange times indeed. Joe, what action or actions would you recommend people take today if they're interested in open primary systems - in South Dakota if they are residents of South Dakota or in their own states? Is there something that they can do?
Joe Kirby Â
There are open primaries initiatives in many states so I guess one of the first things an individual can do is check and see what's going on in their own state and support ranked-choice voting or open primaries. Any of those efforts to take some of the hyper-politics out of our politics.
Richard Helppie Â
How can they find out more about the organization that you represent?
Joe Kirby Â
We have a website; that's openprimaries.org. We're also on Facebook:Â South Dakota Open Primaries, the national group is openprimaries.org. We obviously need money and we're mounting campaigns. In some states, there are campaigns to keep the open primaries where the parties are trying to get back to a closed primary system.
Richard Helppie Â
It's all about power; it can be with the voters in an open primary or can be with the parties in a closed primary. I guess a big question I have is that once the election is over, what's going to happen on a national level? Once they get to Washington we know that Kevin McCarthy's there, we know that Nancy Pelosi is there, we know that Mitch McConnell's there, we know that Chuck Schumer is there - they're waiting. They're waiting with campaign money that they control. They're waiting with committee assignments that are very key to building a track record. How can an open primary help break that hyper-partisanship that is ruining the country today in so many ways, thwarting our progress, once they get to Washington.
Joe Kirby Â
If we can get enough states that have an election system that doesn't reward partisanship - let's say we get five states that are like where Alaska seems to be, where the people that survive are going to be moderate. They're still party members, but they're not hyper partisan. That would be ten US senators. That could be a group of senators that - both ways depending on what the proposal is - they look at issues on their merits and no longer have to listen to the party. They can ignore the national party and the congressional leadership and vote their hearts and minds and they can't be punished. They can only be punished by their voters back home, and the voters back home with the well-designed non-party, rewarding system will continue to re-elect them.
Richard Helppie Â
So if this works, people in Washington, instead of representing their party above their country and above the people that elected them, would actually represent the voters that sent them there. Kind of a novel concept. I think that's in the Constitution someplace or in the design of our constitutional republic.
Joe Kirby Â
That's the system I learned when I was a kid and the system is broken. Again, I think the internet, social media and 24/7 news have broken it and we need to do something.
Richard Helppie Â
Indeed, the date we're recording this we're at the beginning of the release of video from the January 6; you've got one slickly produced version over here, you've got another slickly produced version over there. Someplace in there, there's actually context, what happened. The only things that we were able to witness in real time, can we really evaluate? And if I'm a perpetual optimist, if something like an open primary can bring us more representative government, then perhaps that will also spur the media to actually get back to doing reporting - kind of a novel concept, I know. Joe, what did we not cover today that perhaps we should have covered?
Joe Kirby Â
I think we've covered them all. It's hard to argue, in my view, against the election reforms; ranked-choice voting or open primaries. They seem to be a better system, the current system is obviously broken. I get a bit frustrated with friends who watch Fox News or watch MSNBC too much and pull their hair out and say there's nothing...they fret without doing something about it. Well, election reform is something we can all get behind and get back the system that we had in the mid 20th century.
Richard Helppie Â
I concur. I hope we can get back to something better, go forward to something better. Any closing thoughts for the listeners, the readers and the viewers of The Common Bridge?
Joe Kirby Â
At this point, I hope more states will, if they don't already, have an effort to reform their elections, I hope they'll get active. The more supporters we have, the less power the parties will have to stop us.
Richard Helppie Â
That's a great and noble goal. We've been talking today with Joe Kirby from South Dakota about open primaries and a ballot initiative to bring open primaries to most of the statewide elections in the state of South Dakota. Please keep an eye on South Dakota. Please visit the website, Facebook page, and other social media to learn more about this important issue. And so with our guest, Joe Kirby, this is your host, Rich Helppie signing off on The Common Bridge
(Read, Watch or Listen) The ABCs of Open Primaries