Do our elected officials care about election integrity?
Those of us who witnessed last week’s Minnehaha County Commission meeting (9/26/23) are left wondering. When County Auditor Leah Anderson spoke to the board – https://www.minnehahacounty.gov/dept/co/co.php – seeking approval for a $123K bill to be paid for electronic voting, she asked the commissioners to simply consider the wisdom of using electronic voting machines in the future. Well that went over like a fart at the dinner table. Much harrumphing & tsk tsking was directed at Mrs. Anderson, who apparently has the temerity to actually present the views of a significant segment of her constituency. It was difficult not to notice an undercurrent of scorn directed at the citizens who took the time to show up & share their opinions on the matter. Jean Bender’s repeated schoolmarm hectoring of the speakers to not “repeat what other people have said”, followed up by Joe Kippley’s lecture that he’s just “not gonna have a lotta patience” with this “nonsense” form “sore losers” who dare question the State’s vote counting methods.
Well, excuse me but are we meant to tolerate such disdain from our elected officials?
Citizens who take the time to show up at these public meetings & voice their concerns -as is their right – deserve more respect from these worthies.
To nearly everyone I know, and new friends I meet, the old days of trusting our government, news media, health experts, “science”, the voting process, big tech, and basically every institution are a fairytale that we just can’t manage to believe in anymore.
And how could we?
For a large chunk of tax-paying, law-abiding Americans, the past 5 years have been an all-out assault on nearly every ideal that matters.
Religious freedom, freedom of speech, medical freedom, the right to assembly, government accountability, two genders, the right to question our rulers. Common decency. Anyone remember that?
If you are a non-Democrat voter in 2023 how in the world could you trust this current regime to allow “free & fair” elections? The fix appears to be in.
You’d need to consume A LOT of alcohol to forget the shenanigans that state actors have pulled since 2016 to gain & maintain control of power in this country. Unprecedented, audacious & devastating. From a purely political standpoint one has to admire the hyper-Machiavellian brazenness of it all. I mean, using multiple district attorneys to prosecute your political rival hoping that just one of those arrows lands home so he cannot run against you. Now that’s a winning strategy!
Or how about the Hillary! Campaign feeding the Russia Collusion Hoax to the FBI to not only question the 2016 election results, but to hamper the effectiveness & drain the energy from the entire Trump presidency?
But for us plebes who dutifully pay our tax bills, doing our best to be good citizens, it’s maddening to watch $110 billion (and climbing!) get wasted on who knows what the hell’s going on in a historically corrupt country that our president has apparently made a fortune from; and see our borders get overrun by people from all over the world; and suffer inflation at a rate 2-3 times higher than what our government actually owns up to; while looters clean out retail stores in the middle of the day; while nebulous entities attempt to steal our land for Ponzi scheme carbon pipelines while our “leaders” turn their heads & fill their pockets.
There’s really no point in itemizing all of the blatantly scandalous events that would adequately explain why such a large portion of the American population is firmly distrustful our own government. If you are a committed leftist, you would simply write me off as a delusional MAGA; and if you are a tax-paying law-abiding type, and have internet access, then you already know what has happened to this country in a very short period of time.
The glaring question isn’t really “Why do so many people distrust the US government?”, but “How can any normal person ever trust the government again in our lifetimes?”
I think it would behoove our elected officials in Sioux Falls, Pierre and everywhere else in SD to wake up and show respect to the tax-paying citizens that they are ordained to serve.
We’re not happy with you, and while we are busy raising our kids, working our jobs, serving God & voluntarily paying our taxes, we shall be also be getting more involved in local issues. And we’ll be watching you.
Chris Larson. SD citizen, Business owner, Land owner, Tax Payer
