Monday, I had the opportunity to head to Parker, South Dakota for the Turner County Fair. It's a free fair goes through Thursday. If you get a chance, head to Parker, South Dakota. Take in an amazing fair. While you're there, you can stop by a bunch of different vendor booths. I had the chance to sit in the Vote No in November booth, and I caught up with Chris Larson. He is the chairperson of Vote No in November, and we'll have that interview in thirty seconds.
No on RL twenty one. Keep the cronies off on him, No on I. I'm twenty nine.
Keep brief out of Hawkins's hand. No on Amendment H.
We choose all our leaders here vote no on amenden. Geez all lie the sacred here. Vote no in November in South Dakota. Wee eight food oh No in November.
God the people pay four if I vote no.
Sde excited to be at the Turner County Fair. And I am in the Vote No in November booth right now, and I'm here with Chris Larson, he's the chairman of Vote No in November. And there's several different issues here. But first of all, Chris, thanks for taking the time to chat with me.
Sir oh, I'm just so glad you could join us in our booth. It's been a great time at the fair today.
It has been The fair is just getting started today. It goes all week long, and when you're out and about, be sure to stop in Commercial building number two. And it's kind of way towards the end you're going to find this booth. And it's really it's a nonpartisan booth. People on both sides of the isle are supporting things that are happening in the Vote No on November booth. So let's take these one at a time. Let's start with vote No on H. Since on the poster that's
on the top, what is vote no on H? And what is the what is H all about?
Well, I'll try to keep it simple because what our group vote no in November. Our website is vote no sd dot com. And what we're trying to do is help people get more information on all four of the issues.
And so.
We'll start with the H. That's the one that people know the least amount. We just call it the primary. It's it would cause create more of the California style primaries what they call jungle primaries in South Dakota.
But overall, there's a lot.
Of misinformation around these each of these issues, and there's a lot around this one, and there's a lot of industry and money to be made if any of these pass. So anytime there's a lot of money to be made, you have really good, slick marketing, you know, campaigns behind it. So there's a lot of marketing around this that we're trying to make it sound like open primaries would be more inclusive and blah blah blah. But the fact is anybody can vote in a primary now. But we have
primaries for a reason. We have parties for a reason. And if you're trying to vote for the best Republican that you think, you should have Republicans voting in that, not you know, Democrats. You don't want Democrats voting for Republican candidates. That just doesn't make sense.
And that goes both ways.
I'm sure the Democrats don't want Republicans voting for the Democrat candidates either exactly.
And on the Democrats side, what we've heard is in a lot of the counties, especially West Rivers, some of the rural ones, the Democrats wouldn't even be able to run a candidate because they would have no shot to get in the top two.
So it would basically.
Destroy the whole idea of what a primary is and so and the other thing is it would turn South Dakota into being more like California. And I think that's the main theme here, like we're not a necessarily political organization. I'm just a volunteer. Everyone involved in this is volunteers. We don't have any politicians that are involved in this campaign necessarily, and so we're not trying to help any party do anything. We're just trying to help the citizens.
You know, most people I ask, I say do you like South Dakota the way it is? Do you like South Dakota? And they say yes. I said, okay, then vote no in November on all four of the issues.
Now, we've talked quite a bit about H. That's the first one on the page that you have here. And again, the thing that I think is fascinating about H is I see people on both sides of the aisle both saying vote no on H. People from the Democratic Party statewide campaign are saying vote no. I'm seeing people on the Republican side saying vote no. So this is one that I think that one is kind of the easy no for everybody because most people agree that that probably should be a nun.
Yeah, And for me, I think the biggest danger of H passing would be that it introduces more corruption, more bribeability, is the way I put it. Get You get candidates that are going to get more money from special interest more out of state money, which is that's really what's pushing this is out of state money has come in and pushing this. So you're going to have candidates that are more willing to quote unquote you know, get things done.
They'll serve their donor class by getting more campaign donation donations, and then they'll be at the beck and call of their donor class. So they have to serve the people that got them elected, not the people of the state. Not the people of the state. And we already have too much of that all over the country. We see it, and certainly in South Dakota when I talked to voters just regularly, folks, that's what they say, they say, our leadership isn't listening to us.
If you go to the top of the leadership in South Dakota.
They're not listening to the voters, and so we think H would just make that problem even worse.
And now let's move down the page a little bit. Vote no on G. What is G and explain why people should vote no on that.
So G is an extremely extreme abortion bill. So it would allow abortion up till birth.
So that is completely different than being pro life, pro choice. This is on the far far end of the spectrum right.
And this would also put it in the state constitution, so it takes it out of the hands of the voters.
And the way you know, our system is supposed to work.
Really shouldn't be changing our constitution just at the will of you know, voting randomly because people, you know, groups come in and spend a lot of money in advertising. We shouldn't be able to change our constitution that way. And this is just a.
Radically extreme ballot measure. That's that's the bottom line.
And again, this one, from what I've been told, is funded primarily by a lot of out of state money that's coming in to help fund the other side of this, isn't it?
Oh for sure?
And I will say this too, is our group that's fighting all for these ballot initiatives. If we win, if we get no's on all four, we don't make any extra money.
It doesn't help us at all.
We're not pushing any kind of industry or business, so we're just playing defense and we want to keep South to go to turning into California very.
Nice and moving down. I see vote no on twenty one. That's the next on the page. What is twenty one and why should folks vote?
Know on that, Chris Well, This is a great organization of farmers, ranchers, landowners who abandoned together to fight our own legislature and our own governor who passed this bill to basically allow private companies to come in and take their land so they can make money off of it.
And we're saying no because we don't want to be human resources for a government private company partnership so they can make a bunch of money off because next, if they can get this pipeline deal to go through, which doesn't have a public interest, you know, it just benefits a few private companies. If they get this to go through, we know that wind farms are next, and it's already happening in some parts of South Dakota.
We just had a gentleman stop buyer booth a while.
Ago and really kind of shocked us with the stories he's telling about how his county commission is in the tank for these wind farms and they're not going to have a right to say no. The people are not going to have a right to say no. And that's a right that Americans should have. We should be able to say no to our own government.
And this has a lot to do with land that you own. Anybody that owns their own land, and we're saying, I don't want this happening on my land. I don't want somebody else to decide what's happening on my land. So this really comes down to a lot of farmers, but anybody that's a land owner, anybody that just believes that the government shouldn't really be able to come in.
And make you do something on your own land.
Yeah.
And I've talked to legislators before that represent people, for example in Sioux Falls, and they voted for it because they didn't think their constituents cared about what happened in rural areas. And that's sad, because just because it's happening to somebody else doesn't mean it's right, and you should do what's right. You don't want the government coming in and doing what they want with your property. Like like I said, we're not human resources to be used by
private companies who come up with. By the way, this whole CO two thing, just as an aside for my personal view, it's a scam. It's a Green New Deal scam that we should never it should never be in place. It doesn't solve any problems. That's personally how I feel about it. And I'm a landowner and I'm against it.
So we need to say no a lot more often and a lot more stronger, you know, to these government entities, these private corporations that are trying to take our land, take our rights, and use them to make money off.
Of Again visiting right now with Chris Larson. We are at the Turner County Fair. It's going on this entire week, and I'm in the vote No in November booth. We've talked about no on H, We've talked about no on G, We've talked about no on twenty one, and there's one left no on I am twenty nine, and let's talk about what I am twenty nine is and why that should be a vote no.
I am twenty nine is the what they call recreational legalization of marijuana. I don't really like that word because recreational is a real positive sounding word. But it's just going to make it more widespread. And you know, we already have medical marijuana, so people who need it for medical reasons certainly have easy.
Access to it.
What this will do is really make it a lot easier for kids to get a hold of. And it's just going to be deep into our our society even more than already is now. And you're going to have companies coming in and you know, figuring out ways to make money off of it like they do pepsi and coke and all that stuff. And so it'll have for me, you know, my viewpoint on it is it'll have a
detrimental effect on society. And as a as an employer, when I go to hire people, that's the hardest thing I have to do as a as a business owner. In my business, it's hiring younger, you know, people under the age of forty, let's say. And I don't think having more weed, you know, in our society is going to make the workforce, smarter, more effective, more motivated.
You know, this isn't the marijuana from our day. John.
Back in the eighties, that stuff was very mild compared to today, It's not the same thing. If it was the same thing, it might be a different story. But you know, these are jacked up to one hundred percent THC, very potent. We don't know exactly, you know what the long term effects are, but you know there's been a lot of studies showing that the effects on marijuana on younger teenagers, anybody before the age of twenty five, can have very long term damaging effects on our brains.
And we need our brains, right.
I use mine every day, at least I try to.
You do. I've seen you use it a couple of times.
A couple of times today.
Getting things set up here just to do this interview now again, the booth that I'm in is vote No in November booth and if people have questions, vote no sd dot com as the website. And again, if you want, you can stop by this booth at the Turner counting Fairy.
This whole week and each of the things that we just talked about, there are groups that are leading up all of these, but you're kind of leading up, You're kind of the conductor in charge of all of them, kind of helping everybody come on the same page and have a unified voice.
Yeah.
Well, I'm certainly not in charge of their groups. I'll tell you that they know a lot more than I do about what they're doing. We just try to direct folks who are looking for more information to go there. We're just trying to help people be aware that these are going on and that they have access to information and they can decide on their own what the best path for themselves when they vote. But at least they'll have hopefully all the story, not just one side of
the story. So that's how our website does. It helps get people more information who want it. And if folks don't want more information, just vote no. I'm gonna vote no at least five times. So uh, that's that's that's what we're recommending to vote no. And I will say this about the fair it is. I've never been to this one, and it's pretty cool. They do have cheese kurds, John don't. I don't know if we'll have to hit them up later.
Oh yeah, And and they also have hand dipped corn dogs, which are way better than foot dipped corn dogs.
Yeah, that's I've heard the foot dipped ones.
That's what That's another California thing we don't we don't want that in South Dakota, I say no.
I'd say no.
I vote no on foot dipped corn dogs as well.
Well.
Chris, thank you for chatting with me. Sir Ah, thank you for having me again.
Chris Larsen and he is the chairman of Vote No in November, and again the website where you can learn all of the information on the four different things we talked about, and you can learn more as well.
Vote no SD dot com.
No on l twenty one. Keep the cronies off on him, No on I on twenty nine, Keep out of Hakin's hand.
Vote no on amending h We choose all of theirs, No on on them, ge all lie the sacred here. No in November in South Dakota, we ain't fool oh. No in November.
Under God, the people pay four by boat. No st