‘Vote for V’ campaigns at USD

In the closing days leading up to Tuesday’s election, USD’s campus was the site of multiple campaigns forballot initiatives, including Amendment V.

The ballot initiative called for establishing non-partisan elections in South Dakota by removing party affiliation from the names of candidates on ballots.

Josh Waltjer, the voter outreach coordinator for the Vote Yes on V campaign was on campus last week talking to students about the amendment.

“It lets independents vote in the primaries and it makes our elections non-partisan so we can vote for the person not the party and elect public servants instead of party servants,” Waltjer said. “It’s something that’s being looked at by a lot of other states.”

USD was one stop on the campaign’s 12-day tour across South Dakota in a motorhome. Waltjer said he and two others were taking the trip.

“A day in the life of Amendment V basically looks like we wake up, make phone calls, go to meetings, go to rotary club, Kiwanis club, College Republicans and College Democrats at places like USD and then at night we go door knocking,” he said. “We’ve hit 8,000 doors since we started, just spreading the word however we can.”

Waltjer’s campaign partner, Justin Otoski, was unable to campaign at USD but Waltjer said that he always says the same thing as to why the amendment is important.

“His quote is, ‘I left a combat war zone and came back to a political war zone,’ and he didn’t fight in Afghanistan so that we could just bicker and argue on stand on our sides of the aisle and scream at each other and not actually do things for the American people,” Waltjer said. “Justin fought so that we could do better for the American people not so that we could play party politics.”

Marcus Ireland, a sophomore political science major and South Dakota voter, said he voted “no” on Amendment V.

“The argument is that it’s going to force voters to become more informed but voters aren’t going to change they are still going to be uninformed but know what ideologies parties have,” Ireland said. “So they will still be able to vote for someone that aligns with most of their ideas.”

Ireland also said he didn’t think party politics has as much impact on the local level in South Dakota as they do on the national level.

“I can see the appeal on a national level but I don’t see that affecting South Dakota in the same way,” he said.

While Ireland disagrees with Waltjer, Waltjer said he received a lot of positive feedback on USD’s campus.

“I’ve had overwhelming positive response,” Waltjer said. “I think people are just frustrated, especially this year with the presidential choices we have. People have said politics is just a mess. We’re trying to channel that into Amendment V because this takes party control out of our election process. People can get on board with that and that comes from the left and the right.”

Waltjer said that while most college students seem supportive of Amendment V, getting out to vote is important.

“It’s just a matter of getting them (college students) out to vote because we have had overwhelming positive response especially on college campuses… kids our age, we have 59 percent I think that either identifies as independent or registers as independent,” he said. “That’s because they are fed up with party politics and young people have seen the parties leave them behind. We really want to show that this is beneficial to all South Dakotans.”