We were discussing this at dinner the other night and it lead to an interesting convo. Trust me, I don’t think it was, even though the conspiracy theories are certainly there. I think the key to what won was the get out the vote effort, and getting a lot of un-experienced young family first time registered voters to the polls. They tend to vote with their hearts and not with their wallets (or brains).
I also think it would have been difficult to rig the vote because I just don’t think the people in charge of the election were smart enough to pull it off, and the ones that were smart enough wouldn’t be able to train the monkeys in the room.
I guess we will never know.
But where our discussion got interesting was when we asked the question, “If it was rigged would it matter today?â€
Probably not.
It was an advisory vote and essentially the city council approved the building and the bonds. All the public really did was ‘give an opinion’. It’s kind of like the proposed Walmart on the Southside and the zoning issue approved by the voters. Just because the voters approved the zoning there are still many legal angles preventing WM from building.
In other words, even if it was discovered today that the EC vote was rigged, there really isn’t much we can do about it now. We are proud owners of another white elephant in Sioux Falls.