WATCH: Joe Kirby Discusses Open Primaries on Richard Helppie’s The Common Bridge Podcast
This podcast featuring Joe Kirby, Chairman of South Dakota Open Primaries, was originally published on The Common Bridge’s website in March 2023.
South Dakota Open Primaries’ Chairman Joe Kirby sat down with Richard Helppie to discuss election reform in South Dakota. This podcast is also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Here are some highlights from Joe’s remarks:
”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.”
”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.”
”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.”