Elections

Update II: The Sioux Falls City Council meeting tonight was truly disgusting. I felt like throwing up afterwards.

l3wis June 17, 2025 14Comments

UPDATE II: I decided to see if the 50% rule has even been used since it was implemented in 2017. It has ONLY applied ONE time, and that was in 2024 and the runoff between Thomason and Deffenbaugh, and the runoff results were the same as the general election with Thomason the victor. There have been 4 elections since the rule was implemented and has only been triggered one time! Simply not needed. In 2018, there was a runoff between DeBoer and Soehl, but the runoff would have occurred even with the old rule of 34% in place because neither Zach or Curt got over 27% of the vote (there was 5 candidates in the initial race). It seems silly to defend a rule that has never been applied, was implemented because of political revenge, keeps grassroots candidates on the sidelines, costs us extra in elections and has NO political or constituent advantages to stand on. The councilors that VOTE against changing it back really need to get their heads examined. This is an easy one. Something wasn’t broken, change it back.

UPDATE: When this was introduced a few years ago by councilor Starr, councilor Merkouris told fellow councilors keeping the 50% rule would keep out the ‘fringe candidates’. In other words grassroots candidates with little money would’nt be able to take on the money machine. This is why Spellerberg and Sigette had no challengers. Peeps are tired of the money game. I also find this rule ironic, since if applied to the last presidential election there would have had to been a runoff between Harris and Trump (he received 49.8% of the popular vote.)

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I will say, I have been following council since Hansen was in office. I have seen some pretty weird meetings, but tonight, was sickening.

First, the public input. I think that most of them need a brain scan to see if they have dementia, secondly, they were saying crap that was counter culture to what really happens. Here is a fine example, so there is this guy that shows up to the council meetings that thinks he is philosopher, but he is mostly just a blabber, and he says to the ordinance about changing the plurality to council races BACK TO 35% that it seemed ‘politically motivated’. Hey, it got changed because of POLITICAL MOTIVES and that is why we need to change it back, so good catch, even if you don’t know what you are talking about. The change came in 2017 when the council was split and Mayor Huether broke the tie to pass this very idiotic change.

Let’s move onto the city council, they also took the side of ‘political motivation’ as to why not to change it back. Let me inform you. Councilor Rex Rolfing was vindictive, he was mean, and didn’t make any policy changes unless he was punishing his political enemies, and the move by him was purely political because of his disdain for councilor Stehly. The main reason why this should be eliminated was it wasn’t needed to begin with. If 7 people are running for a council seat and the leading candidate gets 35% of the vote, that’s good enough for me (the remaining 6 candidates would get an average of 11% of the vote, which is a THIRD of what the winner would receive.) It seems the council likes to enrich the pockets of local campaign electioneers, so the longer they can draw this out the better. The problem; You are so misinformed it is almost criminal.

It is shocking to me that the majority of the council has NO CLUE about good governance. Just protecting their behinds. In a democratic republic you are elected to represent us, not to preserve some rule that was concocted to punish political foes. Do your research BEFORE the second reading, and you will see that changing a rule that was in place for 20 years back to it’s an original intent is the best way to resolve this, and put the Rex Rolfing rule to rest once and for all.