South Dakota Family Policy Council Releases Primary Voter Guide 2008

The South Dakota Family Policy Council 2008 primary voter guide is now available.

The voter guide is broken down on the web page for Districts 1-17, Districts 18-29 and Districts 30-35 in an attempt to keep the guide down to one page for each general area.

There are also some extended answers listed here, when a respondent added qualifying comments to their answer.

The voter guide features 11 questions asked of state House and Senate candidates of both Democrat and Republican Parties.

Questions asked range from abortion, firearms, pre-K, homeschooling, transparency in government, and homosexual issues, among others.

I was a little uncertain on the wording of some of the questions, so I talked to Dave DeVries, the Statewide Grassroots Director. He said that the questions as presented to the candidates were a bit more elaborate, but they had been kept as short as possible on the voter guide in order to keep the guide to one page.

DeVries clarified for me that for question #2 a Y means "yes" to authorizing the type of pre-K standards discussed in the 2008 legislative session's SB 26.

He also clarified that a Y to question #5 means "yes" to supporting the right to carry a firearm on campuses.

And for any who don't homeschool and might not understand what #6 is about, a Y would be in support of allowing homeschool students to take some classes at a public school without being enrolled full-time.

Dale Bartscher, Director of Pastoral Ministries in Rapid City, told me that survey results are still coming in from respondents and these will be updated on the website as soon as they're available. So you may want to check back if your representative(s) answers aren't on there yet.

These voter guides will be going out to hundreds of churches across South Dakota starting this Sunday.