By Benjamin Chase
From the Mound
“Seasons are aging:
Earthquakes, wars, and rumors
I want us to get by
But we’re more than consumers.”
“Wake Up Everybody” – John Legend and The Roots
In 2010, smooth-voiced John Legend paired up with legendary band The Roots for an album titled “Wake Up!” “Wake Up Everybody” was the lead single from that album, a cover of a song originally recorded by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes in 1975. Legend and The Roots were inspired to record their own take on the song after a 2004 version featuring more than 25 of the most popular R&B artists at the time was released to encourage participation in the 2004 election cycle.
The quoted section is from a rap interlude provided by legendary rapper Common, which is unique to the Legend and The Roots version. The song encourages participation in the world to see changes happen, which is why it’s been tapped into multiple times around voting to encourage participation in elections.
After nearly a month of hostile acts by a government agency in Minnesota, this past week, President Donald Trump said the quiet part out loud.
The president was on a podcast hosted by Dan Bongino, and he stated, “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over.’ We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many – 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
This was followed up by an attempted walk-back by the White House and members of the Republican party, but then Trump spoke in the Oval Office and reiterated his stance.
Elections have been state- and local-run since we formed as a country. In fact, that is a hallmark, bedrock belief in our country. We govern from the inside out, not the outside in, meaning that our local governments have the most influence on our daily lives, followed by the state, followed by the federal government.
Sales taxes are collected locally and distributed to local governmental bodies. Same with property taxes.
In fact, in an average year, the vast majority of the taxes you pay don’t leave your county. Estimates per state vary, but in South Dakota, the lack of a state income tax typically means in a year, we are more impacted by federal income taxes than many other states, but even then, roughly 70-80% of all tax dollars a South Dakota resident pays in a year remain within the state.
That was an intentional construction by our Founding Fathers. Seeing the tyranny of top-down governance, they set up a government that, in theory, receives its power from the bottom up, meaning individuals give power to states and give power to representatives to the federal government, who then make decisions.
It has become clear in recent months that an intention of the administration is to alter voting within the country. Pushing the disproven narrative that the 2020 election was “stolen,” the Trump administration has ordered the turnover of election data from multiple states.
Back to ICE activity in various states, the states that tend to lean “blue” or have no disputed elections in question in 2026 are ignored, despite significantly larger numbers of estimated illegal immigrants. The Immigration Research Initiative estimates that more than eleven million undocumented immigrants in the country. Roughly 1.65 to 1.85 million of those undocumented reside in Texas and roughly one million reside in Florida. Minnesota houses less than 100,000, according to the initiative’s 2022 numbers.
Yet, the push of ICE in Minnesota has been evident for a month, with Attorney General Pam Bondi also recently saying the quiet part out loud when she insisted that ICE would leave Minnesota if the state turned over its voting rolls.
For what its worth, our Secretary of State thought nationalization of the vote was an okay thing and has already turned over South Dakota’s voting rolls to the federal government.
Voting is a state process, and more than that, it’s a local process. We have an amazing auditor in our county who spends far too many hours sleepless, considering how to ensure the safety and security of elections in Beadle County. Yet, the rhetoric spouted after the 2020 election sent people into a tizzy, and her office received dozens of calls about “illegal” procedures in the elections in Beadle.
The reality is that the goal of sowing this distrust is to push a narrative that the polls are not safe, that elections are not secure, and that election officials are corrupt. That allows for support from those who would be duped into believing the rhetoric when the Constitution is violated when the federal government confiscates state voting information.
Several bills are again working to undermine our hardworking auditors in the state under consideration in the 2026 legislature. Be sure to contact your local senator and representatives to let them know that you support individual voting rights and, moreover, support your local auditors.
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