South Dakota, with the usual 2 senators and just 800,000 people (therefore just a single US Representative) is small potatoes as residential elections go. But still, these things add up. Especially with all the mud-slinging about the Electoral College, and the various candidates for the new Massa.

Every State is unique – many have very strange quirks that influence their local politics and the impact they have on regional and federal politics. South Dakota is no different. Understanding this can help in encouraging and educating people to reject the power of mandatory human governments and how it makes life miserable for most people – if not virtually all of us.

247WallStreet.com lists six South Dakota counties most likely to vote for Harris. Todd, Corson, Ziebach, Buffalo, Dewey, and Clay.

Of these, the most significant is Clay (SE South Dakota, seat Vermillion, 15,000 population). Its population is nearly as much as the other five combined. (Next is Todd: 9,000.)

But the article doesn’t explain WHY; lots of statistics but not why.

There are two reasons why these counties vote consistently and often overwhelmingly for Democrats, whereas the rest of the State of South Dakota is more and more “conservative” and therefore votes Republican. (Libertarians virtually never get more than 3-4% of the vote.)

Clay County is Democrat for the same reason many counties are: it is the home of the University of South Dakota. Like virtually every other government-owned, tax-funded institution of higher education in the States, USD is a bastion of fake liberalism: Progressives (regressives) are in the university and congregate around the school and campus. And vote accordingly, even while they are busy trying to convert the sons and daughters of conservatives and libertarians to their perverted system of state worship and all-powerful government. Funded mainly, of course, by the taxes stolen from people afraid to fight back and demand that government stop dipping into their pockets or purses without limit.

Indeed, American universities since at least the 1960s – and probably earlier – are a major cause of the deterioration of American society: the state-funded University of South Dakota is part of this sickness.

But what about the remaining five counties, Nathan?

These are most of the counties which are the site of all or part of the Indian Reservations in South Dakota. Excuse me, the “native American” homelands – to play the political correctness game. South Dakota has all or part of nine reservations, all officially some part of the Ahkota people. The Seven Council Fires or Great Sioux Nation. These reservations have all or part of thirteen counties. Enrolled tribal members are a majority in six South Dakota counties. Five of these are mostly the current homelands of various of the seven bands of the Lakota or Teton Sioux, and are located in West River: that is, west of the Missouri. The sixth is a homeland of Dakota (which also have reservations and federally-recognized governments, together with their Nakota relatives, in Minnesota, Nebraska, and North Dakota).

Four of the five counties in the 247WallStreet article are in West River. Only one, Buffalo County, is east of the Missouri, the home of the Crow Creek Sioux Nation. Five Lakota nations occupy all or part of ten counties in West River, but only make up a majority of the population in six counties. (Oddly enough, 247WallSt did not include Oglala Lakota (formerly Shannon) County – even though it is the county with the largest tribally-enrolled population.)

It is hard to estimate, but at a guess, whether Dakota or Lakota, most enrolled members of all nine tribes are registered as, or almost always vote, Democrat. Some claim that at least some of those vote twice for Democrats in each election: once in the homeland (on the Rez) and once where they really live most of the time That might be Rapid City, Sioux Falls, or Pierre in South Dakota, or in Minnesota, Colorado, Nebraska or North Dakota. But that is perhaps just urban legend. Just as it is legend that some voters – and not just Democratic voters, can cast votes in elections for decades after they are in the “happy hunting grounds.”

Why do they vote for Democrats?

First, they have long memories. And hate Abe Lincoln for what the Army did in Minnesota in 1862, hanging many of the Dakota soldiers fighting in the “uprising” against settlers. To say nothing of later Republican administrations which among other things prosecuted a long series of wars against them, including the Ghost Dance War of 1890 which finally broke their resistance. And took most of the land the Lakota (and their fellows) claimed and conquered (~1765-~1850).

Since that time, although both GOP and Dem-run White House and Democratic and Republican controlled Congresses? The Dems outfoxed the GOP. The AmerInd nations have been constantly wooed by – and generally bribed by – Democrats more than the GOP. That is certainly the case in South Dakota with the Governor and Legislature: though it has been a long time since there was Democratic control of either branch.

The key point, however, is that the Democrats have consistently won the propaganda war both in South Dakota and all of the States’ reservations: the mere posting of an (R) after a person’s name makes them a sworn disciple of old Honest Abe and US Grant and all the other GOP bosses for 150+ years.

There are more reasons: the largesse of the FedGov, for one. And frankly racial politics.

Indeed, we can see that the Indian Reservations operated by the FedGov have been a practice and proving ground not just for a brand of socialism that rivals anything in Soviet Russia or China. But for the winning of the meme or propaganda wars – exactly as we see being waged across all Fifty States and DC this fall.

It is not a pretty picture, and the overwhelming vote for the Dems in a few counties is just the tip of the iceberg.