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PIERRE - Video lottery machines will continue to sing and clang in South Dakota if Nov. 7 election results match findings in a new poll of likely voters.
Slightly more than one-third of 800 South Dakotans polled for the Argus Leader said they'd vote to repeal video lottery, Initiated Measure 7 on next week's ballot. More than half would not. The results were 36 percent supporting repeal, 56 percent opposing it and 8 percent undecided.
Bill Richardson, chairman of political science at the University of South Dakota, says the poll results aren't surprising. Voters simply might have had enough of the video lottery debate. That feeling, and the revenue replacement question, probably is driving the vote to keep electronic gambling, he said.
"Money and the fact that they've had a couple of other shots at it in the past," Richardson said. "The issue, I think, is sufficiently well-known. It seems this is seen as one of the important barriers to a state income tax. It raises sufficient money, and most of it is perceived as going back to the local level."
South Dakota approved video lottery in 1989. At that time, the state received a 22.5 percent share of net machine income, and the machine owners and video-lottery establishments split the rest. After former Gov. Bill Janklow took office in 1995, he persuaded the Legislature to bump the split to about 50-50 between the state and the industry.
That split gave the state about $112 million last year, 11 percent of the general fund budget, according to Attorney General Larry Long's ballot explanation of Initiated Measure 7.
The Argus Leader commissioned the poll, done by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research of Washington, D.C. Mason-Dixon conducted the telephone survey Oct. 24 through Oct. 26. The poll has a margin of error of no more than plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Subgroup results were similar to the statewide totals. Men were against video lottery repeal by a 58-36 margin, while women were against it 54-36. More Republicans, 42 percent of those asked, said they'd vote to repeal the games than did Democrats, 30 percent, or independents, 32 percent.
An initiated repeal failed in 1992, winning only 37 percent of the vote. Two years later, after video gambling was declared unconstitutional, South Dakotans voted about 53-47 to change the constitution so that video lottery would be legal. In 2000, voters rejected by about a 54-46 margin a constitutional amendment to get rid of the games.
After 17 years of video lottery and three separate votes, as well as several legislative debates on the issue, most people in South Dakota probably have a pretty good understanding of the issues involved, Richardson said.
"It would not surprise me that people are getting tired of dealing with it every few years," he said.
Donna Fjelstad of Pierre has changed her position on video lottery, but not from fatigue.
Fjelstad, who voted against video lottery each of the previous three times it was on the ballot, said Monday she already has cast an absentee ballot this fall. She sides with video lottery this time, partly because the long-running public argument over abortion made her rethink her core values.
She says she considered abortion an issue of personal responsibility, and "I decided I had to start being consistent with what I believed about personal responsibility in other areas. It was really hard to let it go (her video lottery opposition), but I did it."
Harold Walter of Carpenter plans to vote to get rid of the machines.
"I just don't care for video lottery," he said. "I never have."
He said he's aware his vote is to eliminate some state revenue, but he said it would be up to elected officials to figure out how to replace the money.
Opponents of the initiated repeal have focused much of their argument on the money.
"Imagine what would happen if the state loses $112 million in tax revenue," Larry Mann, campaign manager for No On 7, wrote in his ballot-question argument. He said it could take a state income tax, the loss of the existing property-tax reduction program, a higher sales tax or "dramatic and painful reductions in state programs."
Mann said the poll results weren't surprising.
"I think we're seeing people who are looking at three past elections and asking when the time comes that the majority's decision becomes final," he said. "Polls are just a snapshot in time, of course. I just hope people get out and vote, not just on this but on every other issue and candidate on the ballot."
Daniel Brendtro, spokesman for Forward South Dakota, the group pushing repeal of video lottery, said the poll numbers don't bother him in what he characterized as a David-and-Goliath campaign.
"The video lottery industry gets rich by ruining lives," Brendtro said. "Then at election time, they spend part of their giant war chest to scare people into keeping this terrible tax. I think this is the year when enough people realize they've been fooled."
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