He led the effort in the legislature to bring the question to voters and wants you to vote yes.

Yeah, I think this is among the most important and fiscally responsible measures that the voters will be voting on this year.

The voters several years ago authorized and directed that South Dakota enter into Medicaid expansion, making it that health care would be provided by the government, not just to populations that were vulnerable, as it always had been, to disabled folks or to pregnant mothers or elderly, but to able-bodied adults.

That was a vote that South Dakota put forward several years ago, and that was faithfully implemented by the legislature.

That was put through immediately and completely.

That was both, and that measure was all under the premise that the federal government would be paying 90% of all of those costs, and with state share, which is 10%, still resulted in tens of millions of dollars that we've been now spending on this program that couldn't go to schools, It couldn't go to nursing homes to help out the elderly.

It couldn't go to helping out disabled folks.

Mortensen told me he wasn't aware of how Jackley's views and the ballot language differ with his own interpretation until Searchlight asked him about it.