By Dave Baumeister
County Correspondent
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an updated version of the story published on-line only last week Wednesday, with clarifications and corrections, and was published in the July 4, 2024 issue.
SIOUX FALLS – Even though last week’s regular Minnehaha County Commission meeting on Tuesday, June 25, was brief, in the next rooms, around 50 county residents were preparing to conduct a hand-count audit of all the county’s ballots in the recent primary election.
Auditor Leah Anderson told commissioners that she wanted to take advantage of the overall low voter turn-out to count all the ballots by hand.
A new state law requires all counties to audit at least 5% of the total ballots in an election, and that, coupled with the low 9% voter turnout in Minnehaha County, is what prompted the hand count.
However, questions on June 18 did not clarify what would happen after the hand count.
Anderson explained that if there was a discrepancy in the count, candidates would have a brief window to ask for a recount, making that a possible “second recount” in this election.
On June 18, Commissioner Jean Bender asked Anderson several times if the auditor was thinking of the hand count as a recount.
Although Anderson never directly answered Bender’s question, she did say the hand count could lead to a recount.
However, according to state law, the hand count, in itself, does not serve as a recount, and any recount that was called for would most likely involve using the tabulating machines.
First recount Monday
The day before, on Monday, June 24, an “official” election recount was completed.
According to Commissioner Dean Karsky, over 300 workers and spectators, along with four attorneys, were in attendance at a recount that took 10-and-one-half hours to complete.
That process was overseen by a three-member board under the supervision of 2nd District Presiding Judge Robin Houwman.
Two of the races, one for precinct committeeman and the District 11 State House race, came out exactly the same as in the original count.
However, at the time of the original count, there were 132 disputed ballots that a precinct committee disqualified for reasons of questionable addresses, and those ballots were ordered to be put back into the mix for the recount.
While those ballots did not figure into the other races, they did for the third recount, which was asked for by county commission candidate Roger Russell who originally lost to the incumbent Dean Karsky by 85 votes.
But with the other ballots added in, Russell fell back even further to Karsky, this time coming in third place by a difference of 108 votes.
Challenger Cole Heisey picked up the most ground with 44 of the originally discounted ballots to finish in first place with 5,416 votes.
Heisey and Karsky will now face Independent candidate Anny Liebengood in the November general election.
Although Anderson told commissioners two weeks ago that she believed the audit would only take three hours (which was amended to five hours, figuring in training and breaks), the count was into the ninth hour and beyond, to almost 11 hours, on June 25. At the commissioners meeting on Tuesday, July 2nd, the auditor was scheduled to give her report to the commissioners.
