By Dave Baumeister
County correspondent
SIOUX FALLS – On Monday, June 10, Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson told the county canvassing board that, while the election day process was conducted by the usual tabulating machines, in a state ordered audit, her office will hand count 100% of the county ballots from the June 4 primary.
The canvassing board, which would usually just be the Minnehaha County Commission was slightly different this time.
Only two commissioners could take part in the canvass, as Joe Kippley and Dean Karsky each had conflicts of interest, and Gerald Beninga was not available.
In their places were former commissioners Jeff Barth and Cindy Heiberger, as well as sitting Sioux Falls City Councilman Alex Jensen.
This election was also the first time that there would be an election hand-count audit, as per state legislative action earlier this year.
The legislature is requiring an audit of votes by hand for at least 5% of a county’s vote totals.
And part of that requirement is that the precincts audited must have a minimum of 100 ballots cast.
Anderson said that although the election went very well, the voter turn-out was extremely low, at around 9% of eligible voters.
And because of that, many precincts had fewer than the required 100 votes. So to meet the state requirements there would have to be an audit of around 25% of the vote.
She added that over the previous weekend, she thought about it, and figured if they were going to put things in place to hand count 25% of the vote, they might as well count 100% of the county’s votes.
Anderson explained that as long as this was under-budget for her office, it was within her discretion to do so.
And to help with the financial end of things, she referred to some savings in the auditor’s office, some reimbursement from the state for part of the count, and that she has a number of volunteers to help with the counting process.
Even though the canvassing board had several questions about the process, none of the members objected, but again, Anderson was not looking for approval. She just wanted to explain the process that she felt was a logical step to the already state-mandated audit.
Other than that, the canvassing itself was done in a normal manner, adding in just a few votes for people who had voted on provisional ballots.
Board members also had questions about 132 absentee ballots that were disqualified by one precinct.
The ballots in question all fell into the category of coming from local campgrounds or post box businesses where no records could be found that the voter had lived that address more than the 30 days annually that is required by the state, if at all.
That precinct committee agreed that since the addresses could not be connected to any regular residential voter, they would be disallowed.
All in all, there were 11,062 votes cast on election day, and another 2,006 absentee ballots.
