Minnehaha County's auditor predicted a hand count of votes would take 5 hours. It took 12.
When 50 people piled into two rooms on the third floor of the Minnehaha County Administration Building at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, preparing to hand count every one of the 13,189 ballots cast in the county's June 4 primary election, they expected to be done sometime that afternoon.
After all, when Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson had discussed the audit with county commissioners last week, she'd estimated that the process would take five hours.
Instead, it was nearly 10 p.m. when the last of the ballots were counted and the rooms emptied of volunteers — and there was still paperwork for Anderson to complete Wednesday morning before sending the results to the South Dakota Secretary of State's office.
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By comparison, when Minnehaha County's polls closed at 7 p.m. June 4, the county's 81 precincts were fully counted before 11 p.m.
Anderson's initial estimate on cost had been $4,500. She did not have an answer as to the cost of the audit on Tuesday night, but said she wasn't concerned about going over her budget, and added that about 15 of the participants had volunteered for free as opposed to being paid the $18 an hour rate.
State law says the secretary of state will reimburse costs for the audits, though Anderson said last week she was not sure whether they would be reimbursed for the cost of the entire audit, since a recently implemented state law requires a hand-counted post-election audit be performed in just 5% of voting precincts.
But Anderson — who has drawn criticism during her tenure as auditor by saying she's not sure she can trust the county's voting system and connecting discrepancies she says she's found in the county's 2020 election results to a theory that claims an algorithm could be altering votes to harm Republican's chances in elections — told commissioners she didn't think 5% was high enough to verify an election, adding that the process would give some people a chance to verify the election themselves.
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Several members of the South Dakota Canvassing Group, who have pushed for the complete removal of machines from the voting process and are among Anderson's strongest supporters, were heavily involved in the audit, including president Jessica Pollema, whose challenge of absentee ballots was overturned during Monday's recount of several county races.
The results of the audit cannot directly change the official election results, Anderson said — though they could allow a candidate to ask for a recount of a specific race.
A summary of the results comparing the tabulation count and hand count of the votes shared by Anderson Wednesday night showed single-digit differences between the methods, almost all of them by just a single vote.
In at least one race recounted on Monday, of course, a single vote was the difference between the winner and the loser. But the count returned by the hand-counted audit wouldn't have flipped any races from June 4.
Anderson didn't immediately return a request for comment from the Argus Leader regarding the audit's results.
Both the audit and Monday's recount did run into a similar issue — ballots that had not been stamped from ExpressVote systems, a voting device in polling places intended for voters with disabilities.
The recount found three ExpressVote ballots that had not been properly stamped, and at least one more was located during the audit. Anderson said the voting tabulator machines do not pick up missed stamps on ExpressVote ballots, and it's up to the people operating them to notice it.
Auditing the election
The audit was performed by about 50 registered voters, roughly half of whom are Republicans and the rest Democrats, independents, Libertarians or non-party affiliates.
They broke into groups of five — two people looking at the ballots, two tallying them and one overseeing the process.
And then, for nearly 12 hours, they counted. Mistakes were more common at the beginning — forgetting to count ballots before splitting them, miscounting, forgetting whether undervotes or overvotes were marked down — but they seemed to lessen as the day progressed, with exhaustion or eye strain becoming the main challenge by the end of the night.
Several people didn't sign necessary paperwork before leaving, with Anderson saying she'd have to contact them early Wednesday and get them into the office. And one table skipped a County Commission race, a mistake Anderson and others caught as they checked final tallies.
As the true length of the audit became more apparent around 5 p.m., Anderson raised the possibility of finishing the count Wednesday morning, but the Minnehaha County State's Attorney's office informed her they could not legally reseal the ballots and then open them again the next day.
Near the end of the night, Anderson said the amount of paperwork required was "overwhelming," and one of the main things contributing to the time the audit had taken. She also was not a fan of the tally sheets that were being used, saying that even with improvements she had made, they were still inefficient.
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Anderson said she expected future post-election audits would fall somewhere in the middle of state minimums and a full count, perhaps looking at 25% of precincts.
Once Anderson sends the report to the SOS office, it will be published on their website, and Anderson will present the results to the Minnehaha County Commission at their July 2 meeting.
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Minnehaha County's hand-counted audit took much longer than expected
