Voters in at least three rural South Dakota counties are set to decide Tuesday whether to return to counting ballots by hand, the latest communities around the country to consider ditching machine tabulators based on unfounded conspiracy theories stemming from the 2020 presidential election.

The three counties, each with fewer than 6,000 residents, would be among the first in the U.S. to require old-school hand counts, which long ago were replaced by ballot tabulators in most of the country.

A number of other states and local governments have considered banning machine counting since the 2020 election, but most of those efforts have sputtered over concerns of cost, the time it takes to count by hand and the difficulty of hiring more staff to do it.

Experts say counting the votes by hand is less accurate that machine tabulation.

Supporters of the South Dakota effort aren’t deterred by such worries.

“We believe that a decentralized approach to the elections is much more secure, much more transparent, and that the citizens should have oversight over their elections,” said Jessica Pollema, president of SD Canvassing, a citizen group supporting the change.

Like efforts elsewhere, the South Dakota push for hand counting has its origins in false claims pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies after the 2020 presidential election. They made claims of widespread voter fraud and spread conspiracy theories that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election. There has been no evidence to support such claims, but they have become embedded in many places that voted heavily for Trump.

The citizen initiatives in South Dakota to prohibit tabulating machines are set to appear on Tuesday’s primary ballot in Gregory, Haakon and Tripp counties. Similar petition efforts for future measure votes are underway in more than 40 other counties in the conservative state, Pollema said. At least four counties have rejected attempts to force hand counting.

Earlier, the Fall River County Commission voted in February to count ballots by hand for the June election, and Tripp County counted its general election ballots by hand in 2022.

If the measure passes Tuesday, Gregory County Auditor Julie Bartling said the county will have to increase the number of precincts to lessen the burden of hand counting. That will force it to buy more assisted voting devices for disabled voters. The county also will face the difficult task of hiring more election workers.

Bartling, who runs elections in the county, opposes the initiative and said she has “full faith in the automated tabulators.”

Todd and Tripp County Auditor Barb DeSersa said she also opposes attempts to require hand counting of all ballots because the process isn’t as accurate. She said the 2022 hand count left election workers exhausted.

“I know the ones that have done it the last time didn’t want nothing to do with it this time, so I think once they do it once or twice, they’ll get tired of it, and it’ll be harder to find people to volunteer to do that,” DeSersa said.

DeSersa’s office estimated it would cost $17,000 to $25,000 for elections in Tripp County to be counted by hand, compared to about $19,000 to $21,000 using tabulators. Haakon County Auditor Stacy Pinney said she initially estimated hand counting will cost between $750 and $4,500, but “overall, an election cost is hard to determine at this point.”

According to a state attorney’s analysis for Haakon County, it would take two election workers using a tabulator three to four hours to count all the ballots. It would take 15 to 20 election workers between five and 15 hours to do a hand count, depending on the number of contested races.

The three counties have a combined 7,725 active registered voters, according to a statewide report.

Republican state Rep. Rocky Blare, who lives in Tripp County, said he will vote against the measure.

“They can’t prove to me that there’s been any issues that I think have affected our election in South Dakota,” Blare said.

Secretary of State Monae Johnson, a Republican, expressed confidence in tabulating machines, noting they have been used for years. In a statement, she pointed to “safeguards built in throughout the process and the post-election audit on the machines after the primary and general election to ensure they are working properly.”

The June election will be the first with a post-election audit, a process included in a 2023 state law. It involves hand counting all the votes in two races from 5% of precincts in every county to ensure the machine tabulation is accurate. Johnson’s office said there was no evidence of any widespread problems in 2020 or 2022. One person voted twice, she said, and was caught.

After repeated attacks against machine-counting of ballots in the 2020 presidential election, Dominion Voting Systems last year reached a $787 million settlement in a defamation case against Fox News over false claims the network repeatedly aired. The judge in that case found it was “CRYSTAL clear” none of the claims about Dominion’s machines was true, and testimony showed many Fox hosts quietly doubted the claims their network was airing.

Since 2020, only a few counties have made the switch to hand counting. In California, officials in Shasta County voted to get rid of their ballot tabulators, but state lawmakers later restricted hand counts to limited circumstances. Officials in Arizona’s Mohave County rejected a proposal to hand count ballots in 2023, citing the $1.1 million cost.

David Levine, a former local election official in Idaho who is now a senior fellow with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, said research has shown hand counting large numbers of ballots is more costly, less accurate and takes more time than machine tabulators.

“If you listen to conspiracy theorists and election skeptics throughout the U.S., one reason the 2020 election was illegitimate was because of an algorithm. Hence, if you take computers out of the voting process, you’ll have a more secure election,” Levine said. “The only problem: it’s not true.”

While some areas do count ballots by hand, mainly in the Northeast, it typically happens in places with a small number of registered voters. Hand counts are common during post-election tests to check that machines are counting ballots correctly, but only a small portion of the ballots are manually checked.

Election experts say it’s unrealistic to think workers in large jurisdictions, with tens or hundreds of thousands of voters, could count all their ballots by hand and report results quickly, especially since ballots often include multiple races.

“The issue is that people aren’t very good at large, tedious, repetitive tasks like counting ballots, and computers are,” Levine said. “Those who believe otherwise are either unaware of this reality or choose to ignore it.”

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Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota. Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed to this story.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – The South Dakota African American History Museum at the Washington Pavilion celebrated the opening of a new exhibit focused on space exploration on Saturday.

The “Black Space Exploration and Navigation” exhibit highlights the incredible journeys, contributions and stories of African Americans throughout the history of space exploration.

The exhibit’s debut featured guest speakers and a guided tour.

“To show little girls and black kids in general that black people have a space in STEM fields. They have a space in space. a space in NASA. They are leaders, explorers and scientists,” said artist Isabella Hageman.

The exhibit includes interactive displays and historical artifacts that show the contributions of black explorers, innovators and trailblazers.

Copyright 2024 Dakota News Now. All rights reserved.

Most of the action in Tuesday’s South Dakota primary election is in Republican legislative races, where a fight for control of the party has drawn in players ranging from upstart challengers to fundraising groups affiliated with members of Congress.

There are 44 Republican legislative primary races across the state, and only one Democratic legislative primary. Winners will go on to represent the party in the Nov. 5 general election, when all 105 seats in the Legislature will be up for grabs. 

Republicans currently hold all but 11 of 105 legislative seats, and their grip on the majority is not in doubt. But the party’s direction could be influenced by Tuesday’s results, many of which will be the final result. Among 35 districts, 16 of them lack general election contests for House seats and 20 lack general election contests for Senate seats, due to candidates running unopposed or one party (mostly Democrats) failing to field a candidate. In other words, in some districts, the primary election is the de facto general election.

One of the Republicans trying to influence the primary results is Toby Doeden, who considered challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson but decided against it. Doeden has since launched Dakota First Action, a political action committee aiming to remove “fake Republicans and their whole crony crowd” from the state House of Representatives, replacing them with “America First” candidates, according to Doeden.

“Then we’ll take the Senate and governor’s office,” Doeden said, referring to future elections. 

Doeden contributed $100,000 of his own money to the committee and reported it as a donation, according to a campaign finance report. After online commenters pointed out the $10,000 limit on individual contributions to political action committees, Doeden said the contribution should have been reported as a loan, not a donation. 

Pat Powers, a Republican blogger, has filed an affidavit alleging Doeden is “flagrantly violating” campaign finance laws. Powers also published correspondence from Attorney General Marty Jackley indicating that Jackley’s office is investigating.

As of the last filing deadline, Doeden’s committee had spent $25,000 on “data acquisition,” and recently sent text messages to District 25 voters alleging a Republican candidate he dislikes is a liberal in disguise.

Another political action committee seeking to challenge the Republican establishment in Pierre is Spearfish Republican Rep. Scott Odenbach’s Liberty Tree. It spent $58,000 ahead of the primary. 

Former executive director of Rapid City Catholic Social Services Jim Kinyon’s Protecting SD Kids donated $37,000 to similar candidates, as did anti-abortion activists’ South Dakota Right to Life PAC, spending $11,600. The PAC is affiliated with the nonprofit South Dakota Right to Life, which includes Rep. Jon Hansen, R-Dell Rapids, Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Watertown, Sen. Al Novstrup, R-Aberdeen, and former representative and current candidate Spencer Gosch on its board.

None of the money spent by those committees went to Republican candidates currently serving in legislative leadership positions.  

One such Republican, former state senator Tom Dempster, of Sioux Falls, warns that confrontational politics within the party will contribute to further divides in an already divided country.

“We have way too many candidates on the fringe that want people to rally around them because they simply want to upset the system,” Dempster said. “It’s just the opposite of what our democracy needs today. We need people who know how to handle conflict and pull people together.”

The kinds of candidates Dempster favors are receiving help in the primary from longtime Republican state lawmaker Lee Schoenbeck, of Watertown, who isn’t seeking reelection. He founded a political action committee in 2021, South Dakota Strong. The committee spent $46,000 on nine candidates ahead of this primary, according to its campaign finance report.

Schoenbeck said today’s Republican party consists of two different groups of people. 

“There are the normal Republicans, and there are these strange individuals who are not conservative. They’re just unusual,” Schoenbeck said. “But they turn out big in primary elections. So, if normal, regular-thinking conservative folks don’t vote in this primary, the highly unusual folks will win.” 

Mort PAC, run by House Majority Leader Will Mortenson, R-Fort Pierre, spent $48,271 to help some of the same candidates. It received $10,000 from Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds’ Peter Norbeck Leadership PAC and $10,000 from Republican U.S. Sen. John Thune’s Heartland Values PAC. 

Dusty PAC, managed by supporters of U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, donated $25,750 to many of the same candidates and more.

Dakota Legacy PAC, run by Senate Majority Leader Casey Crabtree, R-Madison, took a similar approach, giving $16,700 to candidates and spending $10,000 on advertising. The committee also received $10,000 apiece from Thune’s and Rounds’ PACs. 

Following are summaries of some races that people on both sides of the Republican divide say they’re watching closely. 

House of Representatives

In state House of Representatives primaries, the top two vote-getters from each party advance to the general election, where they will vie for two House seats in each legislative district.

District 18 (Clay, Yankton counties): Incumbents Mike Stevens and Julie Auch, and challenger John Marquardt, all of Yankton. 

Auch received money from South Dakota Right to Life PAC and a 91.7% scorecard rating from South Dakota Citizens for Liberty, a group that says it advocates for limited government. Stevens received money from Dusty PAC and a 33.3% rating on the Citizens for Liberty scorecard. 

Meanwhile, Auch received a D rating from a scorecard published by the Republican blogger Powers, the Real Conservative Scorecard, and Stevens received a B+ rating.

Yankton County Commission Chairman Marquardt received donations from Mort PAC and Dusty PAC.

District 13 (Lincoln, Minnehaha counties): Incumbent Tony Venhuizen and challengers Brad Jankord, John Hughes and Penny BayBridge, all of Sioux Falls. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the two Republican primary winners will win the two House seats. 

Venhuizen formerly served as chief of staff for Governors Kristi Noem and Dennis Daugaard and has been involved in Republican state politics for many years. 

Jankord received donations from Dusty PAC, Mort PAC, former Gov. Dennis Daugaard, Venhuizen and others, totaling over $60,000. 

Hughes has received funding from Odenbach’s Liberty Tree, South Dakota Right to Life PAC, Protecting SD Kids and others, totaling over $40,000. 

BayBridge took in $4,703 from various individuals. 

With Venhuizen taking in over $100,000, plus the fundraising by other candidates, the district’s primary election is the most expensive South Dakota Searchlight found.

District 9 (Minnehaha County): Incumbent Bethany Soye, of Sioux Falls, and challengers Kristi Golden, Daryl Christensen and Tesa Schwans, all of Hartford. 

Soye has a 97.5% Citizens for Liberty rating and contributions from Liberty Tree, South Dakota Right to Life PAC and Protecting SD Kids. She was given a D rating on the Real Conservative Scorecard. 

Schwans received donations from South Dakota Right to Life PAC, Protecting SD Kids and Liberty Tree.

Golden received donations from Dusty PAC and Mort PAC, and Christensen received donations from Venhuizen and Daugaard. 

District 2 (Minnehaha County): Incumbents John Sjaarda, of Valley Springs, and David Kull, of Brandon, face challenger Jake Schoenbeck, of Sioux Falls. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the two Republican primary winners will win the two House seats.

Sjaarda has an 87.5% Citizens for Liberty rating and contributions from Liberty Tree and Protecting SD Kids. Schoenbeck is the son of longtime legislative leader Lee Schoenbeck (who isn’t seeking reelection). South Dakota Strong gave Jake Schoenbeck $5,000. He also received contributions from Mort PAC and Dusty PAC.

Kull has an A rating on the Real Conservative Scorecard and received donations from Dusty PAC and Mort PAC.

District 21 (Aurora, Charles Mix, Douglas, Gregory and Tripp counties): Incumbent Marty Overweg, of New Holland, and challengers Lee Qualm, of Platte, and Jim Halverson, of Winner. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the two Republican primary winners will win the two House seats.

Overweg has a 97.5% Citizens for Liberty rating and contributions from Liberty Tree and South Dakota Right to Life PAC. Qualm, a former legislator, also has Liberty Tree and South Dakota Right to Life PAC contributions, plus an endorsement from Dakota First Action.

Halverson, whose daughter is involved with U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson’s reelection campaign, received donations from Dusty PAC and Mort PAC. 

District 23 (Brown, Campbell, Edmunds, Faulk, Hand, McPherson, Potter, Walworth counties): Incumbents Scott Moore, of Ipswich, and Majority Whip James Wangsness, of Miller, and challenger Spencer Gosch. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the two Republican primary winners will win the two House seats.

Gosch previously served as speaker of the House. He received contributions from Protect SD Kids, Liberty Tree and a PAC affiliated with the South Dakota Freedom Caucus, whose members sometimes clash with Republican legislative leaders. 

Wangsness has an A+ rating on the Real Conservative Scorecard and received contributions from Dusty PAC and Mort PAC.

Moore’s pre-primary finance report includes donations from Dusty PAC, Protecting SD Kids and the South Dakota Freedom Caucus PAC.  

Senate

In state Senate primaries, only the top vote-getter from each party advances to the general election to vie for one Senate seat in each legislative district.

District 16 (Lincoln, Turner, Union counties): Kevin Jensen vs. Eric Hohman, both of Canton. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the Republican primary winner wins the seat.

Jensen, a current state representative, is term-limited in the House. He has an 83.3% Citizens for Liberty rating and a contribution from Liberty Tree and South Dakota Right to Life PAC. 

Hohman’s campaign has received contributions from Lee Schoenbeck’s South Dakota Strong PAC, Senate Majority Leader Casey Crabtree’s Dakota Legacy PAC and the Dusty PAC.

District 3 (Brown County): Carl Perry vs. Katherine Washnok, both of Aberdeen. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the Republican primary winner wins the seat.

Current state representative Perry is attempting a switch to the Senate against Brown County Republican Chair Washnok.

Washnok says she “grew up in” the state Republican Party. She has a contribution from Dakota Legacy PAC and Dusty PAC.

Perry has a 75% SD Citizens for Liberty rating, a Dakota First Action endorsement, and checks from Liberty Tree and South Dakota Right to Life PAC.

District 30 (Custer, Fall River, Pennington counties): Incumbent Julie Frye-Mueller, of Rapid City, vs. Amber Hulse, of Hot Springs, and Forrest Foster, of Rapid City.

Frye-Mueller is one of two Republicans with a 100% rating from Citizens for Liberty. The state Senate censured Frye-Mueller in 2023. She had allegedly verbally harassed a Legislative Research Council staffer, including criticism of the staffer’s decision to have her baby vaccinated.

Hulse is a lawyer and former Miss South Dakota who worked as an intern in President Donald Trump’s administration. She received a donation from Dusty PAC. 

Foster received $1,600 ahead of the primary, including $1,000 from himself. 

District 8 (Brookings, Kingsbury, Lake, Miner counties): Incumbent Casey Crabtree, of Madison, vs. Rick Weible, of Elkton. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the Republican primary winner wins the seat. 

Crabtree is the Senate majority leader and reports taking in about $69,000 on his pre-primary finance report. He has a 31.8% rating from Citizens for Liberty. 

Weible is a leader in attempts to get rid of vote-counting machines and force hand-counting. He received a donation from the South Dakota Freedom Caucus and took in $6,000 total.

District 4 (Clark, Codington, Deuel, Grant, Hamlin and Roberts counties): Fred Deutsch, of Florence, vs. Stephanie Sauder, of Bryant. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the Republican primary winner wins the seat.

With term limits forcing John Wiik out of the Senate, current representatives Deutsch and Sauder are seeking the open seat.

Deutsch has a 66.7% Citizens for Liberty rating and received donations from South Dakota Right to Life PAC and Protecting SD Kids. Sauder has a 43.5% Citizens for Liberty rating and contributions from South Dakota Strong and Dusty PAC.

District 35 (Pennington): Incumbent Mike Walsh, of Box Elder, vs. challengers Greg Blanc and Curtis Nupen, both of Rapid City. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the Republican primary winner wins the seat.

Walsh was appointed to an open seat this year by Gov. Kristi Noem. He has a contribution from South Dakota Strong. Blanc has contributions from Liberty Tree and South Dakota Right to Life PAC. Nupen gave himself $6,000. 

District 34 (Pennington): Jason Green vs. Taffy Howard, both of Rapid City.

With incumbent Michael Diedrich not seeking reelection, former legislator Howard is seeking a return to the Legislature. She is a former primary challenger to U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, whom she described as insufficiently conservative. She has contributions from Liberty Tree, South Dakota Right to Life PAC and Protecting SD Kids, and a Dakota First Action endorsement. 

Green is endorsed by outgoing Sen. Diedrich and received donations from Dusty PAC and Lee Schoenbeck.

District 25 (Minnehaha and Moody counties): Incumbent Tom Pischke, of Dell Rapids, vs. challenger Jordan Youngberg, of Colman.

Pischke has an 80.7% rating from Citizens for Liberty, a contribution from Liberty Tree and a Dakota First Action endorsement. He made statewide news for being banned from the House during the last days of the most recent legislative session for a breach of decorum. 

Youngberg, a former legislator, has contributions from South Dakota Strong and Dusty PAC.

District 17 (Clay and Union counties): Incumbent Sydney Davis, of Burbank, vs. Jeffrey Church, of Vermillion. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the Republican primary winner wins the seat.

Church has contributions from Liberty Tree and Protecting SD Kids, and is highlighting Davis’ 20% Citizens for Liberty rating in his campaign material. Davis has donations from Dusty PAC and others totaling about $39,000. 

District 9 (Minnehaha County): Joy Hohn, a vocal opponent of eminent domain for carbon dioxide pipelines, faces off with former representative Mark Willadsen. There is no Democratic or independent candidate, which means the Republican primary winner wins the seat.

Doeden’s Dakota First Action endorsed Hohn, and she has donations from Liberty Tree and South Dakota Right to Life PAC. 

Willadsen has donations from Dusty PAC, former Gov. Daugaard, and former speaker of the state House, Mark Mickelson.