How South Dakota, Michigan took different paths to 'election integrity'

DETROIT, Mich. – Justin Roebuck can recall the exact moment that distrust of 2020 presidential election results impacted his status in the Republican Party.

The top election official of Ottawa County in western Michigan was speaking to a GOP women’s group when he was asked who won the race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden in the Midwest battleground state.

“When I told them that Biden won Michigan by about 154,000 votes, the gasp was audible in the room,” said Roebuck, adding that he was castigated by other party members for legitimizing the results. “I think it hit home for me at that point.”

Roebuck was among a group of election officials who spoke to journalists as part of the National Press Foundation 2024 Elections Fellowship in late July, assessing the state of American voting systems ahead of November.

They illustrated how unfounded claims of voter fraud, exacerbated by public frustration over social restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, emboldened electoral activists seeking to overturn results and erode trust in the democratic process.

These reverberations were felt in South Dakota, where grassroots efforts from organizations such as South Dakota Canvassing Group put pressure on state legislators to address election security through post-election audits and the banning of unmonitored drop boxes.

But the heightened scrutiny of casting and counting votes was hardly unique to the Republican-run Mount Rushmore State.

Michigan, a Democratic-controlled swing state that voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden four years later, was at the center of civil unrest before, during and after the tumultuous 2020 presidential race.

The way the two states handled the fallout – with Michigan expanding voting opportunities through ballot measures and South Dakota restricting access with legislative action – reveals disparate strategies to defend the sanctity of the vote.

South Dakota House Majority Leader Will Mortenson told News Watch that, in the case of restricting drop boxes, there were questions about the “susceptibility of abuse” and whether that justified changing the law. “Or do we have to wait until there’s actual abuse that we see before we address the susceptibility?” he asked.

In June 2021, after months of investigation, a Republican-controlled Senate Oversight Committee in Michigan issued a report that found “no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud” related to the 2020 presidential election in Michigan.

But GOP lawmakers still pointed to vulnerabilities in the system and moved to pass nearly 40 bills aimed at restricting voter registration, absentee ballots, voter ID and drop boxes. Whitmer vetoed the bills and overcame a narrow Republican legislative majority, which has since shifted to a slim Democratic advantage.

In 2022, Michigan voters adopted Proposal 2, a constitutional amendment that established at least nine days of early voting, provided voters with a right to request an absentee ballot, and enshrined voter ID rules that Republicans had sought to restrict.

The measure also mandated at least one state-funded drop box for each municipality, with additional boxes for every 15,000 voters, building on absentee voting reforms passed in a similar Promote the Vote amendment in 2018.

Proposal 2, lauded by supporters as Promote the Vote II, passed with 60% of the vote, a notable mandate at a time of election-related angst in the state.

South Dakota’s own introspection on election access was accelerated by groups such as South Dakota Canvassing, whose founders were inspired by My Pillow founder and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell’s 2021 Cyber Symposium in Sioux Falls.

Lindell, who campaigned for Trump alongside South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, claimed to have incriminating 2020 election data showing that China hacked into U.S. voting systems to help elect Biden. He offered $5 million to anyone who could prove him wrong, which did indeed happen, forcing him into a court battle as he tried to avoid honoring the bet.

“Fair elections equal a representative republic, but stolen elections equal slavery,” Canvassing Group co-founder Jessica Pollema told followers, who put county auditors and commissioners on the defensive by echoing accusations from conservative media and demanding proof of secure systems, even in a state that Trump won by 26 points in 2020.

For some Republicans, the message matched the moment. In a May 2024 poll co-sponsored by News Watch, more than 6 in 10 South Dakotans said they were dissatisfied with how democracy is working in the United States, including 32% who said they were “very dissatisfied.”

The same poll found that 58% of Republican respondents said they accepted the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

That was the political climate in which South Dakota’s Republican leadership, in consultation with county auditors, explored the issue of election security during the 2023 state legislative session in Pierre.

Those seeking major overhauls included Rick Weible, a computer analyst and Canvassing Group adviser who supports the hand counting of ballots and criticizes South Dakota’s 46-day early voting period, tied for longest in the nation.

Opportunity Solutions Project, a conservative nonprofit that advocates restrictions to absentee voting, also worked with legislators and county auditors to make it “easier to vote but harder to cheat,” a mantra newly adopted by election reformists.

Some of the testimony included allegations of people dumping unauthorized ballots into drop boxes in other states, without providing proof that it happened or how it was connected to South Dakota.

An Associated Press survey of election officials in each state revealed no cases of fraud, vandalism or theft involving drop boxes that could have affected the results of the 2020 election.

That didn’t mean it couldn’t impact South Dakota in future elections, said Mortenson, who along with Senate Majority Leader Casey Crabtree helped pass a package of 10 election reform bills in 2023.

“Some of the news we heard inspired legislators to kick the tires and figure out if some of the allegations seen in other states would show a vulnerability in our system,” said Mortenson.

“What we found is that we started out with a very secure, trustworthy system. The steps we took were to shore up security and acknowledge that if we’re going to have this really long early voting window, we’ve got to make sure that it’s done right.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit news organization. Read more in-depth stories at sdnewswatch.org and sign up for an email every few days to get stories as soon as they’re published. Contact Stu Whitney at stu.whitney@sdnewswatch.org