Machine-counting ban unnecessary
Three South Dakota counties went to the polls during the primary election to vote whether or not those counties would ban the use of vote-counting machines in their counties, which would in turn force the auditors and election workers in those counties to hand-count each ballot during the election. All three of those bans failed.
As reported by South Dakota Searchlight, the unofficial election results from the secretary of state’s office were:
• Gregory County, 587 votes (54 percent) against the petition and 509 (46 percent) in favor.
• Haakon County, 276 (61 percent) against the petition and 177 (39 percent) in favor.
• Tripp County, 734 (57 percent) against the petition and 553 (43 percent) in favor.
We say this is a good thing. The votes show that the citizens of those counties still have faith in the state’s election system, and more importantly, faith in the people who conduct the elections in those particular counties.
“They listened to the pros and cons, and I believe this vote shows they still have confidence in the tabulators and the work we do here in the auditor’s office,” said Gregory County auditor Julie Bartling in the Searchlight story. “We’re a small county and we know each other. You just want people to have a sense they can have trust and confidence in me not only as an elected official, but as a neighbor and friend.”
Bartling hit the nail on the head. Here in Custer County, we have a professional auditor’s office that handles our elections. We have the utmost confidence in county finance officer Dawn McLaughlin, Dana Benjamin and the rest of the auditor staff to conduct fair elections. They have given people zero reason to believe they are doing anything suspicious, and the machine on which the ballots are counted is tested, a process the public is invited to watch. A couple of years ago interested Republicans and Democrats watched the ballot counting process and came away convinced there was no skullduggery afoot.
We feel sorry for the auditors who have to count ballots by hand. Let’s hope they also don’t have to go back to plowing their fields with oxen and biting down on a chunk of wood while having surgery instead of getting anesthesia. Fall River County voluntarily counted its ballots by hand during the primary election, and as a result, had its results much later than the rest of District 30.
This demand to revert to hand counting is driven by the misguided belief that somehow these ballot-counting machines are being hacked to “rig” elections, a residual effect of Donald Trump claiming the election was stolen from him in 2020. We aren’t sure why some residents of the aforementioned counties, which are largely Republican with Republican county officials, think those same officials want to rig an election for candidates they likely don’t want to win. The entire thing takes some mental gymnastics.
We are all for transparency, but that is being and can be achieved without reverting to antiquated ways of running elections. Technology advances for a reason. Voting machines work. Let’s not reinvent the wheel.