How do over 1,000 votes disappear?
After Tuesday’s primary, the Secretary of State’s Office reported about 6,100 votes were cast. But later on, the auditor reported that just more than 5,500 votes were cast. And after Thursday’s recount, the official count was around 4,400.
I suppose I could go on another rant about the incompetence of Jason Gant, but why keep beating a dead horse? How do these many ballots going missing? Or the bigger question, were ballots overcounted?
Some say the only thing that will satisfy them is a re-vote. Candidates have ten days after the election day to file a petition for a re-vote.
This should not have to be the case. Why should they inconvenance voters if these ballots exist, not to mention the tax payer money it will cost because of this incompetence? And the bigger question is how could they be off by that much? The AG’s office needs to do an investigation into election fraud (either intentional or accidental). It is blatantly obvious someone in the Davison county auditor’s office either screwed up accidentally or on purpose. This episode better end with someone in handcuffs.
Apparently test ballots were mixed in with the regular ballots on election night. Also, the SOS’s registration numbers for Davison county are different then Davison county’s numbers. WOW!
More reasons why to never trust machines to count the vote.
Wow, “S.O.S.” is really appropriate in this case…I grew up in Pierre and have known three Sec.s of State (Kundert, Hazeltine, and Nelson) personally – I’ve never heard of anyone being able to completely screw up this job like Gant. His understanding of proper governing procedures remind me of Tornow’s grasp of law…
Gant is an embarrassment. I’m not saying he is personally responsible here, but clearly his office isn’t doing a great job of addressing these types of situations.
Then when you are clearly partisan, and you have partisan people in your office who work on campaigns on the side… how can you ever be fully trusted?
If it quacks like a duck and if it walks like a duck… it probably isn’t a non-partisan pheasant. It is still a duck.
I for one will never be happy until voters get receipts after they vote that could then be used for a random audit against what the machines claim actually happened. There is too much room for manipulation with machines… never mind the people behind them.
Am I the only one who really misses Chris Nelson? Where can I get a bumper sticker with Nelson’s face on it and a slogan of “Bring back the ‘stache!”
L3wis: I think you need to put one of those together. I’d buy one.
Craig and L3wis, I will never be happy as long as we have any machine involved with the counting of ballots.
His office is a complete cluster. From The Daily Republic:
“Gunkel said she was told by a member of Secretary of State Jason Gant’s staff that she was not required to file campaign finance reports prior to Tuesday’s primary election.
That turned out to be incorrect advice.”
Craig – sign me up for one of those bumper stickers!
Gant is such an embarrassment that even other Republicans keep their distance
Maddy – Ironic you say that. Most of the complaints I have heard about Gant is from Republicans.
In the old days, we have big books to know who and how many voted. If there was a question, we had real time books to go to to find out how many voted to compare to the ballot pile. We did not know how the voters voted but we did know upfront how many people showed up.
Once we know how many total voters, we start hand counting each election contest. Hand counting would never show too many votes counted only the expected under counts.
Under counts are contests where a person shows up to vote, then doesn’t make a decision and the ballot has no mark. BTW, if you only had one race (June 5 primary) to make a decision on, why would you show up just to turn in an unmarked ballot?
So it is simple to hand count at each voting precinct by the people who have the legal ‘sworn’ duty to fairly allow citizens to exercise their right to vote. These poll workers have been an amazing history of correctness. Why do we let machines and political hacks keep screwing it up?
Gant was constantly calling during the machine counting pushing for answers, get it done type demands. Maybe he was doing it to Mitchell also and in the rush to get any answer the Davison Auditor’s office just started running the machines without care to the loading process?
The Sioux Falls election night had a double count problem for a while and the staff was not going to be rushed into reporting incorrect totals. The staff knew how to fix the problem but called the former auditor to verify the fix.
If the ballots were hand counted this problem would have never arisen. We might not have known some of the race totals in time for Stormland’s 10pm weather and sports reporting service but I for one do not care. I want accuracy.