Before I go into it about how this has turned out to be a total Kangaroo Kourt, the appointments;
Kea Warne (Public Employee, SD Department of Ag, former Elections Supervisor for the SOS)
Lorie Hogstad (Public Employee, Sioux Falls City Clerk)
Bruce Danielson (Citizen)
Sue Roust (Former auditor and elected official)
Joel Arends (Citizen, attorney)
Julie Pearson (Pennington County Auditor)
Deb Elofson (Citizen, Minnehaha County Democratic Party, Political director at Craft & Associates)
When they originally discussed how this process was supposed to go, Commissioner Kelly recommended that NO elected officials sit on this commission, which I agree, but as you can tell, they threw the bath water out with the baby, and have several former and current elected officials and public employees REVIEWING themselves. That seems fair 🙁
I was originally asked by Jeff Barth to be on the commission, and I accepted his invitation, but when he relayed that information to county administrators they had to call a whaaabulance about Jeff’s choice, so he chose someone else. The commission is so lucky they have administrators making choices for the commissioners, kind of reminds me of the directors telling city councilors what to do. I told Jeff I wanted to serve to keep a record more then anything about the proceedings, not to make a mockery of it. I also think I have covered enough of these elections to know what has and hasn’t work. When super precincts were first introduced by city clerk Owen, I saw the potential for problems, and there were, they promised those kinks would be worked out, but they haven’t, they have only made the process confusing. The first proposal I would bring to the table is the elimination of super precincts and a common election process within our city.
Besides Debra, Joel and Bruce, this Kourt seems to be stacked with people who cannot possibly give a fair assessment of the situation. There are several defenders of the SOS’s office, Bob’s office and the offending software supplier ES & S, not to mention defenders of our very clunky government processes when it comes to elections. Elections are NOT about saving money or new fangled devices, they are about fairness.
The findings should be interesting.