As you may or may not know, South DaCola broke the story on Pat Powers involvement with a consulting business while serving as the SOS’s Chief of Operations. Stan left these comments today on my site;
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Gee, seems like the logical thing to do!
“Our complaint is contesting the method by which the votes were counted,” Sioux Falls attorney Sam Khoroosi said. “It was conducted by a computerized voting machine. The count was done three times and each time, it came up with a different count.”
Khoroosi and his client, Guymon, says those different numbers aren’t providing a clear picture. That’s why they filed the complaint this morning.
“What we’re requesting is a manual confirmation of the vote count,” Khoroosi said.
It is unfortunate that a lawsuit had to be filed to make the Davison County Auditor do the logical thing. So why haven’t they counted the votes manually yet? Good question.
This is my educated guess, because it will show that vote counting machines are not accurate, and this will open up a gigantic can of worms. I am sure the company that maintains the machines will fight this, and mountains of taxpayers time and money will be wasted when you could simply have four people in a room for about 2 hours counting (at most) 6,000 votes.
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.
Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in a lawn chair enjoying a refreshing peach iced tea with a couple of (nerdy political) friends in the beautiful 93 degree weather. We of course were sitting in the shade.
The topic of conversation? Elections. Yeah, I know, not exactly what most people talk about on a nice day like yesterday.
I brought up that there are some on the city council (Jamison, Staggers and Karsky) that truly want to fix the musical precincts, and the wheels will be set in motion soon. But we know how slow those wheels turn.
So one of the ‘Super Friends’ suggested that if the council and the county auditor don’t want to fix the back and forth of municipal elections, we should just fix it.
I said, “How?!”
They responded, “A petition drive.”
I am a bit gun shy when it comes to petition drives, but I don’t think any group that would pursue it would have a problem collecting signatures. There are so many people frustrated with the constant changes when it comes to precincts and voting in Sioux Falls, that I think they would have no problem collecting enough signatures.
The bigger question is if it gets on the ballot, how many precincts would be open to vote on it 🙂
Here is a recap of the email I sent out to elected officials;
Normally I do not email my elected officials, especially the entire city council, the county commission, the school board, the mayor, the city clerk and the county auditor all at once, but I did a recent post about the ‘musical precincts’ this city continues to play with elections and the mass confusion it has on voters. It’s time you all sat down in a room and figured out a standard already, this has gone on long enough!
Here is a PDF of the responses I haven’t gotten so far:Â precincts
Notice only two county commissioners responded and four city councilors (Jamison responded by phone). I’m still waiting to hear from the county auditor, school board, city clerk and mayor. I’m not holding my breath.
I’m glad I finally found my hoagie recipe book.
Before I get into the actual results I wanted to point out something that a South DaCola foot soldier observed at the Minnehaha County’s auditor’s office last night. The first thing was they commented to me that Roust left Litz with a well trained staff.
Secondly, they observed two candidates at the offices during the tabulating. I believe it was Dick Kelly and Pat Kirschman, but it doesn’t really matter who the candidates were, it is a BIG NO-NO to be within a 100 feet of the auditor’s office during tabulation and voting. Staggers was reminded of that in the last municipal election.
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER
Begalka beating Rausch proved that the governor isn’t the big wheel he thinks he is. I have often felt that Rounds was a very weak governor and Denny is even weaker.
Abdallah finally sent packing. The rumors are that Otten’s co-horts ran a dirty campaign. I actually enjoy Republicans beating each other up. Gene was from the old Janklow guard and it was time for his retirement.
Dave Munson sent back into retirement doesn’t surprise me. I will give Jenna Haggar credit, she is a door-to-door campaigner. The only campaigning I saw Dave do was hanging out with his normal bullshitting crowd at Kahladi’s coffee downtown.
I want to congratulate Hajek for sending the constitutional scholar, Tornow packing.
In district 15, things are going to be heating up in November. I have known Karen Soli for a number of years, if elected to represent us in Pierre, we will truly be getting a gifted individual. Karen is a retired Lutheran pastor and a compassionate liberal, and as smart as a whip.
Also in November is the prime-time battle between Johnny come lately Kyle Schoenfish (used to be a Democrat, and is the son of Mayor Huether’s first cousin) and Stace Nelson. This will probably be the most enjoyable race to watch. Please, Mike, no more voicemail’s about Kyle. Thank You.
l3wis