South Dakota’s Secretary of State says nine out of ten of absentee ballots requested have reached county auditors ahead of Tuesday’s general election.
South Dakotans are on track to file nearly double the amount of absentee ballots filed in the 2016 presidential election.
Of the 204,535 absentee ballots requested, 184,379 have been returned.
Secretary Steve Barnett says there’s a good chance that number keeps climbing into the weekend and could reach 200,000.
By comparison, 102,390 absentee ballots were cast in 2016, the last presidential election.
Barnett says counting absentee ballots requires a few more steps. Election workers must match the signature on the absentee request form with the manilla envelope a ballot comes in on. Regular election day voting is different.
“The work is done on the front end on election day,” Barnett says. “The individual shows their i.d. then they go in and vote and those votes get tabulated at the end of the night. Where these, they’re verifying to make sure that the signatures match and there’s a copy of the photo i.d. attached. It’s just a little more labor intensive on the absentee ballot.”
Minnehaha County Audior Bob Litz has already indicated they’ll need two days to count absentee ballots.
Given how close election day is, Barnett says anyone with an absentee ballot should take theirs to their local ballot dropbox.
He also says it’s not too late to sign up as a back up poll worker.
“Say a worker comes down with COVID a night or two before the election, it’s great for county auditors to have a really good back up list of workers,” Barnett says. “If people are interested in doing that they can call their county auditor.”
Barnett is reminding people who plan on voting election day to double check their polling location.
Lee Strubinger is the politics and public policy reporter for SDPB.
