LEOLA, S.D.(Aberdeen Insider)- Hand-counting all of the June 4 primary ballots in McPherson County proved the process is a waste of time and money.
That was the take of McPherson County State’s Attorney Austin Hoffman after a secondary audit of ballots on Tuesday, June 25.
The review “blatantly showed hand-counting of ballots is far more inaccurate than the tabulators are,” Hoffman said.
McPherson County commissioners agreed to hand-count all of the primary ballots after they were processed by vote tabulators. That decision was made during an April 2 county meeting after they unanimously denied a request from local residents to set a vote on whether hand-counting should be mandatory.
About 30 local residents who wanted the use of ExpressVote tabulators to be eliminated attended that meeting. The machines are required by federal law as part of the Help America Vote Act to assist voters who need help filling out their ballots.
Commissioners denied the request because it would have conflicted with federal and state law.
Some South Dakota residents have been “screaming for quite some time now” about supposed problems with vote tabulators, Hoffman said. There’s no evidence to support those claims, he said.
Hand-counting totals were off after the primary election, he said, though it didn’t affect any of the election outcomes.
The problems were simply the result of human error, Hoffman said.
Read the full story at www.aberdeeninsider.com.
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