Scott County details post-election errors and missing absentee envelopes; investigation opened

Scott County elections staff told the Board of Commissioners on March 18 that a chain of technical and human errors during the Nov. 5, 2024 election produced confusing public results and a separate but related problem in Shakopee that left some accepted absentee ballots uncounted in the initial tabulation.

Julie Hanson, the county's property and customer service manager overseeing elections, said a settings error in the vendor upload process caused an initial public report to show 100% of precincts reporting when absentee tallies from several cities had not been processed yet. Hanson said she discovered the display error soon after it appeared online, contacted the vendor and the Secretary of State, and re-uploaded corrected files; she said the earlier 100% display could not be fully erased from the public feed.

Hanson said that was only one result of the high-volume absentee process. During post-election reconciliation staff discovered that 20 accepted absentee signature envelopes for Shakopee Precinct 10 had no matching secrecy (ballot) envelopes available for tabulation. When city staff searched for the missing secrecy envelopes they reported some had been discarded. County staff told the board they later recounted and rescanned absentee…