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 ballots, brought remaining ballots into county scanners, and ultimately reconciled the large bulk of the absentee totals; the criminal- and process-investigation into the missing secrecy envelopes remains with the county attorney.

Why it matters: The county said its audit and rescans addressed several tally imbalances and produced corrected totals, but the sequence of errors and the discarded secrecy envelopes created public confusion about unofficial election-night reporting and prompted calls for process and statutory changes.

What the county said: Hanson outlined three related problems that emerged during and after the election: (1) a vendor-programming option that allowed partial results to be displayed by precinct when staff wanted those partials suppressed; (2) errors in some municipal absentee processing that required reruns of tabulator batches; and (3) reconciliation evidence that secrecy envelopes for a subset of accepted absentee applications were missing from the tabulation chain. She told the board, “When we found the missing secrecy envelopes the county attorney advised us to open an investigation. We could not simply reassign ballots.”

County attorney remarks: The county attorney told the commissioners his office had the post-election report and is conducting the investigation; he said three independent reviews (county staff, city staff and attorney review) arrived at the same conclusion that the 20 missing ballots were the result of errors in local processing and handling rather than a systemic failure of the statewide voter system.

How staff reconciled tallies: County elections staff recounted Shakopee ballot boxes repeatedly and rescanned tens of thousands of absentee ballots (21,000 ballots across jurisdictions) on high-speed scanners to ensure proper batch counts. Hanson emphasized rescanning and reconciliation were done in public forums with party representatives present. She said rescans resolved an earlier imbalance of 38 ballots that had appeared during the post-election audit and that many other discrepancies were traced to ballot jams, mis-batched uploads or the need to rerun certain precinct ballot styles.

Proposed process and legislative changes: Elections staff recommended several near-term and statutory changes to reduce risk and increase transparency: require preservation and return of both signature and secrecy envelopes to the county, add a public-facing disclaimer or a soft-close mechanism on statewide reporting to prevent misleading partial displays, require municipalities to perform daily interrupt-tape reconciliation between tabulator counts and SVRS ballot counts, impose a 7-day cutoff for online absentee applications (except for overseas/military), standardize chain-of-custody procedures and consider improving public accuracy testing and training. Staff noted proposed bills at the legislature that include many of these items (e.g., limits on online absentee requests in the final week, storage and counting requirements, and public-notice changes).

Reactions and next steps: Commissioners and members of the public pressed staff about communications to candidates and voters during the event, whether the county should centralize more election functions, and how to improve recruitment and party balance among election judges. County staff said they will continue the investigation with the attorney's office, implement operational changes where they can, and press for statutory fixes at the state level. The county remains the custodian of the certified election records and the canvassing board proceeded as scheduled while the investigation continued.

Provenance: Discussion and evidence appeared throughout the election presentation and Q&A (see county upload/timeline and ballot-reconciliation sections).