Lincoln County canvasses June 2 primary, approves abstract after debate over canvass method

The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners on June 4 completed the official canvass of the June 2 primary, approved an abstract of verified results and drew precincts for a post‑election audit after a prolonged discussion about how thoroughly commissioners should check poll books during a canvass.

Auditor Sherry, identified in the record as the Lincoln County auditor, told the board that the county had 44,309 registered voters and that 14,117 ballots were cast in the primary — 10,358 Republican ballots and 3,759 nonpolitical ballots — for an overall turnout of 31.86 percent. She also reported that an election‑night reporting error in Precinct 1114, in which results were inadvertently reported twice in the unofficial totals, had been identified and corrected before the official canvass.

Why it matters: The canvass is the legal step that verifies and certifies local election returns. Commissioners’ questions about how to perform the canvass — whether a sampling check is sufficient or whether a commissioner must correlate poll‑book entries to each returned ballot — shaped the meeting’s debate and the board’s confidence discussion about the procedure.

A hands‑on precinct spot check during the meeting produced a disagreement among commissioners about the standard for 'tabulating the returns.' One commissioner argued that a more exhaustive correlation of poll‑book names to returned ballots is a legitimate interpretation of the administrative rule and takes far longer, while others said sampling is an accepted practice and the auditor’s staff followed the rule as written. The transcript cites the board’s reference to an "Administrative Rule 5.02" in discussing the standard for tabulation; the meeting record contains inconsistent numeric references for that rule, which the board cited when explaining permitted canvass approaches.

A member of the public, Chad Skiles of Canton, praised county election staff, telling the board: "I just wanted to stand up here as a citizen of Lincoln County and personally thank auditor Sherry, election coordinator Kayla, the entire election team, the staff, the election workers, the volunteers...for an efficient, well run, organized, transparent...process." Another resident, Beth Quayle of Harrisburg, said she appreciated the thorough work by one commissioner but recommended refresher training for commissioners who canvass less often.

The board then moved and seconded the motion "to approve and execute the abstract of the results of the votes cast for each candidate and each issue." After debate and a roll call, the motion carried and the board approved the abstract of results. (The meeting record reports the motion carried; the roll call names appearing in the transcript were Commissioner Putnam, Commissioner Schmidt, Commissioner Arons and Commissioner Landin.)

The auditor announced a post‑election audit for June 16 at 10 a.m. The audit will include 5 percent of precincts (two precincts for Lincoln County) and will use manually drawn bingo balls (legislative requirement prohibits electronic draws in the process described). The board drew Sioux Falls precincts 114 and 210 and selected the U.S. representative contest and Charter Amendment B as contests to be manually counted as part of the audit.

What’s next: The county will hold the manual count post‑election audit on June 16 and will produce the audit report required under state rules. The abstract approved by the board will be executed as the official county canvass record.

(Reporting note: numbers and rule citations are taken from the meeting transcript. Several candidate tallies in the transcript contained garbled numerals; this report uses the overall county totals as read by the auditor and notes where the auditor apologized for any mispronunciations.)