SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Early absentee voting came to a screeching halt Friday in South Dakota.
In Minnehaha County there was no voting between approximately 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. The already long lines at the county administration building grew even longer.
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Poll workers were on the phone looking for guidance. They also handed out bottles of water to those waiting in line. Darren Schlechter of Sioux Falls had been in line for two hours when we talked with him.
“I think its important to everyone it’s your civic duty to have you voice be heard,” he said.
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Others like this couple were ready to stick it out no matter how long it took. They traveled almost 5 hours to get to Sioux Falls.
“Because she is a travel nurse, so we travel all over the country and we wanted to make sure we voted in this election,” said Drew Cunningham.
The statewide computer glitch also brought voting to a standstill in Canton. Amy Hofer drove the half hour from Sioux Falls.
“I’ve been here half an hour and in that time I’ve seen several people leave and not be able to vote today you know that makes me feel bad because they made an effort to get here,” said Hofer.
Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson says they were in contact with the South Dakota Secretary of State’s office in Pierre and came up with a solution to get the lines moving again.
“What we came up with is we saved a registration list on November 1st in Excel, we are using that registration list to try to look up voters, look up their precinct, get their voter registration number, manually fill out the envelope that we would normally put a sticker on and get them their ballot so they can vote,” said Anderson.
The process is a little slower, but they got people voting again.
In Hughes County the Finance Officer-Auditor says the system crash caused some confusion at first, but they also improvised.
“Our first thought is we had no way to verify without looking up the system so we actually did end up turning some people away until the system came back up. We did figure, we did use poll pads in Hughes County so we did have the voter file available to check if people were registered so we started doing it that way,” said Thomas Oliva
Oliva says the Total Vote System came back on line around 2:30 p.m.
Back in Sioux Falls, Schlechter finally made it to the front of the line and was able to vote after a 3 and a half hour wait.
“Don’t give up stay in line,” said Schlechter.
