SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Early voting has been impacted during what the South Dakota Secretary of State’s office calls a “temporary technical issue” with a voter check-in system that impacted counties across South Dakota Friday afternoon.
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KELOLAND News received reports of issues with in-person absentee voting at noon Friday and confirmed a statewide issue with South Dakota’s online voting database. The system is used to help verify what precinct and which paper ballot people should be using.
At 3 p.m. Friday, Secretary of State Monae Johnson said the system was back up and running and thanked people for patience and understanding.
“We monitored the situation as our top priority as we remain fully committed to maintaining the integrity and accessibility of the voting process,” Johnson said in a news release.
Johnson said in the news release the temporary interruption “in no way impacted the tally or processing of votes. Ballots are securely stored and counted on Election Day.”
The Hughes County Auditor Thomas Oliva told KELOLAND News the office has turned away about 60 voters around the noon hour. Hughes County has resumed absentee in-person voting with poll pads.
Oliva said he was notified about the system being down from the Secretary of State’s office at 1:18 p.m. Friday.
Around noon Friday, Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson confirmed the Total Vote system was down and this was preventing them from checking in voters. She said she has been in contact with the Secretary of State’s office and that they are working on a solution.
Lines of people wanting to vote in-person absentee at the Minnehaha County Admin building are starting to grow. Voters standing in line to vote in Minnehaha County have told KELOLAND News they have been waiting longer than an hour and half because of the downed system.
Line at the Minnehaha County Auditor’s office
Ian Fury, spokesperson for the governor’s office, told KELOLAND News that the state is aware of the issue and looking into it. Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Deadrick said the system is cloud based and working with the vendor that manages South Dakota’s system.
KELOLAND News confirmed this was a statewide issue, speaking with former Secretary of State and current Charles Mix County Auditor Jason Gant, who said he was also aware of the outage.
Absentee in-person voting was also delayed in Lincoln County and Brown County.
“The entire system went down so we can’t look up a voter, we can’t print anything out,” Brookings County Auditor Lori Schultz said. “We do have the updated voter registration books so we are able to tell if someone comes up that yes, they are registered to vote and that it is them.”
In Brookings County, voters are still being handed absentee ballots and envelopes, but any information that is usually printed on their forms, must now be handwritten.
“When the machines do come back up, we’ll go back in and enter those as quickly as we can match them up with the stickers on them and everything will be good to go,” Schultz said.
“Be sure and have your ID; be sure and have time to wait in line because there’s gonna be lines, and come early,” Schultz said. “I say the same thing for election day because you just never know so always go early.”
‘Global issue’
“It’s a global issue, we’ve been told with Microsoft. Another state — we haven’t been told who it is — has the same problem,” said Deadrick, who also declined an on-camera interview.
When asked what happens if the issue isn’t fixed by Election Day, Deadrick said the best people in Microsoft and best people in KNOWiNK are working on the problem.
“I don’t know what Plan B would be right now. Right now, all we’re thinking about is getting up and going again,” Deadrick told KELOLAND News.
Gant told KELOLAND News that Charles Mix County has their voter list printed out and are able to continue with absentee voting with backup paper ballots. He said this is a busy day for the state’s computer system and added that he expects the issue to be fixed soon.
According to the latest numbers for the secretary of state’s website, 97,333 absentee ballots have been received as of Friday, Oct. 25.
KELOLAND News has reached out to the South Dakota Secretary of State’s office. We’ll update this story with any information received.
Election Day is set for Tuesday. Monday is the final day to vote absentee in-person.
This is a developing story.
