A future change to South Dakota election laws possible

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) - South Dakota is 1 of 6 states that don’t conduct a post-election audit.

The Pennington County Board of Commissioners is trying to open a discussion with lawmakers in Pierre to enact changes to South Dakota election laws in the 2023 legislative session.

In a letter to Governor Kristi Noem, state legislators, the Secretary of State and the Board of Elections, the commission claims the changes would strengthen the integrity, transparency and the public trust in election results.

“I’m a voter in South Dakota too and I believe in election integrity, and it’s something I took personally to look into to verify that my votes are not getting diluted if you will, and so I dove into some of their accusations work through all that, asked a lot of questions, and that’s how I came up with that to determine that we don’t have a post-election audit that was a concern of the public,” said Pennington County Commissioner Travis Lasseter

Aside from establishing a post-election audit some of the proposed changes include stronger wording surrounding an already-existing clause that prohibits tabulation machines from connecting to the internet and stricter criteria for determining voter residence.

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