SD Democrats criticize Minnehaha County auditor for comments on county voting system

Two Minnehaha County Democrats are criticizing the county's auditor, Leah Anderson, following her statements that she wasn't sure she could trust the county's voting system.

"It is inappropriate for the Minnehaha County Auditor to sow distrust in the integrity of state and local elections in concert with private groups focused on spreading consistently debunked conspiracy theories,” said Minnehaha County Democratic Party Chair Erik Muckey in a statement released Wednesday by the South Dakota Democratic Party. “Minnehaha County residents should know that our elections have been, and will continue to be, secure regardless of the Minnehaha County Auditor's personal beliefs."

He's referring to statements made during a Dec. 4 call with officials from the South Dakota Secretary of State's office and Election Systems and Software, the Omaha-based company that provides the county's voting machines and software.

More: Minnehaha County auditor says she’s not sure she can trust county’s voting system

Anderson said a Nov. 16 training session for her and elections coordinator Mike Mathis had been delayed following unspecified questions she asked to ES&S, and said she felt "attacked" for asking the questions.

“Pretty much every day that’s my question that I get asked, 'Is do you trust our system? How can we trust it?'" Anderson said. "In all honesty, I can’t give an answer that I trust the system because I'm in the dark. I can’t even get training to happen without going through this call with 12 people or however many people are on this call. I want to understand the system and get the training for myself, and for Mike, because that’s what’s supposed to happen.”

What have Leah Anderson and Mike Mathis called for in elections?

Anderson expressed interest in auditing "the entire system, start to finish," raising concerns about county employees having access to rooms where voting machines were stored and an electionware laptop she said was being "held hostage by the IT department."

She also said she wanted to ensure that relevant passwords were reset and software versions were up to date — both recommendations from the Election Assistance Commission, a federal commission that releases guidelines for state and local election officials — and that she wanted to ensure modems were not present in any voting machines.

ES&S officials told Anderson that while more and more states are pulling away from the use of modems to transmit some results due to potential security risks, Minnehaha County does not use them. They also recommended the use of a Voting System Test Lab, one of two EAC-accredited organizations that could perform a third-party audit that ES&S Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Kathy Rogers said would ensure that "the people touching your voting system actually are safe and secure themselves and will do no harm to your voting system."

Mathis — who prior to his hiring as elections coordinator was involved with South Dakota Canvassing Group, which has called for banning machines, electronics, mail-in voting and ballot harvesting from elections while committing to hand-counted ballots — then told ES&S officials that he'd like a "highly respected" person from South Dakota to perform their own inspection and check for modems at the same time as the VSTL audit.

"Both Leah and I’s reputation is totally on the line," Mathis said. "What if it comes out years down the road that there were modems in these machines, and we never — all your studies are great. The people want somebody that they know and trust to do a study. And I do too!"

Rogers said she didn't recommend the idea, but said that other people could certainly be present to watch and ask questions about the audit. Mathis did not identify the person in question, and Anderson told the Argus Leader that she knew who the person was, but did not want to identify them because she had not spoken with ES&S further about the process.

Anderson concluded the call by revealing that unbeknownst to the other participants, a group of nearly two dozen of her supporters had been listening in.

"I just want you to know that this time I have a lot more witnesses that know that we’re going to get this training, and I hope that it’s gonna happen without any hitches," she said at the time.

One of those supporters was Rick Weible, a candidate for a District 8 House seat who the next day spent an hour praising Anderson and Mathis to Brannon Howse on "The Lindell Report" while talking about clips from the call.

The show's namesake, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, recently said he was no longer able to pay his lawyers to represent him in a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit brought by voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems.

Dems also bring up Leah Anderson's mentions of hand-counting ballots

Muckey wasn't the only Democrat criticizing Anderson in the statement.

“Election integrity is an important part of our democracy and should be treated as such,” said Sen. Liz Larson, D-Minnehaha, in the statement. “Tabulating votes should occur in a robust, reliable, and safe manner to ensure all votes are counted and there is no opportunity for fraud.

"However, it appears that much of the recent dialog about how this is managed starts from a place of extreme distrust, and devolves from there,” continued Larson. “Election integrity is unlikely to be enhanced from this starting point - in Minnehaha County or elsewhere. Resorting to hand-counting, especially when voting machines/software were invented to combat the inherent unreliability of hand-counting votes, seems absurd. I'd much prefer a conversation focused on making voting easier, increasing voter turnout and protecting voters' rights.”

More: Minnehaha County Auditor floats idea of hand counting ballots in Sioux Falls elections

Anderson said in September she was in favor of being a county that does random hand counts at the precinct level along with the tabulators, a statement that was criticized by multiple members of the Minnehaha County Commission.

On the Dec. 4 call, she replied to comment that no one was forced to be customers of ES&S.

"It’s actually our Secretary of State’s Office that has forced us to either hand count or go with ES&S," she said. "We don’t have any other options. So I respect what you do at ES&S, I want to be able to trust every aspect of the count, and maybe we compromise and we let the tabulators count the ballots but we don’t use the reporting software. I don’t know what the answers going to be but you know, we’ll figure it out.”

It was one of several criticisms leveled at Secretary of State Monae Johnson by Anderson, who said that Johnson had not supported her or been helpful with legal questions, and that she hadn't "been very supportive of the people."

Neither Anderson nor Johnson's office immediately replied to a request for comment.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: SD Democrats slam Leah Anderson for county voting system comments