County Commissioner & Board of Adjustment - Regular Meeting

This conference will now be recorded.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, we'll come to order today from Lawrence County Commission for the purpose of canvassing the past Tuesday's election results. I believe you kick us off probably, Ms. Brenda, when you're ready.

Motion to approve the agenda.

Oh, you have an agenda. Sorry. Oh, there we go. It's been moved by Ewing, seconded by Tisdale to approve the agenda. All those in favour, say aye. Aye. Okay, that motion passes. There's no conflicts. Nobody else has any conflicts? I don't know. All right. Now we can go ahead. Sorry, I didn't see the agenda there.

Nope, no worries. So this is the time and the place to canvass the 2026 primary election results for Lawrence County. What we will do is I have the reports that were printed from the tabulator for each precinct. So starting with absentee and it goes all the way through precinct 10. So we will start with the US State Senator race and then I will read all 11 precincts and then we'll just move on to each race. And it goes McNeil and rounds is the order. 361-911, 106-283, 106-312, 167-467, 76-234, 25-89, 24-59, 92-329, 29-62, and then 153-308. and then 246, 591. Okay. We'll move on to U.S. State Representative, and it's Jacqueline Villalata, I believe is how you pronounce James' last name. So starting with the absentee, 1,007, 241, 287, 84, 321, 82, 466, 136, 218, 73, 85, 23, 55, 27, 296, 110, 74, 15, 338, 106, 612, 182. Moving on to Governor, and this goes Roden, Hanson, Johnson, Doden, 444, 218, 307, 323. 116, 97, 80, 113. 137, 79, 109, 108. 212, 134, 130, 175. 111, 34, 55, 112. 40, 16, 28, 31. 26, 11, 6, 41. 146, 46, 61, 174. Is it 145? No, it's 46. Okay, this is Precinct 8. 38, 15, 3, 35. 165, 77, 54, 178. 257, 185, 122, 288. Moving on to State Senator District 31, and it goes divert, tuple. 729, 490. 232, 146. 253, 152. 349, 262. 169, 121. 67, 44. 35, 38. 194, 183. 54, 32, 209, 205, and 401 and 404. Moving on to County Commissioner, it goes Flanagan, Jennings, Comer, Davies, Howitt. So 471, 495, 382, 741, 518. 145, 145, 68, 238, 144 173, 169, 112, 238, 156 230, 220, 169, 343, 184 141, 106, 144, 136, 80 49, 37, 44, 52, 31 29, 29, 27, 36, 27. 153, 151, 124, 195, 113. 25, 36, 16, 63, 44. 91, 90, 54, 316, and 351. and 278, 316, 204, 532, and 374. Move on to delegates to the state convention. It goes Kotex, Brady, Merchant, and Lutz. So 296, 655, 423, 415. 69, 206, 119, 120. 89, 247, 135, 127. 154, 314, 168, 168, 76, 109, 94, 88, 20, 36, 27, 26, 13, 25, 25, 24, 70, 165, 108, 125, 16, 47, 33, 27, and 94, 154, 159, 168, and 200, 434, 258, 242. And then what's the next? We'll go to the precinct committee, men and women. What's precinct? Oh, you have it up there. Okay, so precinct two. So in the absentee, it's 78 and, oh, it goes Tupel and Schlemgen. So 78 and 35. and 212 and 128. Precinct three, committee man goes Tagliatelle and Markworth, 57 and 76. Precinct three total is 148 and 201. And then precinct nine, committee man We have a Saathop, Rodin, and Wagner, 11, 21, and 13, and 120, 109, and 127. So then Precinct 2, and this goes to the committee woman. It's Mowry and Pisani, 67 and 28, and 170 and 100. Precinct three, committee woman Washenberger and Wendt, 5574, and 126 and 207. And then precinct eight, Samuelson and Fitzgerald, eight and nine, and 45 and 38. and then Precinct 9 Committee Women, Halverson and Wagner. That was 33 and 17, and 232 and 145. And that should conclude the canvas of the rest of the races on there. We're all either city or school, so we won't be canvassing those. The cities and schools will take care of that canvas. I would just like a motion to canvass the results of the 2026 primary election.

So moved. Second. It has been moved by Ewing, seconded by Tisdale to approve the canvass of the election results in this past Tuesday's election. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Okay, motion carries.

Thank you all very much for your support. My team did an excellent job, as did all the election workers. I can't thank them enough. Do you have to sign the document? Yes, we do. I just want to thank everybody.

How many ballots did you have to go through?

34 ballot faces.

To make sure that everybody had the right one. That was a pretty long day, apparently.

So here's three copies of the canvas. If you could please sign each one, and then we'll move on to the drawing for the post-election audit. Yeah, it takes many people.

Yeah, well, thank you for all your hard work and your team. Yes, definitely. What time did you get out of here that night?

We left in between 10.45 and 11. As everybody kind of finished up their jobs, we kind of started out. I walked out at 11 with the cleaning crew, so we got out before them.

You were here somewhat before them.

Yeah, we got in at five.

And Saturday's a long, long day.

Well, couldn't have asked for a better day. Got a new one?

Perfect.

Thank you. And the runoff election will be held on July 28th. In the same manner that we did this one.

When does early voting start?

June 12th, next Friday.

Wow, really?

Are the ballots getting ready by then? Yeah, that's what I was wondering.

I hope so.

This will be discussed next Tuesday, but just start thinking about it. So on the 28th, election day, you're supposed to have a county commission meeting. It'll be the second round of your budget talks as well. So the idea would be to propose to you would be to move that meeting to the Thursday to the 30th, because you already would have had to have come in and done this for that election to do the canvas for the runoff, right? So think about that, moving the commission meeting to the 30th. And then you have your budget period after that. We'll talk about more Tuesday.

Okay, so the next step after the canvas is done, we're required to conduct a post-election audit. According to 1217B20, basically the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to draw a precinct. The precinct that I draw has to have had at least 100 ballots. We do have two precincts that did not have 100. That was St. Onge. And Nemo, so if we draw that, we'll have to draw another one, and we'll have to audit both of those. But I think that happened the last time, so we'll see. So, yeah, I had 186 and then 97 in Nemo and St. Orange. So if we draw those, we'll have to draw another one. So that's going to be the first thing we do. So I have all the precincts here in this little clip. So I'll just go ahead and drop all of them into the bucket here. And who wants to be the drawer? John? Are there 11 of them? No, we do not have to audit the absentee. That's not part of it. That's just the 10. We're good.

They're small.

Here we go. Oh, wait. Is that one that doesn't have a hundred? Is that the big spirit fish?

Nice. So eight is St. Ange, which is the one we drew last time. So since there's not a hundred, we have to draw another one.

We do commend you for cutting costs and saving paper there and having such small.

I know, and I thought to myself, you should get up and make those bigger today, but I'm not going to.

Next time. And we just can't exclude like St. Onge because it's always going to be a non-qualifier, huh? Why would they even be in there? If they're drawn, they can't. 10.

10, okay. So 10 is row number two. So that one definitely has 983 ballots. So I think we're good there. No, you have to put them all in there.

Even if you pick them, it's not going to qualify.

Yes, yes. Because sometimes they might have 100.

Well, but you know they don't go right now.

Oh yeah, yeah, so they stopped.

We should probably look at redrawing those districts because there's just a huge difference in population there. It's not representative for those precincts.

Well, a lot of those precincts are drawn, you know, if you start, you know, I don't know if you really want to get into it now, but if you start with lines with those precincts, they're drawn with school districts to incorporate townships. And if you start doing that, then you start having tons of overlaps, which that, so I mean, I mean, I understand what you're saying, but those precincts were drawn, like, you know, right now, 46.1 leads into here, leads into there, you know, and if you start drawing that and you start doing that, I mean, it's something that we can look at.

It's not as simple as just matching up the population. Exactly. And it really hasn't caused any real problems.

Yeah, so anyway, so like I said, it's- Yeah, it's just- Okay, so then the next thing we will draw for- Okay, so the next thing that we have to draw for now is you have to draw a statewide race. So we will draw, I don't know if you remember last time we had just the Democratic race, and it was a statewide race, so that one was the one that we counted as the statewide This time we have the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Representative and the governor. So those races, we'll draw for that to see which race we are going to do as far as the statewide race. So I've got the U.S. Senate, U.S. Representative,

and the government.

John, ready to draw again, or you'd like to draw this time? I think somebody else should draw.

There's a lot of pressure.

There you go. Yeah. See, it's not as easy as you thought, is it? The United States representative. So that will be the state race that we will count in precincts eight and 10. So then the next process is now we have to do a county, just a county race. So since we drew St. Onge, so this is where it kind of gets a little more complicated. So you'll have the District 31, the County Commission, delegate at large, because those were on all of the county ballots. And then the first thing we'll do is for St. Onge, we will put, we've got the precinct committee woman. So that was on that ballot as well.

And then on St. Onge, we also have

the 40-2 school district. I'm not sure I got all the races for St. Onge yet. So St. Onge just had the 40-2 school district. Okay, all righty.

At least we know this one will be done right.

That was quick and easy. I'm glad we heard it.

Okay, so that is, so precinct eight will be U.S. state representative, and then the precinct committee woman will get counted in St. Onge. And then for rural number two, I've got the county commission, the delegate at large, and the Senate race. And then they have also... We'll have the Spearfish School District that will go in there, which is same as St. Onge. Let's make sure we're not missing anything else. Yep, so it'll be, yep, same as basically as St. Onge, okay? All right, who wants to draw this time? Amber's up.

I'm up for something? You are? Is there anything else there?

I made them really tiny. School Board 40-2 will be the race of the race audited in precinct number 10. So I just will need a motion to approve the precincts and the candidates to be manually counted during the post-election audit.

You want to wait for Bob to get back?

So it'll be precinct eight, we'll do U.S. state representative and precinct eight committee women. And then precinct 10, we'll do United States representative and school board 40-2 will be the races that will be audited. Yes, manually counted.

I'll make the motion as requested.

I'll second. And motion by Tisdale, second by Comer. to approve the hand counting election results. Manually. Yeah, manually. Manually, that's not even canvassing. Counting. Counting. Manually count the election results for the precinct eight and 10 that the candidates has listed. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. Okay, motion carries.

And then just the post-election audit is scheduled to be held on June 16th at nine o'clock being held here in the Lawrence County and the administrative annex building here in the commissioner's room. And just want to also note that there is a possibility there is one race eligible for a recount. So if that does happen, the post-election audit would be canceled. So just to put that out there that if that does happen, That's all I have.

Okay, and that manual count is open to the public also. That is correct. All right, is there any further business that needs to be taken care of? Do the commissioners have anything they'd like to bring up? Anybody from the public?

I have a suggestion.

We just need your name and address too, sir.

Okay. 20417 Canyon Springs Lane, Whitewood.

Thank you.

I was trying to get the translation between the precincts, the polling places, and the precinct numbers, you know, the precinct identification, and I was having trouble on the website. I was wondering if there's somewhere that has a little Rubik's Cube that kind of makes that translation. Say none, just number eight, and polling place, et cetera.

Where were you looking at Mike?

I was looking at the website and the map. Okay. So yeah, probably the map probably just says three or two or whatever. Yeah, the map has a whole list of places. It's hard to translate those things. At least it was for me. So just a suggestion to kind of make that clear. And I know there's a lot of people who are looking at the app, the election night in the group that I was in, that was wondering the same thing, which is which sort of thing.

Anybody else? Anybody online?

Okay, that will close the public comment portion. I welcome the motion to adjourn. Move the second to adjourn. Thanks, everybody, for coming. See you next Tuesday.