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Hooray for Election Integrity: Legislative Recounts Show Auditors Reliable

SDCL 12-21-11 allows losing Legislative candidates to call for a recount if they come within two percentage points of the candidates who beat them. Three Legislative primary recounts suggest that our county auditors work so reliably that two points is a very  generous margin for permitting losers to bother them.

Four losers came within two percentage points of winning nominations in our June 7 primary contests; only three asked for recounts. Bob Mercer reports that not one of those recounts changed the results or even came close to picking a different winner.

Legislative primary recount results, compiled from SD Secretary of State Election Results, retrieved 2022.07.09, and Bob Mercer, "<a href="https://www.keloland.com/news/capitol-news-bureau/sd-legislative-recounts-dont-change-nominees/">SD Legislative Recounts Don't Change Nominees</a>," KELO-TV, 2022.07.07.
Legislative primary recount results for recount requestors and next-highest candidates, compiled from SD Secretary of State Election Results, retrieved 2022.07.09, and Bob Mercer, “SD Legislative Recounts Don’t Change Nominees,” KELO-TV, 2022.07.07.

The gaps between the candidates requesting recounts and their winning targets were all within one percentage point. But the net changes the recounts produced were all less than two tenths of a percentage point.

Recounts rarely change election outcomes. FairVote looked at 20 years of statewide election data nationwide and found that only three recounts out of 31 requested out of 5,778 statewide contests between 2000 and 2019 flipped the initial results. The median original margin in those 31 recounts was 0.134 percentage points; the average change in results was only 0.024 percentage points, less than a fifth of the median gap. The three races in which recounts flipped the results had margins of 0.046, 0.009, and 0.005 points. There were five other recount races with comparably small margins where recounts did not change the results.

South Dakota’s threshold for requesting a statewide recount (candidate or ballot question) is only 0.25 percentage points, an eighth of the margin for calling a recount in a Legislative or local race. So (big unstatistical leap of reasoning here!) if we multiply the largest margin FairVote found in those recent result-changing statewide recounts by eight, we could say that losers don’t have a chance at reversing an election unless they are within 0.4 percentage points of the winners, and even then, the chances of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat are only 3 in 8.

I don’t mind leaving the 2% recount threshold for Legislative races where it is. Especially with election law, it is better to err on the side of caution. Allowing even those mostly hopeless recounts in Districts 12, 29, and 30 to proceed dries up the urge losers may feel to blame the auditors or (heavens forfend!) any dirty tricksters in the courthouse for their losses. These three no-change recounts may be inconsequential to who sits in Pierre next year, but they are consequential in reinforcing our faith in our county auditors and election integrity. In every close race where a loser felt like challenging the results, we see that the auditors and their brave election officers got it right the first time, and what few errors may have crept into either the original count or the recount did not thwart the will of the people expressed at the polls.

9 Comments

  1. Vi Kingman 2022-07-09 10:19

    And the Republican candidate for Secretary of State has to be asked what she wants changed and how much will those changes cost

  2. Jake 2022-07-09 13:03

    If only the Republican GOP anarchists, believing in Trump of course, wouldn’t have started soaking up his lies: months before the election between he and Biden he was bragging that the only way he could lose to Biden was if the election was rigged and stolen illegally by the Democrats.

    After he lost it, of course he had to put forth the ‘face’ of the victim fighting the great big evil Democratic party by claiming his own Republican party states’ auditors and election officials had wronged him.fbegged his followers to send him money to n officials had wronged him. Right away (and still does) he

  3. Jake 2022-07-09 13:08

    Sorry, to quickly hit send!

    Anyway, the silent good Republicans, (other than Cheney and Kenzinger), continue the charade and BS mantra of following their orange-haired MAGA god- (Golden Calf of biblical times) all the way into the sewers of dirty politics and denial.

  4. leslie 2022-07-09 14:12

    Don’t give Cheney too much! She eyes the presidency for herself. Of course.

    “Cheney voted with Trump about 93% of the time. She’s one of the party’s most conservative members….” https://www.unitedvoice.com/will-liz-cheney-run-for-president-in-2024/ (featuring ABC interview)

    Thune’s boss:

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was the latest Republican to give her a boost, saying in a statement to CNN that she had “the courage” to act on her convictions in the aftermath of her vote to impeach Trump last month on a charge he incited the deadly insurrection that ransacked Capitol Hill on January 6.
    “Liz Cheney is a leader with deep convictions and the courage to act on them,” McConnell said. “She is an important leader in our party and in our nation. I am grateful for her service and look forward to continuing to work with her on the crucial issues facing our nation.”

    Would you trust ANYTHING Mitch says?

  5. Arlo Blundt 2022-07-09 15:06

    Well..Leslie, Give Liz Chaney credit for standing up to tyranny at the expense of her political career. She is twenty points behind her primary opponent in Wyoming, last time I looked. Chaney, of course, is the daughter of Dick Chaney, VP under Trump and a Republican kingmaker for years, solidly in the Bush Family camp. Of course this should give one pause. Credit where credit is due…she is putting one pie after another in Trump’s face and forcing the running dogs in his administration to come forward and spill the beans, if only to save themselves jail time. Trump is in big trouble, and if his accusers were only Democrats, it would not resonate nearly as well with the public. Liz Chaney wants to kill Trump as a political entity, in part, in revenge for what he has done to the Bush Family (Trump’s political assassination of Jed and consignment of George I and II to the dustbin) and to the Bush wing of the Republican Party. (The Bush’s have always seen themselves as on par with the Kennedys.) I’m glad to see it being done. If she does not succeed, and Trump somehow survives, Liz and some large Republican money may establish a second Republican Party to run parallel to Trump and Trump’s candidates. I have no problem with that outcome.

  6. mike from iowa 2022-07-09 16:08

    Poll out today says Kamala Harris would beat DeSatanist in 2024 election.

  7. Arlo Blundt 2022-07-09 18:16

    OOPS..I said Dick Chaney was Trump’s VP…obviously, the marksman was George Bush’s VP and author of the Iraq War and other misadventures.

  8. grudznick 2022-07-09 20:13

    Mr. PP is blogging about the fellows nominated by the Dems for the offices. It is riveting stuff. You fellows should read about these people who will get decimated. I am sad that a more formidable challenger to Ms. Monae was not put forward, but perhaps there is no others on your bench.

  9. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2022-07-10 08:58

    To VI’s first comment, about what changes a new SOS cold ask for, I’d say that the failure of the recounts to make any difference in dictates that the vote-counting process itself needs no reforms. We got reliable results from our county auditors and their technology on primary night.

    The kind of radical Trumpists who nominated Monae staged a coup at yesterday’s Nebraska GOP convention. Some of them pushed for the ridiculous idea of requiring that all ballots be hand-counted and that all results be produced by 11 p.m. on election night. Such a notion is emblematic of the destructive thoughtlessness of Trumpists when it comes to the practical business of running elections.

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