The program that hosts South Dakota’s online voting database is back up and running after a temporary technical issue with the voter check-in system on Friday.
Secretary of State officials say the glitch was due to a Microsoft service disruption and the interruption did not affect the tally or processing of votes.
Total Vote Systems keeps track of who has voted and prints the labels for the envelopes the paper ballots go in. Auditors across the state were advised on alternative procedures to ensure voters could still participate in elections on Friday.
Hughes County Auditor Thomas Oliva said he was training poll workers for Tuesday's election when the system went down.
His offices switched to the format used on election day to check in voters at polling locations.
“The public file from total vote was already on our pad, so we were able to pull voters up," Oliva said. "However, they did have to entirely fill out their envelope and we were unable to print labels. But we were able to verify who voters were, using the poll pads.”
Officials with the Secretary of State’s office say ballots are securely stored and counted on Election Day.
“We monitored the situation as our top priority as we remain fully committed to maintaining the integrity and accessibility of the voting process,” said Secretary Monae Johnson, in a statement. “As the system is up and running now, we want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding.”
Hughes County Auditor Oliva said he’s confident in the security of absentee voting—both at the auditor's office and with take-home ballots, which he said are verified.
“We verified those signatures between the application and the envelope—the absentee board does that. That, I think, is very secure. I proved it’s secure because I caught someone attempting to vote twice in this election and I had to turn it over to law enforcement. I feel very confident in the policies and procedures we have for that security.”
Oliva said he’s keeping the Hughes County auditor's office open for an additional two hours on Friday to cover the length of time the system was down.
As of October 25, 97,333 South Dakotans have voted. Voters can still vote early on Monday.
Election day is Tuesday.
