Simplified: Sioux Falls still doesn't have a mayor, but after the recount board wrapped up absentee ballots Tuesday afternoon, at least a few more votes have been added to the grand total – three more for Christine Erickson and one more for Jamie Smith. Here's what we know so far and what to watch going into tomorrow.

Why it matters

  • In a race this tight, every vote has the power to shift who wins. The recount board initially declined to share the vote tally at the end of day one with the public, but reporters Joe Sneve with The Dakota Scout and Dan Santella with Keloland spoke up and advocated for updated totals to be shared.
  • Those four votes came after hours of re-running absentee ballots followed by even more hours of discussion on whether the any of the eight previously rejected absentee ballots could be counted and considered. Ultimately, only three were added to the tally.
    • The fourth vote was initially missed in one of the precincts during absentee ballot counting and was added to the total on Tuesday.
  • Another revelation Tuesday was the 153 absentee ballots that were mailed in, but didn't arrive in time for election day. None of those ballots were able to be counted, per state law requiring absentee ballots to be received by 7 p.m. on election day.
  • Headed into Tuesday, the three-member recount board has more than 30,000 ballots to go through, including looking one-by-one at, by visual estimation, dozens of ballots that were considered by the resolution board on election day.
"We're going to be here a long time tomorrow," Matthew Tysdal, recount board member representing Jamie Smith's campaign said to his fellow board members Tuesday afternoon.

How the process unfolded so far

The three-member recount board convened around 9 a.m. Tuesday at the Minnehaha County admin building and spent the first couple hours running test ballots through machines before moving to re-run absentee ballots through ballot counting machines.

  • During that process, at one point two ballots were missing but then found.
  • In another instance, a ballot from precinct 0521 (east-central Sioux Falls), was found to not have been counted on election night but was counted on Tuesday.

When asked why it wasn't counted on election night, County Auditor Leah Anderson said as a "rule of thumb" if a recap sheet for a precinct is within five ballots, "we don't go digging for it."

Once the ballots went through the tabulation machines, the recount board moved on to consider absentee ballots that had previously been rejected by the absentee board.

There were eight rejected absentee ballots up for consideration. Here's how those broke down:

  • Two were rejected by the absentee board because they lacked signatures – those, the recount board decided, could not be counted.
  • Three were initially rejected because of mis-matched voter signatures – those, the recount board decided, also could not be counted.
  • Three were initially rejected because voters filled out a ballot from a different precinct than that in which they're registered. The recount board ultimately decided to count those ballots – citing election worker error and not any fault of the voter. Ballots between the two precincts were virtually identical – just had the wrong precinct sent to the absentee voter.

After getting through those ballots, the recount board moved on to absentee ballots that were decided upon by the resolution board.

  • The resolution board is a three-member board assigned to each vote tabulation machine on election night. They're the folks who look at ballots the machine can't count for whatever reason and, in many cases, end up filling out a clean ballot duplicating the vote of the one with extra pen marks, or whatever it might be.

What happens next?

Thursday morning, the recount board will reconvene at 9 a.m., and they're expected to start the day by going through those election day ballots that went before the resolution board.

  • It's hard to tell without getting too close to the recount board members – who did not have microphones and were challenging to hear throughout the day – exactly how many of those resolution board ballots there are. It appeared to be in the dozens.

It's possible the results will be available by Thursday evening. Recount board member Justin Smith, representing Christine Erickson's campaign, said he anticipates if the board is close, they'll stay as late as 8 p.m. to get the final results.

One more thing to watch

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Tuesday sent a news release noting they'd filed a public records request related to the management of the city runoff election.

"If there were any issues during the June municipal runoff election, we want to highlight what happened so we can work with officials to ensure that voters in future elections are not facing similar disenfranchisement and that the voting process will be improved for everyone,"  said Samantha Chapman, ACLU of South Dakota advocacy manager.

The release also notes the ACLU has fielded a "steady stream" of calls and emails from people sharing issues they encountered while voting – including delays in absentee ballots, precincts running out of ballots day-of, and more.