HUGE $avings to Hand Count - Follow the Money

By: Dale Buse and Mick Baruth

In a super tight budget year, we are hearing about programs being cut here and there, yet massive amounts of money seem to be available for pet projects. Counties are always claiming to be broke, yet somehow find the money to fund out of state, private, for profit corporations to count our votes and print our ballots.

Remember, President Trump just said going back to paper ballots, hand counted would cost 8% of electronic elections.

Dale Buse’s Testimony that he was unable to give to Senate State Affairs because of time constraints. Dale has done a lot of work on an “easy math” estimate of hand counting VS the massive expense of the machines.

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SIMPLE MATH

I’m a retired farmer and businessman and also a lifelong resident of this great state. In order to succeed in farming you must be a good steward of the land and make common sense decisions.

We have elected you in hopes that you will be good stewards of our tax dollars, and also make commonsense decisions on how to spend our money. My concern today is how our state government is spending our money on elections.

In my research I have put together the cost on hand counting vs using a computerized tabulator to count our ballots. First on my county level: With 11 issues/races on the ballot time trials will conclude that four people counting and one supervisor watching you can count 100 ballots per hour. You pay the workers $20 an hour which is a cost of $100 per hour. You divide $100 into 100 ballots and you get a dollar. Pretty simple math isn’t it?

Remember a buck a ballot.

Meade County in the 2024 primary and general election combined in total had 18,200 ballots cast. (remember a buck a ballot) they would have spent $18,200 and all the money stays local. Instead Meade County paid ES&S $60,000 which this money is gone, and equates to $3.30 per ballot. So now Meade County has spent three times more money than need be to get the same results. I have done figuring on multiple counties with similar results.

Now let’s apply these percentages to our whole state. Total ballots cast for the 2024 primary and general election combined was 542,589. Remember a buck a ballot, which would’ve cost the state $542,589. This money would’ve stayed local. Now let’s take $3.30 Per ballot using ES&S tabulators which amounts to $1,790,543. This money is gone. That’s almost $1,250,000 more money spent than need be.

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Mick Baruth compiled costs from counties across South Dakota, and put together this hand out that was circulated at the capitol.

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FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL

Dollars Leaving vs Dollars Saved AND Staying

We thought it would be appropriate with all the talk about how best to build up voter confidence in our elections that we analyze the driving force in virtually everything in our lives. The almighty dollar and the age old adage FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL.

The South Dakota Secretary of State’s website unofficial results on January 25, 2025 says that we had 624,186 registered voters and 436,478 votes cast in the 2024 general election which correlates to a 69.93% voter turnout. In the 2024 primary election, we had 100,505 votes cast and 591,153 registered voters which correlates to a 17% voter turnout.

The most important thing we can evaluate is the costs going forward to continue the use of the services of ES&S. The naysayers will say that the counties are being reimbursed (if they apply for and receive the reimbursements) by HAVA (Help America Vote Act) funds. We all know that in reality those funds are really nothing more than our tax dollars being laundered to an out of state company.

This company must reprogram the tabulators for each and every election for each and every precinct. With this in mind how easy would it be for the 1 person in charge of programming the tabulators to program them to not count accurately and skew the counting of the ballots?

Compare this to having many people involved at the precinct level counting the ballots before they are taken to the auditors office at the end of the day.

The election by the people of a new auditor in Minnehaha County, SD vs the ongoing appointments in the past, by the powers that be, may have been the key ingredient in forcing ES&S to do their best to make sure that those tabulators were going to count as accurately as possible. ES&S knew that the new auditor was going to, if at all possible, do a 100% hand count audit and that could have ended their business forever.

The hand count proved that the tabulators are CAPABLE of counting fairly accurately, but that those tabulators are not capable of identifying voter intent on ballots where the voter crossed out a vote for one candidate and then voted for another candidate, among other things. This negates that voters vote completely. Hand counting provides the ultimate in transparency with a team of 4 people all having to agree on voter intent on each and every race on each and every ballot. This in turn creates elections that are instantly auditable and greatly decreases the opportunity for funny business, while greatly increasing the confidence that WE THE PEOPLE have in our elections. Especially when, and if, we educate the public on the difference between the two options.

Below we will show you examples of how much we are overpaying for the use of these tabulators, but before we do that let’s examine some simple math when it comes to hand counting.

We have run multiple training sessions for hand counting. Once people are taught how to efficiently count ballots in teams of four (2 democrats and 2 republicans) just like was done years ago before the tabulators were thrust upon us; they can count 100 ballots per hour with 10 races. Those who have attended the training will attest to the fact that in less than a half an hour they can be taught the process and practice what they were taught. With that in mind if each person was paid $25 per hour that equals $100 for 100 ballots or $1 per ballot! This is if no one chooses to volunteer their time because they believe it is their civic duty as a citizen of our state and the United States of America.

Therefore, it would take 10 hours for a table of four to count 1,000 ballots with 10 races at a cost of $1,000 or 2.5 hours for 4 tables of four people to count 1,000 ballots with 10 races at the same cost of $1,000.

The above does not take into account that if a ballot only has 5 races to count it will take half as much time and manpower to hand count and those same 100 ballots could be counted by a team of four in 30 minutes or only 50 cents per ballot! Below are three examples of what the largest, smallest, and one mid-size county by ballots cast paid to ES&S in 2023 and 2024 and how many votes were cast in the 2024 primary and general elections in each of those counties. Keep in mind that the amounts paid are only for service, etc. but not the actual cost of purchasing the tabulators which were done many years ago.

The largest county, Minnehaha, had 95,648 ballots cast in the 2024 general and 13,058 in the 2024 primary elections. They paid ES&S $75,493.70 in 2023 when there were no elections and another $156,904.45 in 2024 for a total of $232,398.15. So if WE THE PEOPLE paid $232,398.15 to have a total of 108,706 ballots counted by an out of state company that equals a little over $2.13 per ballot not counting what we paid local citizens to man the precincts and process all the absentee ballots, etc., etc.

Minnehaha County overpaid by approximately $123,692 for the 2024 elections.

Davison County had 9,335 ballots cast in the 2024 general and 4,422 in the 2024 primary elections. They paid ES&S $14,852.94 in 2023 when there were no elections and another $41,437.99 in 2024 for a total of $56,290.93. So if WE THE PEOPLE paid $56,290.93 to have a total of 13,757 ballots counted by an out of state company that equals to a little over $4.09 per ballot not counting what we paid local citizens to man the precincts and process all the absentee ballots, etc., etc.

Davison county overpaid by approximately $42,533 for the 2024 elections.

The smallest county, Campbell, had 847 ballots cast in the 2024 general and 312 ballots cast in the 2024 primary elections. They paid ES&S $1,842.76 in the 2023 when there were no elections and $3,895.80 in 2024 for a total of $5,738.56. So if WE THE PEOPLE paid $5,738.56 to have 1,159 ballots counted by an out of state company that equals to a little over $4.95 per ballot not counting what we paid local citizens to man the precincts and process all the absentee ballots, etc., etc.

Campbell County overpaid by approximately $4,579 for the 2024 elections.

We know that Minnehaha, Pennington, Lincoln and Davison counties have paid over $3.5 million to ES&S since 2014. Since those counties represented 45% of the ballots cast in the 2024 general election it would not be out of line to assume that ES&S has been paid well over $8 million by all the counties combined in the state of SD since 2014, especially when you take in to consideration that the smaller the county the more they are paying per ballot for the services that number could very well approach $10 million dollars or maybe even more.

As you can see this is nothing more than simple math and the vast majority, if they knew this information, would agree that it makes much more sense to get our citizens more involved in the process (unless of course the powers that be do not want the citizens involved in their government) and keep the dollars local for those who choose to be paid so those dollars can help our local economy and its residents.

We have been amazed over the last few years of talking to the public about this that once they are educated on how hand counting really works and the costs vs the machines and the costs they are overwhelmingly in favor of the hand counting. The only ones who are not, even after education, are those who are profiting thru power and/or money by keeping the status quo.

As they say “those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still!”

Mick Baruth & Dale Buse