The Election Apparatus in SD

It’s hard to know where to begin engaging a new audience when we are this far down the road. We began not knowing anything about elections in our state, to realizing the entire American surveillance state and how that applies to our elections. Everything in between there took a lot of hard work and research to uncover and understand.

The main points we needed to dig into were:

1. State Law

2. Federal Law and Agencies

3. County processes and procedures

4. Machine Vendors

5. Technology

6. State and Local Officials - we’re not going to list “elected” because we STILL have no proof of that.

State Law

First of all, we had to find what is and is not legal in South Dakota. Our State Law is very vague and loosely written, leaving room for various interpretations of the law. We think this is by design. You don’t have to look much farther than the way your county auditor and commission does things, and then look across the border to the next county to see they interpret the law differently.

Federal Law

Early into our research, we realized the Federal Election Laws like the NVRA and HAVA weren’t for the good of the States, or the integrity of the vote. Neither was the Patriot Act. Federal interference comes with Federal funds, which come with strings attached. Then, pick your favorite three letter agency and how they meddle in United States (s)elections. You may or may not know that the US perfected the election steal on other countries before using it on us. More on that later.

County Processes and Procedures

The County Auditor is the election official of the county, and has the authority to run the elections as they see fit. (or do they?) All counties in South Dakota use ES&S tabulators to count the votes. However, some use DS250’s, DS450’s or DS850’s. Some use electronic poll books and some use vote centers. Some used absentee ballot drop boxes and some did not. Some used surveillance video, and some did not. Some counties allow the auditor to sign the ES&S contracts, and some require approval of the commission. Some use the State Assurity Alliance for their bonds, and some use local insurance companies. And each County State’s Attorney has a different opinion on the law, until it comes to public records. Now that is one thing across the state that comes back uniform and verbatim by each county - the public records request denials. It almost seems like they coordinated their responses or something.

Machine Vendors

South Dakota uses Elections Systems and Software (ES&S) tabulating machines. They are the only vendor approved for use in the state. ES&S has a monopoly on the vote count. ES&S also has exclusive rights to software contracts, upgrades, maintenance, repairs, and election night staffing. (you know, to help deal with the occasional ballot jams and data downloads) And lucky us; now that ES&S discontinued their contract with SeaChange of Minnesota, they will now provide ballot printing, ballot layout and election programming along with those pesky proprietary flash drives at $105 a piece. “A one stop shop!” in their words. Our very professional and skilled ES&S state rep made sure to let the SOS office, and every county auditor who called them know that South Dakota tabulators DO NOT CREATE CVR’S and the ballot imaging function was turned off. We were even told state law prohibits ballot images; until we asked which law they were quoting and there was none. How convenient that our auditors and SOS were so educated on their computer tabulators, that they knew just how to deny public records requests for CVR’s and machine logs when they started pouring in from across the state and the nation.

Technology

Where do we begin on this one? The computerized web-based election system is very technological. The election denier club has many cyber experts, IT professionals, former military intelligence, computer programmers, and systems analysts because of the complicated computerized voting systems we employ across the country. There are so many ways to hack an election it isn’t even funny. South Dakota’s voter rolls are hosted on the cloud with Microsoft Azure by Bpro, Inc of Pierre, SD. South Dakota’s BPro Total Vote voter roll maintenance system uses the internet daily to transmit all of a voters personal information to the Secretary of State’s centralized database. Many of our state agencies are contracted with Bpro, Inc. for their data hosting and maintenance. The Knowink e-poll pads use the internet to exchange voter information live on election night. And all of this is monitored by the DHS Fusion Center with the Albert Censor located here in good ‘ole South Dakota, for our protection, of course.

State and Local Officials

One look at South Dakota’s government officials and we understood why things are the way they are. Many of the state’s republicans call themselves republicans, while bearing no allegiance to the republican party platform, conservative values, or the Constitution. This was shocking at first; now it is expected. The true conservative republican government officials in the state can be counted on two hands. Thus, the state of our elections today.

South Dakota has lost control of it’s elections. It’s death by 1,000 cuts. We will delve into each of the above and many more topics in the weeks to come. We have done our research. We have documentation. It’s time to lay it out for everyone to see. Please share our Substack with others and consider supporting us with prayers, volunteering, and action where you live.

Up next: ES&S