SIOUX FALLS, SD (Dakota News Now) – Election integrity and transparency is an important part of the election process.

An open viewing of the vote counting process took place on Thursday.

Dakota News Now went to the Minnehaha County Commission building to check out how the process works.

Workers from the Minnehaha County Auditor’s Office run the tabulating machines to make sure they are working as expected. If you are a successful candidate, counting the ballots is much easier. They’re also working on other things, like making sure each ballot is identified whenever there’s a mistake.

The machine can scan dozens of ballots in seconds, but it’s not that simple.

“We can trust them as long as we do proper checks, proper testing, proper audits, this is the first year we’ve ever done an audit,” Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson said.

The ballots tested were sample ballots, as the actual ballots are currently stored in a secure location.

“We do so much testing to be accurate and to make sure there are no discrepancies in any of the precincts or areas like that,” said Minnehaha County Auditor’s Office worker Anna Schreurs.

However, it is not a perfect system and recounts may still occur. In the June primary, there was no change in winners after 132 ballots were added after residency issues were resolved.

Although these tabulating machines are working as expected so far, audits will still be happening in this election, just as they did in the primaries.

State law only requires an audit of 5% of precincts in each county.

Anderson wants to make sure audits aren’t just a one-time thing and are used as a consistent practice. In the primaries, she audited 100% of the premises. It is not clear what percentage of precincts it will audit for the general election.

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