South Dakota elections officials oppose shortening absentee voting timeline

PIERRE — Election officials are critical of a push in the Legislature to cut in half the time for absentee voting in South Dakota. 

Election officials urged the House State Affairs Committee on Monday to oppose House Bill 1178, which would shorten the time period for absentee voting from 46 days to 21 days before Election Day. The committee ran out of time to vote on the bill during its meeting on Wednesday morning and were planning to meet Wednesday evening to discuss and vote on the bill.

Bill sponsor Rep. Lee Qualm, R-Platte, explained that he was proposing to shorten the absentee voting period because a lot of information comes out about candidates in the final weeks before Election Day. Keeping absentee voting limited to those final weeks will lead to more informed voters, he said.

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The state's Elections and Voting Division and county auditors opposed the bill because it doesn't account for overseas voters, disenfranchises voters and creates a hardship on county auditor offices.

Twenty-one days would leave 15 business days for county auditor staff to administer absentee ballots, while also training poll workers, setting up polling locations, and testing and retesting voting machines, said Kea Warren, who oversees the state's elections division in the Secretary of State's Office. 

Davidson County Auditor Susan Kiepke testified that she would likely have to hire four temporary employees for the three weeks prior to the election if House Bill 1178 passed and she would have to find a larger space to conduct absentee voters because the Auditor's Office isn't large enough to accommodate 2,400 absentee voters during only 15 business days, she said.

"I understand in theory that this bill looks promising. It would mean less campaign time, less propaganda. But realistically, it disenfranchises so many voters," Kiepke said.

The federal government requires states to have absentee voting open for 45 days prior to Election Day to accommodate residents who are overseas and military service members — South Dakota set it at 46 days in 2011. House Bill 1178 doesn't accommodate a longer absentee voting period for those residents and South Dakota wouldn't qualify for a waiver to the 45-day requirement, Warren said.

Changing the absentee voting timeline would impact the ability to vote for people in nursing homes, snowbirds, vacationers and anyone traveling or living abroad, Minnehaha County Auditor Bob Litz wrote in an email to the committee ahead of Wednesday's hearing.

Voters are informed by the time absentee voting begins because all candidates and initiatives have already been finalized, sample ballots are available and voters are already making their own observations, he wrote.

"That’s why they are comfortable doing absentee voting. This is simply a voter suppression move. It will disenfranchise voters of all stripes," Litz wrote.