Posted on 11/07/2002 12:56:40 PM PST by jwalburg
Narrowly defeated Republican Senate candidate John Thune has postponed a decision about whether to call for a recount after unofficial vote returns showed him losing to incumbent Democrat Tim Johnson by less than two-fifths of a percentage point.
Thune, South Dakota's three-term congressman, said he will await the outcome of the official statewide vote canvass on Tuesday, Nov. 12, to see whether Johnson's 528-vote lead erodes.
"The numbers are in, and we came up a little bit short. I don't anticipate a change," Thune said when he addressed reporters early Wednesday afternoon. "We'll wait and see."
State law allows for a recount if the margin is within one-fourth of 1 percent. Thune would have until Friday, Nov. 15, to request a recount.
The final tally was 167,477 votes for Johnson and 166,949 for Thune. Libertarian Kurt Evans, who had dropped out of the race, drew 3,071 votes.
Thune, 41, and Johnson, 55, watched see-saw returns roll in throughout the night as counting was held up by equipment problems in two counties and other precincts simply took all or most of the night to count votes.
By 2 a.m., Thune held a fairly commanding lead of more than 3,000 votes.
By sunrise, Johnson had made up the ground and edged ahead.
"At about 3 in the morning, I went back and got about an hour's worth of sleep," Johnson said. "It was not looking as good as I would have liked. Our lead had completely eroded away. We also knew which precincts were left and knew John's lead wasn't insurmountable."
Johnson's wife, Barb, woke him to tell him the gap had narrowed to about 500 votes, he said. "I could see not much room for error," he said.
Counties have until Friday, Nov. 8, to tally each precinct total into a countywide total. Secretary of state officials will add county totals to arrive at an official statewide total Tuesday. Any recount would convene with a three-member recount board in each county on Monday, Nov. 25.
Although Thune said he doesn't expect things to change and won't pursue a formal recount unless "absolutely necessary," he stopped short of conceding the race and said he's keeping his options open.
"We're hoping for a math error," Thune said. "I can't say at this point I'm ruling out any option."
Thune called Johnson on Wednesday morning to congratulate him on his apparent victory.
"He said he did want to take a look at the canvass, and I respect that," Johnson said. "He has every right to do that. We agreed the likelihood of there being a 500-vote problem in a canvass isn't very high."
In addition to a recount, a variety of legal challenges are possible, although no specific situations were publicly in play by Wednesday afternoon. State law sets a Monday, Nov. 18, deadline for someone to legally contest the election results.
On Tuesday, the Todd County auditor asked a judge for an injunction to delay the counting of votes due to confusion over which hours the polls were to be open. However, the judge denied the request, and the votes were counted, Secretary of State-elect Chris Nelson said.
"End of story," Nelson said.
Nelson, the state's longtime elections supervisor, said he knew of no other reports of voting irregularities beyond a few unfounded rumors floating around Wednesday.
Democratic officials were aware of a few dozen voters from Pine Ridge who might have been denied the right to vote, but they ran out of time Tuesday to locate copies of the would-be voters' registration cards, a spokeswoman said.
It was the vote from Shannon County - where returns were completely unavailable until after 2 a.m. - that helped Johnson squeak through. Democrats launched massive voter-registration and get-out-the-vote efforts statewide and concentrated on South Dakota's Indian reservations, where voters lean heavily Democratic. On Tuesday, 2,856 Pine Ridge Indian Reservation voters in Shannon County, 92 percent, cast votes for Johnson.
"This was a major step forward for the native vote in this state. But when you win by 500 votes, everybody can take some credit for it," Johnson said. "We work every county in the state hard. We wrung every vote out that we could."
Thune, too, recognized the record level of campaign volunteers and high voter turnout.
"We saw literally thousands of people get involved in the political process that never have been involved before," Thune said.
Thune will decide next week whether any as-yet-unformed county recount boards get involved.
If a recount is requested, the presiding judges in South Dakota's seven state-court circuits would appoint a three-member recount board for each of the counties in their purview, Nelson said. Under state law, each board would consist of one Republican, one Democrat and an attorney belonging to the political party that carried that county in the 1998 governor's race.
The boards would convene Monday, Nov. 25, and have no deadline to complete their work. Board members would examine each ballot physically, looking for an official ballot stamp and any irregularities. State law spells out how to identify and handle various kinds of disputed ballots, he said. The law sets up a two-person resolution board to examine ballots that machines have trouble counting, he said.
The group would decide whether to count the ballots by hand or, in the case of optical-scan and punch-card ballots, by machine, Nelson said.
Work could take weeks in the state's largest counties, where only three people would do all the work. In Pennington County, 35,976 ballots were cast; in Minnehaha County, 65,538.
"Those folks will have a large job," Nelson said.
A recount for one of South Dakota's federal offices is not unprecedented. The three most recent examples each had a Democrat narrowly defeating a Republican.
In 1978, then-Congressman Tom Daschle defeated Leo Thorsness, ultimately by 139 votes, in the state's former first congressional district in eastern South Dakota. Daschle took his seat in the U.S. House while awaiting the results of the recount.
In 1962, Sen. George McGovern narrowly defeated Joe Bottum, and Bottum alleged voting irregularities. The Rapid City Journal quoted him as noting "registrations at the polls of persons not qualified to vote." Bottum referred to construction workers working at Ellsworth Air Force Base who did not meet the state's one-year residency requirement.
In that recount, hundreds of ballots ended up changing in both directions.
In 1937, Democrat Clair Roddewig defeated Republican Sterling Clark by 376 votes.
This story doesn't even mention the FBI investigation about the irregularities with the Absentee Ballot applications on the Indian Reservations!
OUR TURN!
IN A CLOSE RACE
2002 Shannon County 3,118 votes cast
2,856 92% percent, went to Johnson
248 went to Thune
third-party candidate received 14 votes
IN A LANDSLIDE FOR THE DEMs (When Daschle won reelection)
1998 Shannon County 1,559 votes cast
1,228 79% went to Daschle
239 went to Republican
a third-party candidate won 92 votes
So even though the total number of voters in Shannon County has doubled, it appears that virtually none of them chose Thune. And in a close race the dem gets 92% of the vote, while in a landslide victory in 1998, the dem got only 79%.
Speak for yourself, not the American people. I want the person that received the most legitimate votes to be elected!
It has to be difficult for you right now, but just think of how you're going to feel in two years when the President takes South Dakota in a landslide re-election and Thune takes Daschle's seat. Better days are coming, for you, for John Thune and for America.
And regardless of the outcome of this particular race, there are a whole lot of us who can't even begin to thank you enough for your efforts. People like yourself are the reason Republicans took back the Senate on Tuesday.
Thank you.
each time we act like timid little children afraid to raise their hand in school...we bring further and further fraud upon us....
the demorats KNOW that we are weak and spineless....that's why they pull this crap....they know they will get away with it....
I know what you mean. We Minnesotans were getting the same treatment from a lot of folks before the election.
There are just too many discrepancies here, as well as similarities to past situations where Dem candidates needed X amount of votes to win and at the end of the counting, those votes suddenly appeared. I sincerely hope the truth will come to light, and that there will be consequences for those who broke the law. I agree with whoever posted that the Dems will resume cheating on a larger scale next time, if they are allowed to get away with this.
we do have to ask first and foremost why the rest of the state who we would think would be conservative did not go hook, line and sinker for Thune and instead, made the Res. voters the ones with the power....
we also have to question why Thune did not campaign more and yes....make more promises...that's the way the game is played.....and reassure the Indian voters...
But on the other hand, I don't know how you hand someone a six year term when there already has been documented proof of fraud endeavors....
Count me in. I want this election settled correctly, I don't think we needs another illegally elected 'Rat in this Senate.
I hope you can find consolation in the fact that Daschle is no longer Majority Leader, that President Bush now has a Congress he can work with, that John Thune's talents will be put to good use in the service of his country and that he lives to fight another day! And I hope that day is in 2004 and his opponent is the dwarf Daschle.
Sounds like Thune had better suck it up and make the most of whatever Senatorial opportunity may be at hand rather than demonstrate that he is as soft in the head as SD RINOs are in general.
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