South Dakota's election system updates could cost millions, Secretary of State says

Sioux Falls Argus Leader

PIERRE — In her first budget hearing in front of the Joint Committee of Appropriations on Thursday, Secretary of State Monae Johnson laid out her plans to update the state's election and voter registration system.

Those upgrades that will bring the system, known as BPro Total Vote Election Software, up to date could cost the Secretary of State Office $4.5 million. The system has been used since 2012.

The office hopes to use a combination of federal funds meant for elections to pay for the system-wide upgrades, plus a proposed special appropriation of $313,000 to pay for the next five years of system maintenance costs.

"We're trying to be wise with our finances here," Johnson said, following a comment that other projected bids to update the state's system topped out at about $12 million.

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The new secretary, who took office in December following the departure of the former secretary and after winning her November election, outlined the new system would help better coordinate communication between her office and the state's county auditors as well as information between auditors and voters.

Johnson added there would also be updates to the signature verification system when it comes to checking signatures obtained in the statewide petition process.

Staff in the office are typically the ones verifying signatures and with the update, they'll have more tools at their disposal to manually check those signatures.

But it's not just updates to the system that are part of the price tag: Total Vote's maintenance cost has jumped to from $85,000 in 2022 to $200,000 in 2023.

"What they (Total Vote) were getting, wasn't paying all the bills for them," said Thomas Deadrick, the deputy secretary of state, when asked why the cost had ballooned. "We were like most-favored nation you can say to some degree. With that they've decided that it's time now that we pay our fair share."