Sioux Falls Democrat seeks recount in state Senate race

One of the five losing South Dakota legislative candidates with a race close enough for a recount intends to ask for one.

Democrat Aaron Matson told South Dakota Searchlight he planned to file a recount request by Thursday afternoon. The deadline to file for a recount is three days after the state canvass of election results. The canvass took place Tuesday.

Matson lost the District 11 Senate race to Republican incumbent Chris Karr, the chamber’s president pro tempore, by 35 votes out of a total of 8,385 votes cast. The district is in southwest Sioux Falls.

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The recount process is conducted by a board appointed by a local judge, consisting of a Republican attorney serving as recount referee and two other members, one each from the Republican and Democratic parties. The recount must be completed within 14 days of the recount petition’s filing.

The remaining four candidates whose close races on Nov. 3 met the recount threshold told Searchlight they don’t intend to ask for a recount.

Under South Dakota law, losing candidates can request a recount if the number of votes separating them from the winner does not exceed 2% of the total number of votes cast for all candidates in a Senate race, or 2% of twice the average number of votes received per candidate in House races.

District 11 Republican Rep. Keri Weems was 129 votes behind Republican Rep. Brian Mulder, who came in 43 votes behind Democrat Sonja Mentzer. The top two vote-getters in a House of Representatives race go to Pierre.

Making up for a 129-vote deficit “is not even in the realm of possibility, from my standpoint,” Weems said.

Weems’ race was the next-closest contest among the five where a recount would be possible. Democrats fell short in the remaining three.

One of them, District 3 House candidate Erin Ronayne Rudner, told Searchlight she might have considered a recount if her Aberdeen-area race were as close as Matson’s.

The 143-vote victory of Republican Timothy Hanigan for the second of two House seats, however, “is a big chasm to leap.”

“I have faith in our Brown County Auditor’s Office to do their jobs right,” said Rudner, whose race was the only one within recount margins outside the Sioux Falls metro area.

Weems sounded a similar note on her candidate Facebook page on Nov. 4.

“I believe in the integrity of our elections and respect the democratic process,” she wrote.

Pending a recount in the Karr-Matson race, the partisan split for next year’s Legislature is 92 Republicans, 12 Democrats and one independent.