A recount board Thursday declared that District 15 House candidate Erik Muckey was one of two winners in this month’s election following a lengthy recount that started Wednesday morning.

Muckey prevailed 4,365 over Joni Tschetter, who the board determined had 4,356 votes. The nine-vote margin was two more than the tally from Election Day.

Muckey will join fellow Democrat Kadyn Wittman in representing the central Sioux Falls district in the House. Fellow Democrat Jamie Smith will represent the district in the Senate.

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A group that defeated a constitutional amendment attempting to expand abortion access in South Dakota is ending litigation against its opponent in that effort.

Life Defense Fund (LDF) confirmed to The Dakota Scout Monday that legal counsel representing both them and Dakotans for Health, headed by Rick Weiland, had asked a state court to drop the litigation that Life Defense Fund had filed earlier this year.

NEWS: Aberdeen Banner Engineering plant to remain open

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The losing architect behind a measure to expand abortion in South Dakota says the effort will be back, but hinted that he won’t be the leader of whatever comes next.

Rick Weiland, the co-founder of Dakotans for Health, said in a message to The Dakota Scout that Tuesday’s resounding defeat of Amendment G by a vote of 59 percent to 41 percent won’t end the issue.

“The fight for women to restore their reproductive rights will continue. What shape that fights takes and who leads it will emerge in the coming days, weeks and months ahead.”

NEWS: Republican leadership in Pierre moves further right after caucus votes

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Despite Minnehaha County again trailing the pace of the rest of South Dakota in vote tabulating from this week’s election, Auditor Leah Anderson is earning praise for prioritizing accuracy over speed.

Minnehaha County Commissioners on Friday certified the results of Tuesday’s election during a special meeting in downtown Sioux Falls, endorsing the accuracy of Anderson’s unofficial results with a 4-0 vote.

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SIOUX FALLS — As votes slowly trickled in on Tuesday night and early Wednesday, incumbent Dean Karsky and newcomer Cole Heisey took early leads and said in interviews they were confident of winning the two seats on the five-member board that oversees all county business.

Karsky will be serving his third term starting in January and said he has the support of the commission to again serve as chairman for the coming year.

Heisey, 33, will take over the seat that was left vacant when longtime Commissioner Jean Bender decided against seeking another term.

The two defeated Independent challenger Anny Libengood, a licensed social worker who is currently working as an operations specialist for a financial technology company.

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Minnehaha County finished counting ballots at about 1 p.m. Wednesday, but an IT delay in uploading the files continued to delay results in several key legislative races.

“We’ve been done for a while,” Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson told The Dakota Scout…

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Nearly 24 hours after polls closed the last votes have been counted and reported.

See full results of all state-wide contests below.

Names of winning candidates are in bold. Unopposed candidates have been omitted.

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It’ll have taken a court order to finish counting Election Day ballots in Sioux Falls.

A Second Circuit Court judge has granted a request from Minnehaha County’s top election official to open a box of ballots that were prematurely sealed during the vote count at the county auditor’s election headquarters overnight.

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South Dakotans will continue to pay taxes on groceries, be prevented from buying cannabis legally, and will keep gender neutral language out of their state Constitution.

When the dust settled, the state’s electorate only gave approval to one ballot initiative, one presented to them by the state Legislature. Amendment F,…

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The Iowa-based carbon pipeline company at the center of Tuesday’s referendum over transmission regulations will continue to advance its project regardless of Referred Law 21’s defeat.

The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission is expected to receive a permit application for a proposed carbon pipeline slated to run through more than 20 eastern South Dakota counties from Summit Carbon Solutions, despite voters rejecting a measure on Election Day perceived to have been a lynchpin in the Iowa-based corporation’s ambitions to pump carbon dioxide emitted from ethanol plants to underground storage facilities in North Dakota.

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Abortion will remain illegal in South Dakota after voters here bucked both a nationwide trend and the state’s own tradition of supporting broader abortion access via the ballot box.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment G failed to earn passage in Tuesday’s election as anti-abortion advocacy groups preserved the state’s near-total abortion ban in a resounding victory.

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The 2024 South Dakota Legislature got its hand slapped in Tuesday’s election when voters rejected Referred Law 21.

A majority of South Dakota voters have said no to a lawmaker-backed measure dubbed the “Landowner Bill of Rights” that would have created statewide uniformity around carbon pipeline regulations, marking yet another blow to a years-long effort by Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions to get a transmission line built through the Mount Rushmore State.

“The people have spoken. This is a mandate from the voters that South Dakota is not for sale,” said Rep. Karla Lems, the Canton Republican who helped refer the law to a public vote after it narrowly cleared the state Legislature in March. “They understand that our property rights are sacred and the legislature got it wrong. Now we move forward to enact much needed protections.”

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Rep. Dusty Johnson will continue to represent South Dakota in Congress while Public Utilities Commissioner Kristie Fiegen will also stay in her job.

Voters were opting to retain both the Republican incumbents Tuesday in what were the only statewide candidate races. They joined former President Donald Trump, who was also winning the state comfortably for a third consecutive time.

Johnson, 48, returns to Washington for a fourth two-year term. He could have to make some hard decisions prior to his term ending. The governor’s seat will be open in 2026, and Sen. Mike Rounds will also have to decide whether to seek a third term there, retire or also run for governor.

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Hundreds of absentee ballots cast in Lincoln County ahead of Tuesday’s election will be counted, despite claims they belong to voters who do not live in South Dakota.

A precinct board at a polling place in southern Sioux Falls rejected a petition in the morning hours of Election Day from election integrity activist Mick Baruth, who sought to challenge about 200 absentee ballots cast by voters registered with the same Lincoln County address.

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Registered Republicans made up a greater percentage of the early vote in this year’s election in South Dakota compared to 2020, a reflection of voter enthusiasm in their ranks.

According to data available through the Secretary of State’s Office, 77,517 absentee ballots — those submitted by mail or during the early in-person voting period — had been cast by Republicans as of Nov. 1, making up 55 percent of the ballots turned in before the final day to vote. Registered Republicans account for half of the state’s registered voters.

NEWS: South Dakota voters chart future on abortion, cannabis, welfare work requirements, taxes, pipelines & more

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One of the largest providers of health care in South Dakota wants to see the state get rid of partisan primaries.

Avera Health donated $25,000 to the Amendment H campaign, backing a proposal to eliminate South Dakota’s current closed primary system for a “top-two” style system. Candidates for the Legislature, as well as a number of statewide offices, would run in the same June primary regardless of partisan registration - with the top two advancing to a runoff election in November. The primary would be open to all registered voters.

Critics question how the contribution further the nonprofit health care system’s mission.

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NEWS: After Illinois governor dumps $500K in South Dakota's abortion battle, Noem cuts check too

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Political influencers and high-profile public officials on both sides of the aisle — and inside and outside of South Dakota — are exerting their financial might as the state’s fight over abortion access enters its final days.

Amendment G ballot question committees have continued to rake in cash since last week’s campaign finance reporting deadline, with amendment sponsor Dakotans for Health and No G for SD and Life Defense Fund filing dozens of supplemental disclosures in the final days of the 2024 election cycle.

On Monday, Gov. Kristi Noem’s national political action committee, registered to the second-term Republican, announced it had contributed $25,000 to No G for SD, the ballot question committee behind an onslaught of advertising opposing the proposal to loosen South Dakota’s near-total ban on abortion.

RELATED: Gov. Noem latest to plant flag in South Dakota’s looming abortion battle

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The finger-pointing between political campaigns accusing one another of misleading or inaccurate advertising has reached critical mass.

But whether or not it's true that recreational marijuana will turn kids into fentanyl addicts; if legal pot really does promise bags of cash for tax collectors; if the state’s primary elections oppress military members; or if an income tax will follow a food tax repeal — that hasn’t stopped an onslaught of marketing across the digital, television, and radio waves leading up to Election Day.

And with seven initiatives awaiting consideration by South Dakota voters, there’s been no shortage of ballot question committees clamoring about deceptive marketing by the opposition.

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