With any school board elections postponed until this month, school boards and school district officials are reminded to complete a canvass of their election, should one have been held.
South Dakota Codified Law 13-7-18, Canvass of election results–Certificates of election–Certification of results, states: The pollbooks shall be opened and the election results shall be canvassed by the school board at the next meeting and certificates of election shall be issued by the business manager of the district to each successful candidate and election results shall be certified to the county auditor of each county in which the school district is located.
By state administrative rule, election canvasses must be completed using the Official Canvass Sheet, which can be downloaded here.
South Dakota administrative rule 5:02:17:12. Duties of official board of canvassers for local jurisdiction, lists the duties of the official board of canvassers for a local jurisdiction as follows:
- Open the returns from each precinct which are found in each poll book;
- Satisfy itself that the returns are genuine and not forged;
- Tabulate the returns from the precincts and the certification of provisional ballot count;
- Declare the result; and
- Make an abstract of the results of the votes cast for each of the candidates and each of the issues. The abstract must be signed and certified by the canvassers under the seal of the business manager or finance officer of the local jurisdiction.
In addition, WHETHER OR NOT they held a school board election, all school districts have a statutory requirement to post specific election information within their board minutes this year.
You can learn more about that statutory requirement by clicking here.
For questions related to the requirements within the law, contact:
- ASBSD Executive Director Wade Pogany at wpogany@asbsd.org;
- Director of Policy and Legal Services Gerry Kaufman at gkaufman@asbsd.org;
- Chief Financial Officer Holly Nagel at hnagel@asbsd.org, or;
- Director of Communications Tyler Pickner at tpickner@asbsd.org.
For updates on education issues, check the ASBSD Blog.