ABERDEEN, S.D.(Hub City Radio)- The runoff for the Republican nomination for Governor was held on Tuesday, July 28th.  Governor Rhoden won the runoff.  Brown County Commission canvassed the results on Thursday, July 30th.  It was also that day that they decided to audit the results of one of the vote centers.  We should note that this was optional and not mandatory and they were debating about whether to do so or not.  They drew the Best Western/Ramkota location for the audit.  That location had a total of 676 ballots casted. 414 votes went to Governor Rhoden while 260 votes went to Toby Doeden.  Two ballots were left blank.

The audit took place on Thursday, August 6th at the Brown County Courthouse.  The audit began with verifying that they did have 676 ballots present from that vote center.  Two people were used to verify.  That process took about 15 minutes for that procedure to be done.  It was confirmed that they did have 676 ballots.

The next step was the actual hand count itself.  They used four people total.  Two would announce the name while the other would record it.  They did sets of 50 ballots and after 100 ballots were counted would compared their numbers to make sure that they matched.  The way that they announced them was interesting.  One pair would would announce the first name of the candidate while the other pair would announce it by saying the initial of the first name of the candidate to limit any confusion.

The process to hand count the ballots lasted about an hour and was determined that the tally did matched the tabulation by the vote tabulation machines used on election night.