The Minnehaha County Administration Building in Sioux Falls. (Photo by John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (South Dakota Searchlight) – A couple who spend winters in Arizona and the rest of the year in South Dakota said they were given a federal-only ballot and denied a state-local ballot when they tried to vote in person last week at the Minnehaha County administration building.
Instead of retaining their Hartford home when they retired and started traveling south for the winter, Steve Nolte and Kelly Stewart sold their home four years ago, bought a recreational vehicle, and parked it year-round at a South Dakota lakeside resort. They use a mail-forwarding service in Sioux Falls, and they’re registered to vote in Minnehaha County.
Since January, state law requires that anyone who lists only a mail forwarding address or post office box — without describing where they actually live — be registered as a federal-only voter when they register or request an absentee ballot. That means the person can only vote in federal contests such as presidential and congressional races — not other statewide, legislative, county, city or local races or ballot questions. The law was motivated partly by some legislators’ opposition to full-time RVers voting in local and state races.
But poll workers didn’t instruct Nolte and Stewart to fill out a form with a description of their living situation before voting, they said later after learning what should have happened. They also cited a lack of communication about the law and how it would impact voters like them.
The two have been registered at their mail-forwarding address in Sioux Falls since 2023 and said they have not made any updates since.
“I felt like our voting rights were taken away from us,” Stewart said.
Stewart said she was shocked and frustrated she wasn’t allowed to vote in the Republican governor primary race or legislative primary races. Her ballot had two races on it: primary races for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.
Poll workers noticed the mail-forwarding address and told the couple they could only vote a federal ballot, then changed their voter status in the system without the couple’s permission, Nolte said. The couple said they voted before the voter registration deadline for the June 2 election, so they could have updated their voter registration if needed.
Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson, whose office manages elections in the county, said the couple should have described their address on the envelope that in-person advance voters receive at the polling place and place their ballots in. Stewart and Nolte said they were not instructed to fill out any information on the envelope, until a poll worker told them to sign it before casting their ballot.
Anderson said she was “not immediately available” at the time to guide Stewart and Nolte through the process.
Nolte said the situation is evidence of a lack of “thorough training” regarding mail-forwarding voters and the new law.
The Secretary of State’s Office, which oversees elections at the state level, did not respond to questions from South Dakota Searchlight.
On Thursday, The Dakota Scout published an article in which Anderson and the secretary of state responded to concerns that auditors were incorrectly switching voters at mail-forwarding addresses to federal-only voters. Anderson told the Sioux Falls newspaper that her office is following the secretary of state’s guidance.
State Elections Director Christine Lehrkamp responded with a press release later that day saying “the Secretary of State’s office NEVER said we support the auditor in Minnehaha County and what she does concerning Federal-Only ballots.”
Lehrkamp added that absentee voters must submit an absentee ballot application and describe where they live in order to vote in state and local races. She did not describe how the law is applied to in-person advance voting.
Nolte and Stewart faced discrimination based on their address, said Amber Hobert, president of DakotaPost, which is the mail forwarding business where the couple are clients.
“There’s an idea that none of our customers come here and have a vested interest in South Dakota,” Hobert said. “We do have people who live here, but you’re treating an entire group of people based on what you believe to be, rather than actually giving people an opportunity to meet the requirements of the law.”
Stewart said she understands the purpose of the law.
“We do know people in the RV park down in Arizona that we call ‘fake South Dakota residents,’” Stewart said. “We would hope they wouldn’t vote here because they don’t spend time here. But we pay taxes on food and clothing and other things here.”
The RV park where Stewart and Nolte spend summers and early fall is in Lake County. They plan to register for the November general election using their rented space near Lake Madison as the description of their habitation, listing their private mailbox as their mailing address.
That guidance should have reached voters before they showed up at the polls, said state Rep. Erik Muckey, D-Sioux Falls. His district includes Nolte and Stewart, as well as all registered voters at DakotaPost.
At least 1,500 South Dakota residents have been reclassified as federal-only voters since January, many without realizing it. The Secretary of State’s Office’s online Voter Information Portal — where voters can check their registration status, find their polling place and download a sample ballot — does not show whether a voter is registered as federal-only. A voter can glean if they are federal-only if they attempt to view a sample ballot.
Muckey said the Secretary of State’s Office has not done enough to explain the options available to voters beyond posting the relevant laws on its website and adding the residency warning to election forms.
“Before the general election, the secretary of state has a responsibility when it comes to the rules around how to demonstrate residency, change their voting status and go back to being a local voter,” Muckey said. “How is this going to be communicated with the voting base?”
Muckey said the underlying law needs work, too.
“The only way to tackle this is to talk again about what defines residency and how we make sure people using P.O. boxes as registered voting addresses have a real ability to prove residency,” Muckey said. “If that’s not clear, we won’t have this problem just now but for many elections to come.”
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