Monae Johnson questioned vote-counting machines. Running elections changed her mind.
By Jessica Huseman for Votebeat Four years after far-right Republicans helped elect Monae Johnson as South Dakota secretary of state, she’s backing a Democrat to replace her. The cross-party endorsement is unusual. But the more interesting story is how Johnson got to this point, Votebeat reports. Johnson ousted a GOP incumbent in 2022 with support from activists who distrusted electronic vote-counting machines and wanted South Dakota to rely more heavily — or entirely — on hand-counting. Her own rhetoric was plenty skeptical, too. Former Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, said she has seen the same evolution play out among poll workers and county officials: People sometimes get involved in elections because they are skeptical of how they work. Then they discover that the problems they expected to find are not there and that some of the fixes they imagined are…




















































