Moody County 2020 Election
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Moody County’s election results will stand, including a close race for county commission.
Commissioner Carla Bruning, earned 268 votes to retain her seat, but challenger Mark Bonrud came within the two percent allowed for a recount with 258 votes. Bonrud, Flandreau’s former mayor, said he won’t request a recount for the 10-vote spread.
County commissioners canvassed the vote totals on Thursday, but nothing changed from results on election night. Details of the report showed that 24 people who were eligible to vote in the Bruning-Bonrud race didn’t vote for either one.
In the presidential race, Moody County voters mirrored the state of South Dakota. President Donald Trump, a Republican, won in the county with 61 percent of the vote or 1,951 total votes. That compared to former Vice President Joe Biden’s 37 percent of the vote with 1,179 ballots in his favor. Libertarian Jo Jorgensen had 2 percent or 76 votes.
Biden won two of the precincts in Moody County, precincts 1 and 2, which include the city of Flandreau. In precinct 1, it was Biden 53 percent to 44 percent over Trump, and in precinct 2, Biden had 55 percent of the vote to Trump’s 39 percent. The President handily won the other precincts with roughly a 2 to 1 margin.
Voter turnout for Moody County was 78 percent with 3,251 of 4,169 active registered voters casting ballots. Absentee voters totaled 1,551, and no ballots were received in the mail after the election day deadline.
“I’m curious what future elections will bring for absentee ballots,” said Auditor Kristina Krull. This year, voting early was encouraged if people wanted to avoid crowds at polling places because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Krull said several people came to the polling places wanting to vote but had never registered to vote. In those cases, they were given a form to register but were not allowed to vote because the registration deadline was in October.
For legislative District 8, Republicans Marli Wiese and Randy Gross will return to the state House. Wiese, of Madison, had 36 percent of the district’s votes, or 7,029 votes, but in Moody County she had 30 percent with 1,682 votes. Gross, of Elkton, had 32 percent of the votes in both the district at large, where he had 6,327 votes, and in Moody County, where 1,795 people voted for him.