South Dakota GOP secretary of state endorses Democrat to succeed her

South Dakota's outgoing Republican Secretary of State Monae Johnson has broken party ranks to endorse Democratic candidate Terrence Davis, a former state trooper, to succeed her in the November 2026 election. Johnson lost the GOP nomination in June to state representative Heather Baxter, a Trump-aligned candidate who has advocated for hand-counting paper ballots. The endorsement marks a major shift for Johnson, who ran as an election skeptic in 2022, in a state where Democrats have not won statewide office since 2015.

Johnson endorsement of Democrat Davis

• ▪Terrence Davis emphasized that the South Dakota secretary of state's office is nonpartisan and stated that trust in the state's election system has been eroded by misinformation
• ▪South Dakota Republican Secretary of State Monae Johnson endorsed Democratic candidate Terrence Davis to succeed her in the November 2026 election
• ▪Monae Johnson stated she endorsed Terrence Davis because of his law enforcement background as a former state trooper and his educational background in law and public policy
• ▪Monae Johnson announced her endorsement of Terrence Davis in a column published over the September 19-20, 2026 weekend on the conservative blog South Dakota War College

Republican convention loss to Baxter

• ▪South Dakota Republican Party Chair Jim Eschenbaum stated that delegates soured on Monae Johnson after Johnson failed to appear before a legislative committee regarding an electronic poll book contract
• ▪Monae Johnson lost the Republican nomination for South Dakota secretary of state to state representative Heather Baxter at the state party convention in June 2026
• ▪Heather Baxter won the Republican nomination over incumbent Monae Johnson at the June 2026 convention with 59 percent of the delegate votes to Johnson's 41 percent

Hand-counting ballot proposals

• ▪Multiple studies show that hand-tallying paper ballots is far more time-consuming and error-prone than machine tabulations
• ▪Heather Baxter sponsored a bill in early 2026 to prohibit the use of automatic tabulating systems in South Dakota, though the bill ultimately failed

Trump election policy alignment

• ▪Heather Baxter's campaign platform aligns with President Donald Trump's concerns regarding inaccurate voter rolls, mail-in ballots, and voting machine issues
• ▪President Donald Trump has attempted to federalize election operations during his second term, including proposing to place the Postal Service at the center of mail-in ballot distribution

South Dakota partisan electoral context

• ▪Monae Johnson campaigned for secretary of state in 2022 on promises to prevent election fraud and refused to say whether Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election
• ▪No Democratic candidate has held a statewide office in South Dakota since 2015, and the state voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in the last three presidential elections

Debatable claims

• ▪South Dakota should ban automatic voting machines
• ▪The Secretary of State office should be strictly nonpartisan