Election officials in southwest Iowa’s Pottawattamie County are having to recount some four-thousand ballots from Tuesday’s primary election — by hand. Deputy county auditor Gary Herman says it became apparent early on that something was wrong.

Herman says “We suspected problems last night when we counted the absentee ballots. The totals didn’t look like we expected they would turn out because we had offices where there were incumbents running against first-time candidates who were relatively unknown and the unknown person beat the incumbent. That’s not a normal thing to have happen.”

Herman says vote-tampering is -not- suspected but a mechanical or computer snafu is more likely. He says the exact malfunction is still uncertain but there’s no wrongdoing suspected — “It’s just a mistake someplace we think. We just don’t know where it is.” Herman says the county, where Council Bluffs is located, was breaking new ground in this primary.

They were using brand new and “relatively untested” optical scanning-style voting machines and Herman says “We were expecting some problems, just not quite this scope.” He says the recount is expected to take all day — perhaps into tomorrow. An official at the Iowa Secretary of State’s office says at least 20 other counties statewide used similar voting machines Tuesday and none of them reported the problems seen in Pottawattamie County.

A new computer system that was supposed to help speed up election results in Black Hawk County apparently had the opposite impact due to a glitch. Black Hawk County Auditor Grant Veeder says there was a problem with collecting the results. He says they get their results via modem from the precincts directly to the election office, but there was some problem with the modems at the courthouse.

Veeder says the failure of the modems required the results to be hand delivered. Veeder says the precincts had to take the memory cards out of the machines and deliver them directly to the courthouse rather than uploading them via modem.

Veeder says once the memory cards were brought in, the information then had to be fed in and processed. The delay meant the final numbers for races in Black Hawk County weren’t available until just before midnight.

Touch-screen terminals were available in Iowa polling places on Tuesday for disabled voters, but election officials around the state say other voters checked out the technology. Black Hawk County Auditor Grant Veeder says since turn-out was light, there wasn’t a line at the machines and some voters decided to try out the touch-screens.

“We want to have that available for people that can vote more easily on that sort of a machine,” Veeder says. “But…if everybody in the precinct used that machine instead of the other one, things would go a lot slower because you can only vote one person at a time whereas with the other, where you mark a paper ballot, we have several booths.” Veeder doesn’t really want to convert to all touch-screens at the precincts.

Scott County Auditor Karen Fitzsimmons agrees. Fitzsimmons says Scott County poll workers were instructed not to encourage use of the touch-screens unless someone needed that technology in order to vote. “I’m not crazy about the whole touch-screen idea because there’s no paper trail,” Fitzsimmons says.

Fitzsimmons talked with Radio Iowa over the noon-hour on Tuesday. “There’s been a lot of publicity about the fact that we have this new equipment but people don’t seem to be interested,” Fitzsimmons says. “I just came from my polling place where I voted and they said no one had used it yet.”

Polk County Auditor Michael Mauro says the touch-screen terminals were used by just a fraction of Des Moines-area voters. “But nothing like we thought we might get,” Mauro says. The vast majority of voters chose to mark a paper ballot and scroll it through the optical scanning machines.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Blouin decided to use the touch-screen technology. Blouin joked with reporters that he was “checkin’ out Chet’s new system” — a reference to rival Chet Culver who as Secretary of State is the state’s Commissioner of Elections. It took several minutes to complete the process and Blouin wasn’t impressed.

“This is going to take forever in a general election,” Blouin said. “Good grief.” Blouin said in primary with fewer voters, there is the luxury of time. But if the machines are going to be that slow in the general election, people will stand in long lines waiting to vote. “I just hope it doesn’t discourage general election turn-out,” Blouin said.

Chet Culver won the Democratic party’s gubernatorial nomination in Tuesday’s primary, capturing 39 percent of the vote. Culver won the backing of a few labor groups, as well as a rare endorsement from Planned Parenthood, and he spoke directly to both groups in his victory speech. “I believe it’s time to stand up for working men and women and raise the minimum wage in Iowa,” Culver said. “And I believe we need to protect the rights of women in this state and I will veto any attempt to infringe upon a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions.”

Abortion was a key factor in the race following passage of a law that would outlaw abortions in neighboring South Dakota.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle was unopposed in yesterday’s election, but he held a rally of his own in Des Moines last night. “Friends, you probably haven’t heard the news yet. I’ll break it to you tonight right now. The polls have closed with the lowest voter turn-out in over a generation for the Democratic party, guess who won?” Nussle asked his supporters. “None of the above.”

Culver’s runningmate Patty Judge responded at the Culver rally a few moments later. “Well, I’ve got news for Jim Nussle…and I sure hope Jim Nussle’s listening to me,” Judge told a cheering crowd. “He ain’t seen nothing yet until he sees Culver and Judge coming at him.”

Culver, Iowa’s Secretary of State, and Judge, the State Ag Secretary, have both won statewide election in 1998 and 2002. Nussle is an eight-term member of congress who rose through the ranks to become chairman of the House Budget Committee. “Democrats across the state voted with their feet tonight and decided they didn’t like the candidates that were running. They didn’t like the personal attacks. They didn’t like the mudslinging. They didn’t like the visionless leadership. They want a change.” Nussle said. “They want to elect a leader, someone with vision, someone who can get the job done and with Jim Nussle and Bob Vander Plaats, we’re going to get to the job done.”

Culver’s two main rivals for the Democratic nomination — Mike Blouin and Chet Culver — both spoke with him by phone last night to pledge their support to his candidacy. “They demonstrated a lot of class and they worked hard and I also want to acknowledge each of their supporters, all of their supporters, their campaign staffs. We need you. We want you and we’re going to beat Jim Nussle in the fall,” Culver said. “I want to thank them for their hard-fought, spirited efforts. We’re not adversaries. We’re friends and we’re a stronger party as a result of the vigorous campaign.”

Blouin, who had the backing of most labor groups including the growing union for government employees, finished with 34 percent of the vote. Blouin called Culver to concede around 11 o’clock and moments later spoke to his supporters. “I just finished placing a phone call to Chet Culver, the Democratic nominee for governor for the State of Iowa, and I think with a little help, he’ll be our next governor,” Blouin said.

Blouin told his fellow Democrats their entire focus must now be the defeat of Jim Nussle in November. “This guy has no business having a key to the Golden Dome or Terrace Hill and we should not allow that to happen over these next five months,” Blouin said. Blouin, who resigned from his job as the state’s econoic development director to run for governor, pledged to actively campaign for Culver when he’s not out job-hunting.

Fallon, the state Representative from Des Moines who finished third with 26 percent of the vote, told supporters his strong finish proved many people wrong. “What they don’t understand is that there are a lot of people in Iowa, across this state, who are very dissatisfied with the status quo,” Fallon told supporters gathered on the street in front of his house. “We have sent a very, very powerful message that things cannot continue the way they’re going in Iowa. Corporate powers and special interests with their PACs and lobbyists and their big donors have controlled what happens in state government for a long time. They’ve been controlling it since I got elected 14 years ago. It’s gone from bad to worse. It must change.”

Fallon also asked his supporters to back the democratic nominee. “We’ve got to out-muscle Jim Nussle,” Fallon said.

Nussle’s claim that Democratic turn-out was the lowest in a generation is a bit off as over 147,000 Democrats cast votes in the primary. Republican turn-out statewide was extremely light by comparison. In Polk County, the state’s largest, just nine percent of registered Republican voters participated in yesterday’s balloting as there were few local contest GOP primaries. In GOP-leaning western Iowa, turn-out was even lighter. In Pottawattamie County, Republican turn-out was seven percent.

In the hotly-contest first congressional district primary races, Bruce Braley of Waterloo won a narrow victory over Rick Dickinson of Sabula to win the Democratic nomination.

Braley finished with 37 percent — just 860 votes ahead of Dickinson. Braley credits a last-minute ad buy in the Quad Cities for securing the victory. “It’s merely a reflection of the economic reality of being on t.v. in the Quad Cities market and I think if you look at the buys from the other candidates we may have been the only one who were on broadcast t.v. in the Quad Cities,” Braley says. “We felt it was important for those viewers to learn more about me.”

On the Republican side Mike Whalen — a Bettendorf businessman, secured the GOP nomination in the first congressional district with 48 percent of the vote. “We really didn’t know exactly how things were going to shake out in the last few weeks,” Whalen says. “I’m just delighted that Republicans in the first district expressed confidence in me.”

Braley is already on the attack against his general election opponent. “My opponent advocates a stay-the-course approach rubber-stamping the failed policies of George Bush,” Braley says. “I’m going to be offering the voters of this district a clear alternative…It’s time for a change. It’s time for a new direction.”

Whalen says he won by talking about “real” immigration reform and job creation strategies. “I believe ideas matter,” Whalen says. “I think the voters decided that as well.”

Braley notes that both he and Whalen have never held elected office before. “A lot of people think that people who have been serving in congress may have forgotten who they were sent to represent,” Braley says. “I think that’s why the two candidates (who) came out of the respective primaries are people without political experience.”

Whalen says he’s unconcerned by the Democratic voter registration edge in the first district. “On paper, it certainly looks like a Democratic district,” Whalen says. “But we’ve had a long history of Republicans who’ve talked about common sense ideas and apparently won over quite a few Independents and blue-collar Democrats and other folks and that’s what I intend to do this fall.”

Bill Dix, a state legislator from Shell Rock, finished in second place with 38 percent of the vote in the Republican primary. “I feel good about the campaign that we ran,” Dix says. “Looking back, I have no regrets. We’ve worked hard. We put a great team together and it’s just unfortunate tonight that it didn’t go our way.”

Dickinson, the second-place finisher in the Democrat primary behind Braley, garnered 34 percent of the vote. “I think the fact that we came as close as we did having been out-spent two-to-one was a political miracle, but still we came up short,” Dickinson says.

Brian Kennedy, a long-time GOP staffer at the state and national level moved to Bettendorf recently and he finished third in the Republican first district primary, garnering 14 percent of votes cast in the race. “People are looking for change this year…and Mike is a political outsider so I think that appealed,” Kennedy says.

Bill Gluba of Davenport, the third-place finisher in the Democratic primary, did not respond to Radio Iowa’s request for an interview after the race was decided. Over 52,000 Democrats and Republicans cast votes in the first district — 29,386 Democrats and 22,662 Republicans.