Voters in southeast Iowa’s Washington County narrowly approved the expansion of riverboat gambling on Tuesday by a tight margin of about 52-percent. Tallies show 4095 county voters approved the measure while 3743 voted no, but only a simple majority, 50-percent-plus-onem was needed for passage. Two precincts in the county did swing to the “no” vote, including the towns of Kalona and Wellman which have heavy numbers of Mennonites. A spokesman for an anticasino group, Communities Against Riverboat Expansion or CARE, says they’ve lost the battle but not the war. The group vows to continue to fight the effort to bring gambling to Washington County all the way through the state’s licensing process.
