Dozens of Iowa utility workers are on the East Coast helping restore power to the victims of Hurricane Sandy and an effort is underway to make sure they can all cast ballots in tomorrow’s General Election. Alliant Energy spokesman Justin Foss says the process is complicated but doable.
“What we’re doing is working with the county auditors here in Iowa to FedEx the ballots out to the locations where our crews are and we’re having a law firm helping fill out the request forms, helping to make sure the ballots are collected and then are sent back to the counties where they need to go,” Foss says.
He says when the so-called superstorm hit last Monday, little thought was given to how long the Iowa line crews would be occupied on the East Coast and whether they’d be home in time to vote. Foss says, “Thankfully, elections officials back home in Iowa and in Wisconsin for us understood the plight and are doing everything they could within rules and regulations to help make this possible.”
Foss says Alliant has more than 100 workers from Iowa and Wisconsin on assignment in New York. MidAmerican Energy, based in Des Moines, also has a number of employees who’ve been dispatched out east. Foss says more than half of the utility’s Iowa workers voted early.