The Washington County Auditor is promising to do a better job of training poll workers after a voter who should have been allowed to vote in a special schoolboard election was turned away Tuesday.
The woman arrived at the polling place in Wellman without her driver’s license. She wasn’t allowed to sign an affidavit attesting to her identity, which the new law allows this year. County Auditor Dan Widmer says the poll workers made a mistake pure and simple. “I’m not glad to know this but I need to know it so we can focus on this in the future with regard to our training when we do train the poll workers coming up for the November elections,” Widmer says.
“That’s something we’ll need to do a better job on, looking at the poll workers and if there’s someone that didn’t work at the recent primary election….perhaps, we’ll need to do some one-on-one training with that person,” according to Widmer.
Under state law, training is optional for special elections. In nearby Johnson county, election officials say they have trained poll workers ahead of a special city county council election scheduled for next week. The head of the County Attorneys Association said counties should be training workers ahead of special elections, just as they do before primary and general elections.
The Iowa Secretary of State’s office is sending out replacement voter registration cards to some Iowa voters clarifying that an I.D. is not required for voting in Iowa until next year.
(Thanks to Joyce Russell Iowa Public Radio)