Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate says there was “a pretty big uptick” in voter turn out for yesterday’s city and school board elections in Polk, Linn and Black Hawk Counties.
“The early voting was significantly higher in the major urban counties,” Pate says. “Some of them were seeing almost twice as many absentees as they had in 2019.”
Voter turn-out in Black Hawk County will be at least double what it was for city and school board elections two years ago. Pate says voter participation has been trending up in most elections over the past six years.
“People are much more engaged and I don’t know if that’s just Covid or if it’s social media bringing more of a focus (on local elections), but people are definitely getting more in the weeds and wanting their voice heard on local issues and I think that’s great,” Pate says. “As the former mayor of Cedar Rapids, I can tell you I think that the most effective form of government — the local level.”
Iowa school board elections were traditionally held in September, but lawmakers moved them to the same Tuesday in November as Iowa’s municipal elections. Pate says that led to a 156% increase in voter participation in school board elections in 2019 compared to 2017. “So that was obviously a pretty good move,” Pate says. “People weren’t used to a September election, I’m sorry. They just didn’t get into it.”
Pate is the state commissioner of elections and later today his office will conduct a random drawing to select one precinct in each of Iowa’s 99 counties where results are to be audited. These kind of random checks of election results have been done during Iowa’s presidential and gubernatorial election cycles and Pate says it makes sense to do random audits of Iowa school board and city elections, too.
“I want people to feel: ‘Yes, that person won. That is our new city mayor or council members or school board person.’ They may not always like who got elected, but I want them to feel like, ‘Yep, that’s the result,'” Pate says. “We can’t afford in our democracy to have doubt and, if we do, we’re in serious trouble.”
Preliminary results from yesterday’s election are to be posted on the Iowa Secretary of State’s website. Results are not final until county board of supervisors meet next week and certify the winners.
Brad Hart, the mayor of Cedar Rapids, lost his bid for re-election and there will be a run-off election between two challengers who finished ahead of Hart, but neither received the required 50% of the vote to be declared the winner. Waterloo Mayor Quentin Hart won reelection with 58% of the vote.
A black woman who ran on a social justice platform defeated an incumbent on the Des Moines City Council. An incumbent on the Marion City Council is asking for a recount after preliminary results show he finished one vote behind his challenger.
Preliminary results indicate three candidates who oppose the mask mandate in Ankeny schools have won seats on the district’s school board, while a slate of conservative school board candidates in the Des Moines suburb of Waukee were defeated. A proposed $12 million bond levy to build two new schools in the Sergeant Bluff-Luton School District failed by 30 votes.