Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate says there was a pretty big uptick in voter turn out for Tuesday’s city and school board elections in Polk, Linn and Black Hawk Counties.
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.
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 percent increase in voter participation in school board elections in 2019 compared to 2017.
Pate is the state commissioner of elections and late last Wednesday his office was scheduled to 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.
Preliminary results from Tuesday’s election were 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.
Some hotly contested school board elections in central Iowa appear to have been won by conservatives. Preliminary results indicate three candidates who oppose the mask mandate in Ankeny schools have won seats on the district’s school board. A proposed 12-million dollar bond levy to build two new schools in the Sergeant Bluff-Luton School District failed by 30 votes.
