Iowa Voters

Poweshiek County auditor Diana Dawley saved money for the small towns in her jurisdiction Tuesday by letting them count paper ballots by hand. The alternative would have been to pay for programming of touchscreen voting machines.

Before the voting Dawley told the Grinnell Herald-Register

We don’t anticipate high voter turnout because there’s not much competition in the smaller communites this time, and we felt it could be a cost savings to the cities to use paper ballots instead of having the voting machine cards programmed for the election.

It just seemed to make sense to simplify things . . . A lot of people would like to get back to paper ballots.

Cheaper, simpler, popular. What’s not to like?

[Thanks to B.B. for finding this story in the Grinnell paper, which is not on the web.]

Our former Secretary of State, having overseen the purchase of new voting equipment during his tenure, NOW wants to reconsider. He seeks our opinion of a vote-by-mail regime as a way to (1) solve the paper trail problem and (2) boost turnout. Democrat Gronstal nods, but Republican Zieman resists.

Why didn’t Mr. Culver mention this when he was SoS? Because he was so intent on succeeding Vilsack as Governor that he dared not make any waves. Instead he concentrated on saying what good elections we ran in Iowa, and on boosting turnout with cheerleading and absentee ballots.

He let counties spend their federal money on paperless black boxes masquarading as high tech election equipment. Last spring he cut money from the state budget that could have solved the paper trail problem by eliminating the touchscreens. As a result many counties will be adding poor quality printers to their dubious touchscreens. This is mal-administration.

Moving to all mail voting will mean ditching the touchscreens, which should be done, of course. But moving to scannable paper ballots in the touchscreen counties is a far simpler and cheaper way to get a paper trail.

Will turnout be higher? If we want high turnout we need high stakes elections where people see a reason to vote. My hometown saw its turnout triple on Tuesday as the mayor and one councilman were ousted in a blue collar revolt.

If we want higher turnout, we could try public financing of some races. (Are you still there, Mr. Gronstal?) That gets new candidates who are barred by the present need to raise money just to run for state representative.

So I’m with Zieman on this one. Zieman said

“Having worked with Governor Culver on election reform, there’s always a motive to his madness.”

I wonder what it is.

Tuesday is municipal election day in Iowa. The Iowa code appears to require that small towns use paper ballots (not touchscreens) if turnout is expected to be light. Look here:

49.26 COMMISSIONER TO DECIDE METHOD OF VOTING –
COUNTING OF BALLOTS.
1. In all elections regulated by this chapter, the voting shall be by ballots printed and distributed as provided by law, or by voting machines meeting the requirements of chapter 52.
2. When voting machines are available for an election precinct, the commissioner shall determine in advance of each election conducted for a city of three thousand five hundred or less population or any school district in which voting occurs in that precinct whether voting there shall be by machine or paper ballot.
If the commissioner concludes, on the basis of voter turnout for recent similar elections and factors considered likely to affect voter turnout for the forthcoming election, that voting will probably be so light as to make preparation and use of paper ballots less expensive than preparation and use of a voting machine, paper ballots shall be used.

The quoted passage refers also to school board elections. As I reported in September, Pocahontas county used touchscreens for an uncontested election. By my reading of the code, that should not have happened.

In July I asked my auditor about the use of ordinary paper ballots versus the cost of preparing the touchscreens for minor elections. No answer so far, but its only been 100 days.