Pottawattamie County has already received more absentee ballots than the number of absentee voters it recorded in the entire 2022 midterm, county auditor Mary Ann Hanusa said. By Wednesday, nearly 3,700 ballots had been submitted by registered Democrats and more than 3,500 by registered Republicans, according to county figures reported by KETV. The comparison is to the county’s 2022 absentee count, not its total election turnout.
WOWT attributed the county’s absentee-ballot count being more than 12% ahead of the same point in 2022 to figures from the Pottawattamie County Auditor’s Office; Hanusa was quoted discussing increased in-person voting. Iowa has open U.S. Senate and governor seats on the ballot, a combination WOWT reported had not occurred since 1968. Those races add to the stakes of the election, but the reported figures do not establish what is driving the county’s higher ballot count.
Statewide returns and local timing
The county’s figures come amid substantial absentee voting statewide. Of 380,567 absentee ballots issued to Iowans, 338,882 had been returned, or about 89%, the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office reported in figures cited by KCCI. Returned ballots included 164,649 from Democrats, 112,022 from Republicans and 62,211 from voters listed as unaffiliated or other.
Pottawattamie County’s voter information says early voting at the Auditor’s Office begins 20 days before an election, while satellite voting locations vary by election. The county’s in-person voting at the courthouse is scheduled to continue through November 2, according to KETV’s report on the current voting period.
Federal observers confirmed, sites not specified
The Justice Department plans to send about 1,000 election monitors across the country on Election Day, according to KTTC. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate confirmed monitors will be assigned to some locations in the state, but said he did not know how many or which polling places they would visit. Hanusa said Pottawattamie County would need to be notified by Monday night if monitors were assigned to its polling sites, KETV reported.
The planned deployment is distinct from other election safeguards and from past federal monitoring. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reported that DOJ monitors observed elections in 64 jurisdictions across 24 states in 2022; that historical figure does not specify an Iowa assignment for this election. Separately, after Iowa’s 2022 election, a randomly selected precinct in each county was to hand-audit the gubernatorial race, with another race audited after Election Day, The Daily Iowan reported. Those were post-election audits, not observers monitoring voting at polling places.
