Scott County's election snafu

We still need answers

Today’s newsletter leads off with an ultra-local item, but I think it has some lessons for how elections can – and do – hit snags.

It took nearly two weeks, but the Scott County Board of Supervisors finally voted Monday to certify the canvass of our 2022 election results.

I’ve covered politics here for 30 years and I don’t recall it ever taking this long for the board to sign off on the results.

No, we’re not Arizona. The vast majority of our votes got counted and reported on election night. But hundreds of them didn’t. Which is what delayed the final tally.

Still, it looks like the deed is done.

On Monday, after a series of administrative recounts, County Auditor Kerri Tompkins reported she is “100%” confident all the votes are accounted for.

That’s good, but now we need to know how several hundred votes got missed.

For those who haven’t watched this unfold, unofficial results reported on Nov. 8 said that 22,874 absentee ballots were cast in Scott County.

Now, the figure is being reported as 23,362.

That’s a difference of 488 absentee votes. Those votes matter to the people who cast them, of course, but they also figure in one very close race, state House District 81, which includes northwest Davenport.

On Election Day, Republican Luana Stoltenberg was leading by 29 votes, according to the unofficial tally published at the end of the day. Now, after the administrative recount, Democrat Craig Cooper is leading by six votes. (There is going to be a recount in this race.)

As for the snag, we still don’t know exactly what happened.

Tompkins told the board Monday, “I’m not sure if it was a human error between the day before and Election Day, or if it was the machine.”

Apparently, machine jams were a problem.

That is something we do have in common with Arizona, and probably a lot of places across the U.S., though the machines at issue here weren’t at polling places but those specifically devoted to processing absentee ballots, officials say. But, unlike Arizona, we didn’t have candidates crying fraud and people marching outside the courthouse. Here, we’ve handled this matter like adults.

It wasn’t clear to me what kind of human error Tompkins was talking about. I called her Tuesday to ask for clarification, but I didn’t hear back. (UPDATE [2:30 p.m.]: I heard from Tompkins today and she said it’s possible somebody in the absentee room took a stack of ballots and put them aside, thinking they had been counted when they were not. She added that her office reviewed the tapes and did not see this happen, but that it could have been missed.)

Scott County Board Chairman Ken Beck, meanwhile, said Monday he thought machines likely were part of the problem, but he also noted that Tompkins was working with several new people. Tompkins, a Republican, was appointed by the GOP-controlled board last year after the previous auditor retired. Tompkins was elected by the people two weeks ago.

Apparently, there will be a follow up report.

Tompkins told the board a report will be submitted to the state to “explain what happened.”

She told me today that report should be available in December.

This is something that deserves follow up by local media.

The 488 ballots make up a fraction of the ballots cast, but every vote should count, and it’s important that we find out exactly how this happened. (If that’s possible. Tompkins told me today that she’s not sure if a definitive answer will be found.) And, frankly, we should find out how the error got discovered.

Secretary of State Paul Pate publicly reported the problem in a Nov. 10 tweet and said that he wanted a recount. According to the tweet, Pate said, “we discovered an error in the tabulation of Scott County's absentee ballot numbers. I'm calling on the county to conduct an administrative recount ASAP.”

Beck and Tompkins maintain the error was discovered here, not at the office of the secretary of state. “Unfortunately, a miscommunication there indicated that they found the mistake when it was here that that mistake was found,” the board chairman said Monday.

I emailed Kevin Hall, Pate’s spokesman, to ask for his response, but I did not hear back.

As I said earlier, there still are questions that need to be answered.

Power to the (right) people

Sometimes, I read a column and think to myself: I wish I’d thought of that.

A good example is a column this week by Todd Dorman of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids. His piece was about how Iowans should be able to directly put a referendum before the people to change state law or the Constitution.

People in a lot of states have that right, but not Iowans.

Republicans who rule this state love to talk about freedom, and they lavishly praise the rights of the people when it comes to parents and local school boards. (The right-thinking parents, mind you, not all of them.) But when it comes to giving Iowans the right to ask for a statewide vote on specific legislative proposals, lawmakers are AWOL in the freedom fight.

According to a post on the National Conference of State Legislatures web site, Iowa is not among the 24 states that give their residents the ability to “bypass their state legislature by placing proposed statutes and, in some states, constitutional amendments on the ballot.”

In Iowa, the people have to bow to legislators first.

As we saw with the gun amendment that passed two weeks ago, the people can get a constitutional proposal on the ballot. But not all people get that chance.

For example, if you want to vote on a constitutional amendment to give people with felony convictions who have served their sentence the right to vote, you’re out of luck.

The Republican-controlled Legislature won’t give the people that choice even though the people support the idea, even though Iowa stands by itself, among all the states, in its hardline stance. Even though Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, has said she supports an amendment.

Still, Republican lawmakers won’t budge. (The House has passed flawed amendment proposals, but the Senate hasn’t acted at all.)

As for the people voting on their own laws, forget about it.

Dorman writes:

Sure, if you’re a big donor or part of a powerful interest group with the bucks needed to send a cadre of lobbyists to the Capitol every day, you might have an impact on legislative actions. Maybe throw a reception at a nice hotel. Lawmakers love free drinks and shrimp.

But most Iowans don’t stand a chance of affecting change once the legislative bulldozer starts rolling.

So giving the people an override switch to bypass legislative action and inaction now seems necessary, especially in a state ruled overwhelmingly by one party. 

I’ve had mixed thoughts about voter initiatives. I tend to like representative government best, but Dorman’s point is a good one. I’ve never seen government in this state, even when it’s been under the complete control of Democrats, be so dismissive of the other side.

Besides, if you’re a political party supposedly built on the pillars of robust freedom and the rights of the people, this should be an easy one. Unless, as Dorman notes, what you are really about is holding onto power.

Know-nothings

Recall, in the days before Election Day, I wrote a column warning that “nobody knows anything.”

The idea was that the pundits were predicting a Red Wave, and while I said it could come true, it was by no means a sure thing. The best thing voters could do, I wrote, was to ignore the pundits, realize their own power and vote.

Well, we saw what happened to the Red Wave nationwide. It was a trickle.

Now, there’s the usual after-election soul searching.

Well, Jack Shafer has a good piece in Politico that, once again, urges the media to stop focusing so much on trying to predict winners and stick to the basics.

It’s a good idea. But what’s really notable about the column is that it’s not just a warning for the news media, but also for a public that tends to treat politics as sport.

Shafer writes:

… the notion that prediction coverage is about as scientific as a horoscope column is a view shared by many political editors and producers. Then why do they continue to green-light stories about incoming “red waves” and that certain Hillary Clinton victory? Not to deflect blame from the press, but readers seem to crave such reports and commentary, much in the way football fans — even if they don’t gamble — look forward to reading the point spread on Sunday’s games. It makes for entertaining copy and provides watercooler or Twitter chatter. It also flatters journalists, who often mistake the demand for predictions as proof of their omniscience.

By overvaluing predictive journalism, voters and the press end up undervaluing the more difficult to assemble coverage of candidates’ positions and their strengths.

Frankly, I think this is more a problem in the media, than the public. But the public clearly shares this flaw.

Too often, whether it’s elections, the stock market or monthly job reports, we tend to focus on pundits (also called analysts) who set expectations for specific events. How many times have you seen a jobs report that says 250,000 jobs were created, but then read a news article that quotes some analyst diminishing the figure by cautioning that the prediction had been 300,000 jobs?

This kind of thing tends to warp reality and puts too much influence in the hands of the predictors.

We ought to stop giving them that power.

A plug

This Friday at noon, the Iowa Writers Collaborative is hosting its second “Office Lounge.” These once-monthly events are Zoom meetings that give paying subscribers to this newsletter, and others that are part of the collaborative, the chance to join us in our regular meetings and ask questions and make comments.

We did this last month for the first time, and it was a lot of fun.

I’ll send out a Zoom link soon to paying subscribers so they can join us on Friday at noon if they’re interested – and not watching the United States take on England in World Cup soccer.

In the meantime, I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving, and I’ll leave you with a list of the members of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. I encourage you to check out their work and subscribe.

Laura Belin, Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll

Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

Art Cullen, Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

Suzanna de Baca: Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji

Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla

Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines

Fern Kupfer and Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Kyle Munson: Kyle’s Main Street, Iowa

Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines

Barry Piatt: Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices

Cheryl Tevis, Unfinished Business, Boone County

Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

Also, please check out our alliance partner, Iowa Capital Dispatch. It provides hard-hitting news along with selected commentary by members of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.