City Election Recap: Part 1

Local elections in Iowa City aren't like general elections, and aren't even like local elections in other places. We have some conservatives here, sure; Republicans come in here and raise money from them at closed door events all the time. But true conservatives have long since checked out of local government.

Instead, our local elections have become contests between mainstream, Elizabeth Warren type liberals vs. the Sandersesque left. That's an oversimplification, but it pretty much captures the flavor.

More on this later.

That was sharply drawn in last week's Iowa City election between two de facto slates. At large liberal incumbents Bruce Teague and Megan Alter, with Shawn Harmsen in the separate District B race, defeated the leftist challenger slate of Clara Reynen and Newman Abuissa in the at large race and Amy Hospodarsky in District B. 

It's the first win for the mainstream liberals in three local cycles. In 2023, Laura Bergus, who took a sharp left turn after winning her first term, switched races and defeated fellow council incumbent Pauline Taylor. Mandi Remington knocked off Royceann Porter in the June 2024 supervisor primary, and self-described anarchist Oliver Weilein won big over Ross Nusser in a March 2025 city council special election.

Turnout saw a sharp jump over the past few cycles to 11,174 in Iowa City. It's the highest ever, setting aside three elections with extreme extenuating circumstances (the 2007 and 2013 elections that saw student turnout spikes due to ballot issues on the bar admission age, and the 2005 election with a public power measure that prompted Midamerican Energy to spend $400,000 on a No campaign). In real terms and taking into account growth, it's a return to the levels we saw in 1997 (10,097) and 2001 (10,668).

That turnout growth, compared to the March special election (6,902 - pretty good for a special and rivaling recent regular city election cycles) was uneven across precincts, and that may be the big story as to why the outcome was so different. Of course, in this election the mainstream liberal candidates were all experienced people who have won elections before, unlike first time candidate Nusser in March. All other things being equal, someone who has won an election before is usually more likely to win than someone who has not.

The turnout increases were smallest in the core downtown/student precincts, with precincts 5, 11, 20, 21 and 25 at 100% to 113% of their March turnout (this includes absentees) and precinct 19 actually dropping to 79% of the March turnout.

In contrast, ten precincts saw turnout more than double the March numbers. The biggest jumps were on the south and southeast side (precinct 10 at 277%, precinct 12 at 263%, and 27 at 226%) and on the west side (26 at 242% and 8 at 228%). 

These precincts saw turnout between 215 and 279 voters, other than 8 at 471, and there were some split outcomes. In 10 and 27, the liberal incumbents all won. But in 8, 12 and 26. Hospodarsky led Harmsen while Teague and Alter led the at large contest.

But elections are counted in raw numbers, not percentages, and the big numeric spikes were in older established east side precincts like 1, 16, 17, 23 and 24 and west side precinct 2. These precincts all had between 558 and 861 voters (with increases of 152% to 210%) and Harmsen won all with 57 or 58% (except for 55% in 24).

Harmsen's strongest vote was in these precincts along with 60% of the absentee (which is not broken out by precinct). Hospodarsky had several hot spots on the southeast side and west side and in the core campus precincts.

The geographic patterns were simpler and different in the vote for two at large race. Most precincts finished in the citywide order: Teague, Alter, Reynen, Abuissa. There was no precinct where Alter ran ahead of Teague, and nowhere that Abuissa was ahead of Reynen. (The part I can't figure is why, in a race that was so polarized, Abuissa ran 1000 votes behind Reynen.)

The exceptions were the core five student precincts - 3, 5, 11, 19 and 20 - which all finished Reynen, Teague, Abuissa, and Alter. But of those five precincts, only 20 saw significant turnout; the others had the four lowest vote totals. And, again, these were the places where turnout increased the least over March. Just anecdotally, this election seems to have attracted fewer of the young voters who don't normally participate in local elections than the special election did - or maybe they just got hidden in the higher overall turnout. My sense is that Weilein had a particularly strong personal following.

The least controversial item in the election was the local option sales tax referendum. That's odd for those of us with long memories. Johnson County has long been the last holdout in the state on LOST, with the regressivity argument having more strength here than anywhere else. Iowa City briefly and narrowly passed a sales tax in 2009 for flood relief (Coralville just as narrowly voted it down), but that expired after four years. There were landslide defeats in 1987 and 1999 (the exquisitely poor timing of scheduling the 1999 vote the day before property taxes were due didn't help) and a narrower loss in 2014.

This time, the liberals and the left seemed to be in agreement that the state had given the cities few revenue options, and the inclusion of affordable housing in the resolutions made the regressivity pill easier to swallow. There was no visible organized No campaign like there was in 2009.

In any election involving money in Johnson County, there's about a 15 or 20% unpersuadable vote that I call the Automatic No. They're just going to vote against taxes, period. That means a Yes campaign has to get their 50% (or in the case of a bond 60%) out of the remaining 80% of voters.

Set aside the Automatic No, and the Yes campaign got everyone else: 77% in North Liberty, 84 in Iowa City and 85 in Coralville.

Looking at that Automatic No a little more closely: Given a choice between a slate of Warren liberals and a slate of Sanders leftists, local Republicans didn't make a "lesser of two evils" choice, they just opted out. The city's voter registration is roughly four Democrats for each Republican (countywide it's more like 2.4 to 1). But the final election turnout was nine to one Democratic. Looking at turnout percentage, Democrats were voting at more than twice the rate of Republicans.

Also pointing to the Republicans Skipped This One analysis: Over 1100 voters, ballpark of 10% of the total turnout, voted in the sales tax contest but skipped the District B race. So the Automatic No vote got out to vote against the sales tax, and if they don't like what the city council (which keeps its status quo ante split of four liberals and three leftists) does, they'll just get the state legislature to overrule them.

Briefly touching on other races:

The Iowa City school board race saw incumbents Ruthina Malone and Jayne Finch comfortably ahead and a close race between two strong challengers who presented as liberal. Jennifer Horn-Frasier narrowly prevailed (as of this writing 248 votes) over Dan Stevenson with last second surprise candidate David Noerper way behind. It's a big change from 2023 when a conservative slate lost in a landslide as liberals packed the polls to vote against them.

The left made its first serious run in Coralville, which saw all time record turnout of 3841, surpassing even the "Koch Brothers Election" of 2013 that drew national attention. In the open mayor's race (incumbent Meghann Foster is running for Zach Wahls' open state senate seat), mainstreamer and longtime council member Laurie Goodrich defeated lefty Ryan Swenka. There was a very sharp geographic split with Swenka carrying the precincts south of I-80 while Goodrich prevailed in the higher turnout north.

The council race was a free-for-all with eight candidates for three spots. Incumbents Hai Huynh and Mike Knudson were consensus choices. Lefty Katie Freeman took the third slot by just over 200 with support from just 38% of city wide voters, as a bunch of hard to tell apart candidates split the vote.

The other notable local result was in Solon. One of the three council seats was open, and it was widely understood that former Iowa football equipment manager Greg Morris (long rumored as a potential candidate for something) would win,and indeed he placed first. But late starters Matthew Macke and Tim Gordon, who both presented as conservative, knocked off incumbents Lauren Whitehead and Cole Gabriel, both active Democrats, in what feels like a backlash election.

So status quo for Iowa City and North Liberty, some shuffling in Coralville, and a big step backwards in Solon. Now, on to the next one, a June primary with unusually high stakes.

More to say about that later.

Bad News By The Numbers

Smith and Kaufmann discuss additional amendments

In the words of the great philosopher Beavis, that sucked. 

Led by Sen. Roby Smith and Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, Iowa Republican legislators raced through a bill, Senate File 413, that among other things shrinks the voting and voter registration timeline.

Kaufmann angrily argued that none of the changes were "voter suppression." But these kinds of bills are death by a thousand cuts. Each change that makes it just a little bit harder, each day lost, means some people just won't be able to make it work.

How many? Assuming the changes aren't overturned by the inevitable lawsuits, or federal bills don't arrive like the cavalry to save us, here's how the changes could affect the numbers here in Johnson County.

Consider this a warning.

Johnson County's total 2020 turnout was 84,198. 72% of the county vote was cast early. That includes all voting plans - mail, in-person, satellite, and overseas - and those voters went 80% for Joe Biden. Donald Trump won - yes, in Johnson County, won - the 28% who voted on Election Day by a 51-45% margin.

The general assumptions below are that people stick with their 2020 voting plan, unless the context indicates otherwise.
 
Voter caging: Inactivation after missing one general election

Current Johnson County active status registration is at 97,704. That's immediately after  the annual post office National Change Of Address (NCOA) update, which already inactivated about 2850 voters. That's been standard procedure since 1995, under the 1993 federal Motor Voter law. 

Of the 97,704 active registered, there are 5655 who 1) last updated their registration before the 2018 general election and 2) did not vote in the 2020 general. Under the new law, these voters would be inactivated without advance notice, and only after being inactivated would be sent a must-respond card in order to not get totally cancelled after 2024.

That compares to 2486 who 1) have a last update date before the 2016 general and 2) have not voted since before the 2018 general. Under previous law, these 2486 voters would get a Four Year No Activity reminder card. They would not be inactivated unless that card was returned by the post office as undeliverable or if the current resident indicated the person had moved. (The voter could also sign and return the card and either be OK or be correctly canceled, whichever applied.) If the card was not returned, we were to assume that the voter still lived there.

So those 2486 people lose their advance notice, and an additional 3169 would be inactivated, before being sent a notice, two years sooner.

Some of these people really do need to get inactivated and cancelled. Despite Johnson County's years of proactive alerts before mailings are sent, we still have a small handful of very old active registrations.  The two main issues are 1) Greek houses, who sort their own mail and generally pitch stuff addressed to alumni. (The dorms are very good about getting stuff back to us.) 2) Townie adults who have moved away but still get mail delivered at their parents. The parents are generally more concerned about this than the voters, but we can't fix it without the voter's own signature.

But some infrequent voters don't need to get purged. In 2020 we had 5651 voters who had last voted in the 2016 general and skipped 2018, and another 2697 who had not voted since before 2016 (there was a lot of "I don't like either of them" that year.) All these folks would have had more problems under the new law. This is a case where the cure is worse than the illness.

Change in pre-registration deadline from 10 days to 15

Iowa's registration deadline was 10 days before a general election for decades. This became a "pre-registration" deadline after the Election Day Registration (EDR) law took effect in 2008. There had not been a serious effort to change this deadline in many years. But this week, in a late amendment the day after the House hearing, the bill was amended to move the deadline back to 15 days.

Last year Johnson County had 1121 new registrations from Day 14 (October 20) to Day 10 (October 24).

• 376 voted at the polls (includes one provisional ballot)
• 290 voted at satellites
• 286 voted in person at the office
  
• 46 voted by mail
• 123 didn’t follow through and vote (or tried and failed)

Assuming these people still try to vote, that’s about 1000 more voters who will have to use the more difficult EDR or provisional voting procedures, on top of the roughly 3000 EDRs we had in 2020. That takes longer, which slows down the line for everyone. Of course, some will be Not Votes.

Change in vote by mail request period

(Note that most changes in mail ballot procedure do not affect military and overseas voters, who are covered under federal law.)

Through the 2002 cycle, the first day for domestic civilian voters to request a mailed ballot was 70 days out. From 2004 to 2016 there was no first day specified in the law, and auditors had to keep requests on file indefinitely. My personal record was close to two years. 

I wasn't a fan of this because too-soon requests cause a lot of problems. In the 2004 cycle, requests were coming in from caucus night in January, and student neighborhoods were getting doorknocked in June. Every lease in Iowa City turns over on August 1. When we started mailing ballots out in late September (those were the good old days), many went to bad addresses. We managed to explain this to campaigns in future cycles (I still had to personally remove the request forms from the Johnson County caucus packets), so it got a bit better, but the problem still popped up.

So when the law changed in 2017 to 120 days (early July) I didn't shed many tears. Now we're back to 70 and that affects the workload. We had 35,504 total non-voided vote by mail requests (not counting ones that were later voided when voters changed their voting plan). 10,454 were received and data-entered on days 120 through 71. 

Assuming all these voters still choose vote by mail, this data entry work from Days 120 through 71 is added to the workload of Days 70 through 15. We'll be processing 30% more requests per day.



This also places the initial load of absentee data entry into late August - the same time as the back to campus registration drives. With campus largely locked down, these were relatively small in 2020. But in 2016, total Johnson County registration increased by about 2500 in the two weeks at the beginning of the semester. Two big piles of work that used to be at different times will now be at the same time.

We've also lost summer doorknocking for absentee requests. Back in the 1990s, campaigns could knock all summer, hang onto the forms, and turn them all in on Day 70.

But in an earlier change to the law, campaigns must now turn forms in within 72 hours of collecting them. That means they can't start asking until Day 73. Luckily that's a Saturday, so there will be a kickoff weekend, assuming campaigns are doorknocking in 2022. At the rate Iowa is going we'll still be in COVID mode.

The last day to request a ballot has also changed. When I started working for the auditor in 1997, there was no deadline; we had to honor requests that arrived the day before the election. In that era of faster mail delivery, it sometimes worked.

When a deadline was added to the law, it was originally four days, then changed to 10 or 11 days (depending on election type) in 2017. But in another last-second change, amendments to SF413 moved the deadline to 15 days out.

In Johnson County, 969 voters successfully sent requests and returned counted mailed ballots on days 14 through 10. (There were another 63 voided requests,  mostly people who changed their voting plan, and another 62 who didn’t return the ballot.) These people would have to choose a different voting plan - if possible. Of the 969 successful requests, 128 were mailed out of town. Those people would likely not have been able to vote.

Later start date for mailing out ballots

As noted above, in 2020 Johnson County had 35,504 total non-voided domestic vote by mail requests. (704 of those were not returned.)

The vast majority, 29,432, were mailed on the first day allowed, October 5, 29 days before the election. SF413 changes the first day to mail ballots to just 20 days before the election. That means all these voters would have eight fewer days  to vote and return their ballots. Another 3293 ballots were mailed on days 28 through 21, and those voters would see a corresponding drop in turnaround time. 

Of the total 32,724 ballots mailed before Day 20, 1060 were sent to a different mailing address than their registration street address. Some of those were sent to local post office boxes, which are very common in our smaller towns. But the majority were the more time-sensitive ballots mailed to addresses outside the county. (I would have to go line by line through the list to get an exact number.)

The biggest issue with the shorter mailing window is voters with complications: mail delivery problems (which we don't even learn about for several days), spoiled ballots, or damaged packets.

It’s a little hard to tell but my best estimate is that roughly 700 voters who initially requested a ballot by mail had some kind of problem that required a void and re-issue. (This excludes people who simply changed their voting plan and voted in person.) Some of these were easy, some hard. Some of these were local, some were long distance and could only be dealt with through mail. Some were people with mobility or transportation issues and could only be dealt with through mail.

Some problems are just not going to get fixed. We have lost eight calendar days on the front end for helping these voters...

Drop dead deadline - all ballots must arrive by close of polls

...and we've also lost days on the back end.

Longtime Iowa law has been that ballots postmarked by the day before the election and which arrive in the first few days after the election (usually the Monday after) could be counted. For one election cycle, 2020, we incorporated intelligent bar code tracking into that day before election rule.

All that's gone now and Iowa will have what is called a "Sure Count" deadline by its advocates or a "Drop Dead" deadline by its opponents. Ballots that don't arrive before the polls close don't count. 

(That close will now be an hour earlier, at 8 PM rather than 9. That change has been in the works for a long time and I'm amazed it took this long. We tracked some data on voters between 8 and 9 PM in the 1990s and 2000s and determined that the final hour wasn't much different than the average hour: a little busier than average in campus precincts but almost completely dead in farm rural precincts.)

Johnson County only had 33 counted domestic mail ballots that were postmarked after Election Day, but that’s mostly due to a heroic extra effort by the Iowa City post office who made a second mail delivery on both Monday and Election Day. A lot of ballots where the postmark would have been an issue were already in our hands when the polls closed.

In 2016, we got 117 countable domestic mail ballots after Election Day, and that's more typical. This number will likely increase with out of town voters getting their ballots nine days later. However many it is, they don't count.

In a gap that Kaufmann and Smith plugged mostly for appearance's sake, there's exceptions in the law for overseas ballots and for the Safe At Home ballots sent to some domestic violence survivors.

Johnson County had a total of 667 overseas ballots counted. Most were returned by email. Under a COVID emergency ruling, all overseas voters could return ballots by email. Normally, only military voters or civilians in a very few high risk areas can return ballots by email. In any case, federal law applies here and overseas and military voters will still be sent their ballots 45 days out and will still be counted based on postmarks.

Despite the postmark exception, eight fewer days on the front end will still make it harder for Safe At Home voters. No statistical data is available on Safe At Home but the numbers are very small.

Later Start Date For In Person Voting

When no-excuse early voting began in Iowa in the early 1990s, we could begin voting 40 days before primary and general elections. That early start date let the committed partisans get their business out of the way and made the line shorter for those who decided later.

But Roby Smith decided that we shouldn't vote before watching debates, at least that was the on the record excuse. So in 2017, Republicans shortened this to 29 days. SF413 chops this even more, to 20 days. This time, the excuse was "to be more in line with other states."

Johnson County adapted to COVID by moving our office voting operation to a drive-thru setup at our building's parking ramp. Voters loved it. In 25 working days, we had 18,006 total voters at the ramp. 

5089 of those were in the first seven voting days and would have to vote later. Assuming no one changes their voting plan, and that we have a seven day a week schedule, that’s 267 more voters in the line each day.

Satellites

I'm still surprised Republicans have not banned satellite voting entirely. (My theory is that some mega-churches are interested in the possibility of satellite sites.) Historically, Johnson County has had the biggest satellite program, and satellite voters have trended the most heavily Democratic. There's no separate vote total data, but looking at party affiliation data, margins of 10 to 1 Democratic at the Iowa City Public Library are not uncommon.

There's been a slight trend away from satellites and toward the office and mail in recent cycles, but we still saw 7457 satellite voters in 2020. 494 of those were at sites on Day 22 and Day 21, which would no longer be allowed.

The new law takes away the auditor's ability to schedule sites on their own. From now on only petitioned sites will be allowed. The petitions for the traditional popular Johnson County sites will undoubtedly happen, but the change increases the chances that we'll also see more petitions for less effective sites. 

We've already seen the worst case scenario: In 2010, when the 21 Bar issue was on the ballot, we were petitioned for 23 separate locations, primarily on campus. And at that time we had five weeks, not three, to get it all done.

Campus is the biggest problem, and no doubt the biggest reason for the change. Rural Republican legislators are, laughably, convinced that the reason Johnson County is The People's Republic is undergrad student votes. It's not - it's faculty and staff that make Johnson County so blue - but there's also many who have an ideological belief (despite a 1978 Supreme Court ruling) that college students should simply not be allowed to vote in their college town and should only vote absentee ballots from their parental address. 

(Sadly, some Johnson County residents think so too. They begrudgingly accept that the students should get to vote for president, but they draw the line at local elections. We haven't had a student on the city council in 40 years.) 

All of our historic data going back to the beginning of unrestricted early voting in Iowa 30 years ago shows that a student is more able to successfully vote a counted ballot in their college town rather than Back Home, and that campus voting sites are more effective before the pre-registration deadline. The only effective ways to get students to vote are pre-deadline sites on campus or Election Day Registration at the polls.

In 2016 we had 2000 voters at the Iowa Memorial Union in a five day run from Day 15 through Day 11, plus another 500 total at three other campus sites. 

With campus being half empty, that dropped to 1217 IMU voters on those same five days this cycle. Only 117 of that was on Monday, Day 15, which is the new pre-registration deadline. The totals increased each day as people learned about the site through word of mouth, and of course students are very deadline-driven. We had over 500 voters on the last day.

Of the exactly 1100 IMU voters from Tuesday through Friday, 195 were completely new registrations to Johnson County. I can't easily get an exact number but most of the rest were changing their address. The number of completely new registrations is lower than it normally would be, because of the high registration from the caucuses. We won't see that in 2022, and probably not in 2024 because either the caucuses will die or President Biden will running again or both.

In any event, these voters would all be shifting from a very simple pre-registration process - complete the form and vote - to a harder EDR process requiring proof of address. That's not insurmountable for on-campus students who have electronic access to their dorm contracts. But off-campus students often don't have bills in their name, and no one habitually carries their paper lease with them.

With fewer days and opportunities, this is where a lot of voters will be pushed into different voting plans. Library voters will likely end up at the office, and the campus vote will turn into EDRs at the polls - or into Not Votes. 

UPDATE: Story County Auditor Lucy Martin reminded me "It all applies to Story County as well except here the county seat and the population center are not the same (which makes things more complicated)." Our office is several blocks from the campus area. Out of the way, out of the cultural comfort zone, and less convenient - but possible. 

But the Story County courthouse is in Nevada, several miles away from Ames. It would be like having to go from Iowa City to Solon to vote early. Grinnell students also face an out of town trek to the Poweshiek County seat in Montezuma. UNI students would have to travel about five miles across town from the campus in west Cedar Falls to the Black Hawk County courthouse in downtown Waterloo.

Impact on Election Day

It’s hard to predict how post-COVID and changes in the law will change people’s voting plans. But just as a numbers exercise:

72.37% of Johnson County voters voted early in 2020: 60,934 early (all voting plans) and 23,264 at the polls. Our previous general election record for highest absentee percentage was 57.93% in 2012. Personally I don’t think we’ll ever drop that low again in a general election and that we will settle into a range of around 65% early. But let’s say we do. 

Take our 2020 turnout of 84,198, and apply the 2012 absentee rate of 57.93% early, and you get 48,776 early and 35,422 at the polls. That’s 12,158 more voters at the polls, and roughly 1.5 times the number poll workers to take care of 1.5 times the number of voters.

That will vary a lot by precinct. It will also mean space crunches in some places, especially the campus precincts.

So more workers, when we're already having trouble keeping enough, and additional Scary Laws about poll watchers to scare them. It's part of the Big Lie mythology that election workers blocked Republican observers, so Smith and Kaufmann added draconian penalties for "interference." That's the kind of thing that makes poll workers quit - nobody wants to risk jail for trying to manage a bullying poll watcher.

Ballot Chasing Banned

Ballot chasing - I never heard the term "harvesting" until 2018 - has been clean and honest in Iowa, and was well regulated by existing law. But there have been incidents in other states, most notoriously in North Carolina in 2018 where Republican operatives were collecting Democratic ballots and not bringing them in. And the media in particular is very suspicious of the practice. 

So it's not the hill I want to die on, but it still hurts some voters. I don't have numbers, but there's going to be some non-zero number of people who have no one else to help them, or who just won't get it done without the personal persuasion.

I thought there was going to be a fix so that a voter could have anyone they wanted, other than a campaign, return a ballot. That didn't happen, and now only caregivers or immediate family members can drop off your ballot. This eliminates a lot of helpers that seniors rely on like neighbors, church members, or just random people. My parents get a lot of informal help from my mom's hairdresser and her husband.

Maybe I should have prepped these numbers before the debate, but turtles move very fast when they want to, and it wouldn't have changed the votes anyway. 🐢

Review of Roby Smith's Amendments: ½ ☆ out of ★★★★★

Reviewing the Roby Smith amendments to election bill and pointing out what I see as significant. This was originally meant to be a tweet storm, but when it grew to over 60 tweets I decided it should be in good old fashioned blog format instead. Welcome back to 2007, excuse me while I adjust the beret.

Organizing this in the order the bill is printed may not be the Classic Inverted Pyramid way to write this, but it's good as a reader's guide. The full text is here (thanks to Laura Belin for making it more linkable and legible than the legislature's site).

Page 1-2 is covering Paul Pate's ass on the legal publication of constitutional amendments . A failure to publish is keeping the NRA amendment off the 2020 ballot. (Chet Culver made the same mistake in 2006 with the famous "idiot amendment," so we waited two more years to remove offensive archaic language from the Constitution.)

My overall opinion on legal publication is that it's archaic in the Internet era and is a subsidy to the dying print newspaper industry. Is anyone really going to first learn about a constitutional amendment by reading the classifieds? This isn't something that's going to substantively hurt anyone or make it harder to vote - but anything that's basically designed to legitimize and excuse a prior mistake is kind of petty.

Page 2-3: Requires bond issue ballots to include a bunch of language about current and proposed tax rates and taxpayer impact - but does not require language about any benefits of the proposal. Basically this is designed to encourage No votes.

Our ballots are already crowded and confusing, especially with more items on combined city-school election ballots and with fewer special election dates allowed. We don't need more language on ballots. In some elections, physically making everything fit is a challenge.

Page 3: "Self-promotion with taxpayer funds." Basically this is a slap at Mike Fitzgerald's Great Iowa Treasure Hunt and at Rob Sand.

Pages 3-5 deal with hospital trustee elections. Doesn't seem like a big deal, but my county does not have this office. Maybe someone from Polk County has more thoughts.

Pages 5-13 are mostly drawn from the original Secretary of State technical bill that was filed pre-session. Some of these items address past issues that have come up.

The requirement that nomination papers include contact info for the petitioner is about the Theresa Greenfield situation where her campaign manager filed false signatures.

The requirement that petition signatures include street address, rather than PO Box, is about Joe Seng's sloppy papers from his 2012 primary challenge to Dave Loebsack. He was allowed on ballot despite the PO Box signatures he collected at the Fibbin' Fisherman. In a contradictory decision, the review board ruled that Seng should be allowed on the ballot (he eventually lost 80-20%) but that in the future such signatures should not count and that a ruling to that effect should be issued. So this is an item seven years overdue.

Language about crossed-out signatures is about Ron Corbett's paperwork from the 2018 governor primary. Corbett was thrown off the ballot after a challenge. In a last-ditch effort to get enough signatures to qualify, Corbett argued that crossed-out signatures should count.


Another practice that's codified: If the first day to mail ballots 29 days before an election falls on a Monday postal holiday, the ballots can't get mailed till Tuesday. This happens with Columbus Day 3 out of 7 November election years.


And dese here guys is not happy about it. Youse gotta problem wid dat?

I would rather have gone the opposite direction and mailed out the previous Friday. Actually, I would rather go back to the 40 days. A shorter time window for dealing with mail means more problems for voters.

The pre-registration deadline for on-line voter registrations is extended from 5 PM on deadline day to 11:59 PM. This has been practice anyway, since the data auditors get daily through the state voter system only includes a date, not a time.

Not sure why abbreviating party names is a thing, but it's a thing, and I don't think it's an important thing.

Now back to substantive changes: Pages 14-17 raise signature requirements to get on the ballot. I don't see much reason for this - Iowa ballots have not been overly cluttered (other than the current Democratic presidential race which is a caucus not an election anyway).

Never trust a dude in a funny hat.

I suspect the push to make getting on the ballot harder is because Cindy Axne beat David Young with under 50% in a 6 way contest. But I don't think any force in the universe will be enough to keep Libertarian Bryan Jack Holder off a ballot.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between goofyness of candidate and ability to get signatures on nomination papers. People sign just to get away.

Page 17 adjusts the allowed special election dates, to account for the combination of city and school elections.

Page 18 addresses the issue of people holding more than one office at once. However, checking the cross reference, it only deals with holding more than one office at the same level of government.

If you were, for example, a sheriff, and later got elected supervisor, that's the same level of government. The proposal specifies that you would vacate the FIRST office you were elected to, rather than both.

This would NOT address what we had in Johnson County where school board member Phil Hemingway ran for supervisor and said he would also stay on the school board. Lost supervisor elections so issue did not come up. School and county are considered different levels of government.

Page 18 moves some county filing deadlines back a couple days, which helps auditors a little with ballot prep and printing.  The Legislature made filing deadlines later in 2017, with the reasoning that absentee ballots were being sent later so auditors had more time. During the debate, they did not seem to understand that federal law requires ballots to be ready for overseas voters by 45 days out.

Pages 19 and 25 prohibit auditors from mass-mailing sample ballots - which Linn County did in 2018. The concern was that voters might think the sample ballot was their real ballot.

Pages 19 and later references take the auditor's signature off ballots and replaces it with a county seal. Petty, but not something that'll really hurt anyone.

Page 19-20 raises signature requirements for third party candidates, & page 20-21 moves their filing deadline (other than president) from August to the date of the June primary. If I read right, full status parties would still be able to nominate candidates at a convention till August.

Page 23 "The (auditor) shall not participate in an absentee ballot drive or collection effort in cooperation with a candidate, candidate’s committee, or (party)." This is vague and leaves a lot of room for unfair interpretation. An auditor is an elected official and has the right to have their own campaign. Could a challenger collect requests but not an incumbent? And how do we define "participate"?  State law already prohibits candidates from handling voted ballots so an auditor can't ballot chase in a presidential year anyway.

Pg 23-24 moves the general election voter pre-registration deadline from 10 days before an election (Saturday) to 11 (Friday). One less day is not good, but could be a lot worse - some states have 30 day deadlines and no election day registration. (Amazed that there has been no effort to repeal election day registration - it must be popular with GOP voters as well, and it required ID even before the voter ID law.) The proposed change makes the deadline consistent for all Iowa elections.

Page 24 requires the presidential ballot to explain that votes are for electors rather than candidates. More unnecessary words and more space taken up on an already crowded ballot. (If you want to do something with the electoral college - get rid of it. Trivia: Until 1920, Iowans voted for individual electors, leading to minor variations in vote totals. Also until 1920, only men voted for those electors.)

We could all use a drink after the polls close.

Page 26 is a big one: it changes the close of primary and general election polls from 9 PM to 8. One less hour to vote, makes all Iowa elections the same. Don't like this, but I think this is a done deal.

My experience is that the 8 to 9 PM hour is a little slower than average but not dead. Busier in town than in rural areas.  Not good but the loss of 11 days of early voting (in the 2017 ID law) is a bigger deal than losing one hour of Election Day

Page 28 would require a runoff for a tied election for partisan office (county, state, or federal). Possible, but rare. Ties for city, school and township would still be name out of a hat. (I have offered my beret for this purpose but my boss has never taken me up on it.) We have ties nearly every general election for township offices - this happens when no one runs and multiple people get one or two write-in votes.

Pg 29-30: "A commissioner shall not use the voter registration system to obtain" missing ID info on absentee requests. Instead I need to call or, worse, snail mail people to get ID numbers that we are already looking at. That's how the voter ID law was worded in 2017 - and that section of the law was and for now still is blocked by court injunction.

There was lots of voter confusion about this while it was in force during the 2018 primary. People calling about "where on my voter card is my PIN number?" (If you have an Iowa license, you don't have a PIN). People putting down Social Security numbers, or non-PIN voter system ID numbers, or even ancient ID numbers from 15 year old voter cards from our old in-county voter registration system that we shut down in 2006 when we went to the statewide system. (If you are going to require an ID number, make it the one that the most people remember: the Social Security number. Even so, I ran into many young voters who don't remember their SSN.)

With the vote by mail window already shortened from 40 days to 29, anything that slows down the mailing process makes it more likely the vote won't count.

Page 31 is aimed right at the People's Republic - it prohibits auditors from establishing satellite sites without petitions, except in special elections. We have a long and popular tradition of several regular sites, especially the public libraries and University Hospitals. Less places to vote means more people pushed down to the auditor's office or to Election Day, longer lines, less parking.

Page 32 is actually a small improvement: It gives voters who failed to sign their absentee affidavit envelopes a few days post-election to come in and sign. Still an issue, though: Auditors can't notify voters of these mistakes after 5 PM the Saturday before a general election (Friday for all others). So a voter who makes a mistake Sunday or Monday is SOL. (This isn't a change, just an un-fixed problem.)

Pages 32-34 appear to deal with signature verification - which I expect a court to shoot down.
Signature verification is a Big Deal for Pate. At a training a couple years back, a staffer let slip: the mythology is that staff at group homes are mass-voting the clients. Not something I've seen any sign of happening.

Page 37 is a gem: The earlier proposal to outright ban satellite voting in state buildings is dropped - but is replaced by some draconian reporting requirements that will be a burden to both auditors and state staff. Auditors would have to report on "each state-owned building in the county that may be petitioned for a satellite absentee voting location." I don't know exactly how many buildings are on the UI campus, but it's into triple digits.

Here's the poison pill. Report would need to include "The impact of electioneering laws on first amendment rights of the Constitution of the United States in state-owned buildings." (This same "logic" is not applied to Election Day voting. Why should satellites be treated differently?)

I have many many times had to get campaigns of all parties and types to get out of range of campus satellite sites. I guess to Roby Smith, the right to campaign is more important than the right to actually vote.

Page 38 remains from the earlier version: it singles out graduating college students for a special letter encouraging/telling them to cancel their voter registration. Can't imagine this surviving in court. (Targeting graduates for cancellation also treats them differently from grad-school dropouts like me.)

Page 39: adding polling place hours to a voter card isn't a bad thing (though losing that 8 to 9 PM hour in primary and general elections is a bad thing)

Page 40 requires counties to participate in the annual NCOA update. Almost all do, and I believe all 99 did this year. Current law allows the option of a county wide mailing to all voters instead, which we did in 2016 with great success in cleaning up the rolls.

Things start to get worse on page 41. Voters would be placed on inactive status for not voting in a presidential election OR for not returning a mailing. Current procedure is you only get inactivated if the post office returns mailing as undeliverable.

This inactivation (and eventual cancellation) simply for not sending a card back had been a major voter suppression problem/tool in some other states.

Our county has a very small population that skips presidential elections but does vote in local school funding elections.  Without digging deeper, I suspect they are from non-mainstream religious communities that discourage voting.

Pages 44-47 deal with ballot rotation. We get that Roby Smith is petty and doesn't want to let auditors decide who goes first, and that's not a hill worth dying on, but this could have been done much more concisely. Put 50 Ds and 50 Rs in one hat, 99 county names in the other, and draw.

Pages 47 to 52 are some minor cleanup items dealing with the combination of city and school elections that will mostly affect auditors, minimally affect school boards and city councils, and will barely effect voters at all.

The postal bar code provisions start on page 53. Again - this is an issue of some significance, but it is a much much smaller issue than most of the other items above. It's only getting attention because of one close race.

And to add more confusion: The postal bar code goes away in 2023. After that, mailed absentees must arrive by a drop dead deadline of when the polls close. (This is called, in Orwellian fashion, "Sure Count.")  I can at least understand the reasons for some of the other provisions, even if those reasons are partisan and petty. But I don't get this. Make auditors buy equipment and implement a system for two cycles, only to take it away? Either go with the bar codes or go with the deadline, but do one thing and stay with it.

On that low note, after 57 pages, the amendment ends.

Johnson County Absentee numbers, Week Two

I am only doing one thing right now, so that's what I'm writing.

Through close of business today our office had 16755 total absentee requests: 11660 domestic mail, 4647 at the office, 187 at a satellite and 261military and overseas mail.  …

The party breakdown on that is more that 3:1 Democrat to Republican, which is not unusual. In 2016 Hillary beat Trump 75-19 in Johnson on absentees. (These were the first results reported from the state, was all downhill from there.)

On the same day, 17 days out, in 2014 we had 15062 requests: 11576 mail, 2622 at the office, 795 at satellites, and 69 overseas.

17 days out in 2010 Johnson County was at 15495 requests: 8718 by mail, 1893 at the office, 4747 at satellites, 97 overseas, and 40 at care centers. Remember, all Johnson County stats from 2010 are skewed by giant campus-based satellites promoted by the referendum campaign to repeal Iowa City's 21 Bar ordinance. Many 2010 voters at the campus sites skipped the other contests on the ballot and voted only on the bar issue.

So Johnson County is 1260 requests ahead of 2010 (and, once you factor in the under-vote by the bar-issue-only voters, further ahead than that) and 1693 ahead of 2014. And many more of those votes are at the office and ready to count, as opposed to requests that are not returned yet.

We have more by mail requests than either 2010 or 2014. The office is more than double 2010 and nearly double 2014. Remember: That's 17 days of office voting in 2010 and 2014 but only 10 days this year.

The satellites lag, but 2010 was a unique case. We have had only one satellite site to date, on opening day, and the March To The Polls was directed to the office instead. The Johnson County satellite schedule begins in earnest next week with 3 days each at  UIHC and IMU  

In Johnson County Democrats have returned 25% of the requested mailed ballots, Republicans just 13%. Likely because the Dems absentee mailings were earlier than the GOP.

Bottom line: About 10% ahead on requests. More votes in the bank than in 2014 and more "real" votes in the bank than 2010 (once you exclude the bar-only vote).

Johnson County Absentee Numbers So Far

Since everyone is asking and since I am OCD about numbers I am spending time on Friday night comparing Johnson County's absentee numbers to the last three governor years.

When we closed shop at 5:30 tonight, 25 days out, we had 11727 total requests. 8872 domestic mail, 230 overseas mail, 2438 at the office, and 187 at our opening day satellite.

Same day in 2014 we had 12198: 10150 domestic mail, 56 overseas mail, 1713 at the office, and 279 at satellites. Remember, that was with 12 days of office voting in 2014 and 2010, but only five days in 2018.

25 days out in 2010 we were at 12547: 7332 domestic mail, 93 overseas mail, 1257 at the office, and 3865 at satellites. Those numbers, like all Johnson County stats from 2010, are skewed by massive satellites on campus driven by the 21 Bar referendum.

2006 is such ancient history that it barely bears comparing: Just 5657 requests total, almost all by mail. Only 327 voters at the office in 12 days; we've seen more than that every DAY this week. Back then, the Republicans weren't even trying on the early vote; they were putting everything into their Bush era 72 Hour Plans for Election Day and teaching their base that early voting was "fraud." Terry Branstad put a stop to that in his 2010 comeback and the GOP returned to their big absentee mailings of the 90s.

So to sum up: Mail is behind 2014 but ahead of 2010, office is far ahead of past years despite fewer voting days, and satellites can't be fairly compared because of the unique situation in 2010.

The Voters Have Spoken And They Said, Meh

"I thought the compressed cycle and the shadow of the general election would lower turnout. But it appears that Iowa City wants to squeeze in a full-fledged city election cycle. The real loser may be the Democratic ticket as this city council vacancy sucks up a lot of energy in the most Democratic county." John Deeth, September 5 

Called that one wrong,

Instead, the lesson from Tuesday's abysmal (9%) turnout Iowa City special election is more basic and more universal: In local elections, a big field of candidates means more people out campaigning means more turnout.

Historically, turnout roughly doubles between an Iowa City primary and the final election four weeks later. But that's in a normal cycle, with six or eight candidates on the final ballot.

Tuesday, with two people on the ballot instead of the five from the primary, turnout was up just 229 people, from 3966 to the 4195 we had Tueday. Nearly all of that increase came in the absentees, which bumped from 490 in September to 666 Tuesday.



(I almost hate to tell people but we got three countable ballots in Wednesday's mail, ruining the 666...)

And most of that absentee gain was because the short early voting window was one day longer; the auditor's office was closed the day before the primary for Labor Day, and we saw about 150 voters this Monday. Only 53 more people showed up at the polls Tuesday than voted at the polls September 4.

That's unheard of between a city primary and a final city election. Again: turnout usually doubles. Tuesday's turnout falls below the record low for a regular cycle city election of 4685 (9.7%) set in 2009. That was both a yawner and a blowout that was decided on filing deadline day when townies Terry Dickens and Susan Mims drew unknown students as opponents.

This election was at least closer, with no obvious pattern or key to Bruce Teague's win. He consistently did just a little bit better than Ann Freerks across the city. In precincts with significant turnout (the student vote was negligible), Teague topped 60% on the southeast side (Twain and Grant Wood), in precinct 6 (Village Green and Town and Campus) 17 (the old City High precinct) and 24 (Windsor Ridge).  Freerks led Teague on the absentees and in precincts 4 (Manville Heights), 8 (the Weber area), 10 (south central part of town) and interestingly in precinct 21, the lefty Horace Mann precinct temporarily voting at St. Wenceslaus Church.

But turnout was down in precincts 17 through 21, the progressive and downtown core of the People's Republic. Some of the vote may have been a shift to early vote - no doubt some folks who usually vote early had the calendar sneak up on them in the primary and realized too late that there was no voting on Labor Day.

But more of that may have been the smaller field, and more to the point WHICH candidates were eliminated in the primary. And I don't just mean the "vote for my friend" people who were motivated to get out by personal ties to the defeated candidates, and then skipped the second round.

The groups that know the most about getting out voters in local elections are the old guard/townie/Chamber of Commerce faction, and organized labor and its allies. Labor was supporting Christine Ralston in the primary, but she trailed Teague by 18 votes. The Chamber's choice, Brianna Wills, was just behind in fourth place, while Ryan Hall, favored by the left of the left, was fifth.

That meant the groups who know the most about boosting turnout were largely bystanders in the second election. On the surface it seems that slightly more of the Hall and Ralston vote shifted to Teague (Hall posted on social media Monday that he had voted for Teague), but there's another layer here.

The organized groups had favorites but they also had "Anyone But" candidates. The Chamber's historic boogeyman has always been the prospect of a student on the city council (which hasn't happened since the early `80s), especially a student as left as Hall. Labor-liberal types, meanwhile, were opposed to the Chamber's favorite, Wills - and it was her total collapse in the progressive precincts that knocked her from second place to fourth in the primary.

But the two Unacceptable candidates were eliminated, reducing that kind of motivation. Survivors Freerks and Teague were more or less acceptable to most of the Every Election Voters who chose to participate.

Had Hall gotten through the primary, you would have seen the townies energized like they haven't been since the last 21 Bar election in 2013. And had Wills survived, labor might have gotten seriously involved, rather than setting this election aside in favor of general election efforts.

Those general election efforts, by everyone, were just getting a good start in late August during the primary campaign, but were in full gear by late September. Opening day for early voting is next Monday and would have been last Thursday if not for the change in the election calendar that was part of the voter ID law. (As much as I hate losing 11 days of early voting, overlapping voting periods for two different elections are a logistical nightmare.) While the primary campaign was briefly able to draw focus, Tuesday's election truly felt like an afterthought.

Or maybe a preseason game?

One thing I got right after the primary: "Wills and Ralston both came close enough to be credible for a 2019 run, when four seats are up." Add Ann Freerks, with a first in the primary and a credibly close second Tuesday, to that statement. We may look back on City Election 2018 as just the opening round of City Election 2019.

Thoughts on the governor's race

SEVERE TWEETERSTORM WARNING ⛈️ TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY

— John Deeth (@johndeeth) May 28, 2018

1) As you all know I supported Nate Boulton for governor and voted for him on opening day. Since I have already voted, I do not see the point in making a Plan B endorsement. After a long weekend I do have some thoughts.

2) I am not ready to discuss the #MeToo issues surrounding Boulton and I may never be. I still hurt too much and it’s all personal. A week ago I thought the guy who was my high school doorknocking volunteer could be governor. Now, I’ve lost not just my candidate but my vote.

3) The only thing that’ll make me feel better is if my candidates in other races win. Given how Boulton worked out you may consider me a poor judge of character, but I still want to put in a good word for my friends Zach Wahls and Janelle Rettig.

4) I’m also not going to get into the “who was behind the story” question because it doesn’t matter.

5) Now, as for the governor’s race itself. The Register tried to dismiss it in their editorial endorsing another candidate, but I believe that Andy McGuire‘s incompetent leadership of the Iowa Democratic Party is disqualifying to consideration of her as governor.

6) This isn’t just about me being petty about being left off the caucus review committee; that exclusion was just one more example of McGuire’s overall poor leadership.

7) I voted for Ross Wilburn a couple times for Iowa City council, and voted against him once for a no-chance opponent out of my obsession with the 21 bar issue. He’s a good guy, but he is not going to be a factor in this race.

8) As for Cathy Glasson. This is the hard part because every time I criticize Glasson I get personally attacked by a bunch of no-names with red roses in their handles. That’s exactly part of the problem.

9) The confrontational, “bold” style of the Glasson campaign wins over some hipsters and members of the grad student proletariat who would probably vote third party or not at all otherwise.

10) Yes I said “hipster” on purpose. There’s a hybrid cross-breed of Rand Paul-Bernie Sanders cat who will probably vote Libertarian over any non-Glasson Democrat, because they’re too dumb to know the difference between libertarian and socialist. Revolution, dude!

11) And I said “grad student proletariat” on purpose because a lot of leftists remind me of me when I was 25 and I am embarrassed for my former self.

12) But within the actual “working class” the ideological lefty style alienates more voters than it wins over, and the effect is a net loss of votes.  It’ll be tough going whoever is nominated – but Glasson is unelectable and will cause downballot damage.

13) As evidence, the issue difference between Boulton and Glasson was narrow but Boulton was presenting it in a way that was much more appealing to voters, as seen by his 20-13 lead over Glasson in the poll taken days before his collapse.

14) The Glasson style is more than rhetoric – it’s the glee many Glasson people showed before Boulton even dropped out, and the immediate, bullying pressure on us Boulton supporters to switch to Glasson. (Monitor responses to these tweets for more evidence of the bullying style.)

15) I have reports that Glasson was personally calling key Boulton backers within hours of his dropout. Our tears weren’t even dry yet.

16) That's in keeping with the style they showed at our county convention when Norris supporters offered a delegate deal and Glasson backers responded only with demands for them to switch to her. As always: it's their way or no way, which is a dangerous approach to politics.

17) I’m sure a lot of people who chose Sanders over Clinton will point out that I ranked the two female candidates lowest. In the four contested races on my ballot (one a vote for two) the gender split of my personal choices was 3-2.

18) That leaves us with John Norris and Fred Hubbell.  Both are good men who could do the job. Both have paths to victory, though those paths differ in some ways.

19) I will of course support the nominee but I think Hubbell and Norris are the choices with the best chance to win. This is not an endorsement of either. But I voted for Boulton so what do I know.

New Look Voter Cards First Stage Of Voter ID Law

UPDATED: For not the first time, the Secretary of State has changed the game plan, as announced at a training of election staffers this week; in a surprise there has been an improvement.

Iowa voter cards will have a new look this week as the details of the state's new voter ID law kick in, starting with a big mailing this week.

Under the provisions of House File 516, an Iowa driver's license is the default voter ID. (This also includes Iowa DOT non-driver ID cards. For the sake of brevity, from here on out every time I say "license" I also mean "or non-driver ID.") There are some other limited options, but these options do NOT included licenses from other states or student IDs.

Voters who do not have an Iowa license are supposed to be sent a special ID card to use instead. This provision of the law was added, likely with some reluctance, to help HF516 withstand legal challenge. Rulings on laws in other states have held that, if a voter ID is required, a free alternative must be allowed.

Over the weekend of November 18, the Secretary of State processed a cross-reference between the Iowa license database and the driver's license database. They also changed some reports in the voter system so that new voter cards will conform to the details of the new law.

Many voters who actually have Iowa licenses did not have them on their voter records. Some simply left them off the registration form, because more people remember their Social Security numbers than their licenses. One or the other is required (I'm skipping some detail here). But most of the newly included license numbers were for people who registered before 2003, when the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) kicked in and we started asking for license numbers.

During debate over HF516, the Secretary of State's office frequently cited 85,000 as the number of active status Iowa voters without an Iowa license number, but after processing, that estimate has jumped to 123,000. Under terms of HF516, the Secretary of State will do the initial mailing to these voters. After that, voter ID cards will be sent out as part of the routine work of processing registrations by county auditors (translation: I get to do it.)

There will be two different kinds of voter cards. The terminology is a little confusing, and which one you get depends on whether or not you have an Iowa license. They are fold-over cards and look identical from the outside.

This is the "Voter ID" card that people without Iowa licenses will get. The initial mailing to the 123,000 people currently registered without an Iowa license is scheduled for December 6 - a very off-time for the election cycle, so many of these very very important cards will be ignored, misplaced, or discarded before they're needed next year.

In a change from the original plan, this first wave of cards will be mailed in an envelope with a page of explanation. After that, they will get sent as cards.

It's worth noting that these cards look very, very different than the Iowa licenses that most people will be showing. That singles out these voters and makes them more obvious to people who want to challenge voters at the polls.

See also the PIN listed just below the signature space. If you don't have an Iowa license and want a mailed absentee ballot next year, you will have to include this obscure piece of data on your request form.

And, in a nasty bureaucratic twist: Even though your friendly local election staffer can look at your voter record and see this number, they cannot use it to complete your form. They will have to contact you by phone or by snail mail, during an early voting window that has shortened from 40 days to 29, to get you to give them a number that your friendly local election staffer can not only see, but that they can find more easily than you can.

Voters who do have an Iowa license will not be part of this week's mailing. They will still get a card in the mail whenever they update or change registration. But this will be called a "confirmation card" or a "verification card" to distinguish it from the "ID card."

Note the prominent "This notice will not be accepted as identification at the polls." (It may not be in color depending on your county and its printer.)

One not as big but still significant change with these cards: The correction and change space that was on the old voter cards is now gone. That was an easy and fast way for voters to make changes by mail. Just write in the stuff that changed and sign it. Now they'll have to complete a full voter registration form. There's also a bar code missing from the confirmation card that used to speed up my work a lot.

Both of the new cards were programmed into the state voter registration system over the weekend of November 18, so there are a few already in circulation. After the initial mailing by the Secretary of State next week, both these cards will be mailed out by auditors regularly, each time a voter registers or makes a change. Which one you get depends on whether or not you have an Iowa license.

Any time there is a large voter card mailing, many cards are undeliverable. When mailings are returned as undeliverable by the post office, auditors are normally required to place voters on "Inactive" status, a preliminary step to cancellation. Voters who are inactive through two general elections get cancelled.

Because of the voter ID law, there's an extra mailing going out to a particular, non-random group of voters, and because they're being sent an extra mailing, they're more likely to have a card returned to sender.

In a big change of plan that seems to have been written by lawyers, this one-time mailing will be an exception. The letters (envelopes with a card in them, that is) will go back to the Secretary of State, not the auditor, and voters will NOT be inactivated from this mailing. That's because inactivating people from this mailing could be seen as illegal "targeting" of certain voters.

Since they're not getting inactived, this isn't AS horrible as what I had feared at first - but sill, these are the people who need to get these cards to vote. And the population getting these cards (or not getting these cards) is the most mobile and least rooted group of voter, exactly the kind of people that the legislators who passed this law would rather see not voting.

Many conservatives (and even some "liberals") have never gotten over Symm vs. United States, the 1978 Supreme Court ruling that held that yes, college students DO get to vote in their college town. Most people have begrudgingly accepted that students should get to vote for president (the only ballot most students actually cast) but resent young people weighing in on local things like tax questions or how old you have to be to get into the bar.

The unspoken implication of HF516's refusal to accept valid out of state licenses and student IDs at the polls is: Kid, you're supposed to be voting an Illinois absentee ballot. But 20 years on the job tells me that the most likely way a student gets to cast a counted vote is to do it at school.

After the Secretary of State's match-up between the voter file and the license database, there were 7030 Johnson County active status voters without Iowa license numbers, who should be getting cards in this week's mailing. That's 7.7% of the county's total active registration.

Because the last "big" election was the presidential, most voters have not updated their address since the fall of 2016. In my town, most young people move every year on August 1, so the voter ID cards will be getting mailed to LAST year's address - which means more cards returned to sender and not getting delivered.



So let's guess at just how accurate these addresses are.

425 people without Iowa ID numbers have voted since the presidential election. Another 165 have registered since the presidential election and not voted yet. Odds are these are good addresses.

4324 last voted in the presidential election, and these voters are likely still registered at their fall 2016 addresses.

1306 last voted before the presidential election, and 810 registered before the presidential election and have never voted. Many of these people have moved away, and actually should be inactivated and ultimately canceled.

Any of these people needing to re-register will need to do a paper registration form - because Iowa's online voter registration system is only good for people who have Iowa license numbers.

Here's some more stats on the 7030 voters without license numbers.

• 5977 of them are going to addresses in the city limits of Iowa City. Iowa City is 51% of Johnson County's registration, but is getting 85% of this mailing.
• 3437 cards are going to the core student precincts - Iowa City 3, 5, 11, 19, and 20. That's  49% of the mailing going to just 11.5% of the registration. 1334 cards are going to dorms, almost all to fall semester 2016 addresses.
• 55% of the people getting mailed ID cards live in apartments or dorms vs. 23% of all active status Johnson County voters.
• 1621 cards are going to voters under age 21; almost all of that is students because townie kids living with parents are likely to have Iowa licenses. 
• 260 cards will go to voters over age 80, another group at risk under the ID law.  Some of them have surrendered or lost their licenses and not bothered with non-driver IDs. Other have never has an Iowa state license or ID, and have moved here late in life to live closer to children and caretakers. (People who are in nursing homes and care centers are exempt from the ID law, but not every facility qualifies.)
• And if you want to get partisan: The mailing of 7030 cards is 5% more No Party than overall registration, 4% less Republican, and 1% less Democratic.

Mail can be iffy, especially at the holiday season. Anyone who believes they should have gotten an ID card (remember, only the people without Iowa licenses will get these) and hasn't gotten one by Christmas should check in with their auditor.

Kander: ID Laws "Not just a policy difference, a political strategy"

Former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander pulled no punches Tuesday in describing ID laws and other vote suppression tools as "the centerpiece of Donald Trump's re-election strategy."

Kander spoke at the University of Iowa College of Law, and was also scheduled to speak at Drake Law Tuesday.

pic.twitter.com/WqWu3DI9qa

— John Deeth (@johndeeth) October 10, 2017

Kander led the Democratic ticket in Missouri last year, almost pulling off a U.S. Senate upset against incumbent Roy Blunt. After leaving office at year's end, Kander founded advocacy group Let America Vote.

While a losing Senate bid may seem like an unlikely launch pad for national ambitions,  Kander is still seen as a Democratic rising star. He'll be back in Iowa City on Oct. 21 at a fundraiser for state Senate Democrats, and Let America Vote recently opened a Des Moines office.

 "If politicians make it hard to vote, we'll make it hard for them to get re-elected," goes the Let America Vote tag line. "There urgently needs to be a political argument against vote suppression," said Kander. "This is not just a policy difference, it is a political strategy. Rather than change their policies, Republicans want to exclude people from democracy."

"Donald Trump's claim of 3 to 5 million illegal voters is the biggest lie a sitting president has ever told," said Kander, to which a student in the crowd replied, "Wait an hour."

Kander also took a shot at Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate. While legislatures and governors usually take the lead on voter restrictions in states where they have full control of government, he said, "Iowa is the only state in the nation where the Secretary of State personally proposed the voter ID law."

In contrast, he said, "I'm the only statewide candidate for Secretary of State who has run an ad against photo ID and won." ID laws remain popular on the surface, because of the common I Have To Show ID For Everything Else simplification, but Kander says support for ID laws may be shallow.

"It's hard to win an argument you don't make," said Kander, noting that arguments against ID laws have been lacking till recently. He said the most effective arguments against ID laws are cost to taxpayers and partisanship. "The average American has a real problem with partisanship."

"When Texas chose which IDs for voters to use, they picked drivers licenses and gun permits -  the two databases that are the most white," said Gerry Hebert, a Georgetown law professor who recently argued before the Supreme Court in a Wisconsin gerrymandering case. "We deliberately used elderly black veterans with long voter histories when we challenged that law and won."

Hebert doesn't always win - "If you're interested in losing a Supreme Court case 5 to 4, I'm your man," he  joked - but he's more optimistic in Gill v. Whitford.  "We think we have a workable standard of gerrymandering and we are hopeful we may have five votes."

In many states "redistricting really is a one party system, the Incumbent Party," said Kander, and historically that's how evenly divided Wisconsin drew its maps, until Scott Walker's Republicans took full control of state government in 2011 - just in time for redistricting.

The Wisconsin map under challenge was described in internal Republican documents as "Aggressively Maxed Out," the most partisan of several drafts. The question at hand is how to measure gerrymandering for partisan purposes, which Hebert says is "Theoretically possible - but the bar is extremely high."

What's new in the Wisconsin case is a measure called an "efficiency gap test," which compares the overall vote to the outcome in individual legislative races.

"In 2012, (Wisconsin Republicans) won 60 of the 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly despite winning only 48.6% of the two-party state-wide vote," writes the Brennan Center. "In 2014, they won 63 seats with only 52% of the state-wide vote."

Hebert noted that Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote in the case, directed particularly tough and pointed questions at the Wisconsin officials defending the map, while his own arguments were described in the Milwaukee newspapers as "Atticus Finch-like." The envy in the room from the aspiring lawyers was nearly audible. 

"Right now the Court is as good as it will be in at least the next four years, said Hebert. "This may be Justice Kennedy's last term. The window is closing."

Hebert said if the efficiency gap test is upheld and allowed to be used to challenge gerrymanders, "maybe 15 to 20 states might be in play."

City Council Election: The Grand Unifying Theory

After the epic battle and record setting turnout of last month's school bond vote, the November 7 Iowa City council election is feeling decidedly anti-climactic.

Iowa City council used to be the office that attracted Some Dude self-starter candidates, forcing low-turnout primaries to eliminate them and narrow the field to the Serious Contenders, usually two progressives of varying strength and two anointed old guard Chamber of Commerce Candidates, who would almost always win.

But in recent years the lines have become more clear, the self-starters have vanished (or run for county supervisor instead), and the progressives have gained strength, capped with the 2015 sweep by the "Core Four" that overthrew the Chamber faction and installed the first progressive-led council in modern city history. Not only is there, for the third cycle in a row, no primary - there are only three candidates for the two at-large seats for the first time since 1989.

This anti-climactic mood has been building, rather NOT building, for months, and throughout those months I've developed and privately shared a Grand Unifying Theory about the local Johnson County politics of 2017. Now that we're at end game, I'm ready to share it in public.

After 3 city election cycles the Karen Kubby candidate party now a tradition pic.twitter.com/ZKMXaJSlTF

— John Deeth🥀 (@johndeeth) September 27, 2017

Salih, Hall and Botchway at a joint campaign event

Because the Core Four - Mayor Jim Throgmorton and council members Rockne Cole, Pauline Taylor and John Thomas - hold over until 2019, it is not possible for the Old Guard to win back control of Iowa City government this year. So instead, they appear to have decided that their priority for 2017 was the school bond. You spend some money, you build and improve some schools, you build some houses near those schools, you make some money.

But to pass a 60% bond vote, you need a broad based coalition, what I call the (former mayor) "John Balmer to John Deeth" alliance of all the pragmatists - progressives who want to build schools and developers who see new and improved schools as good for business.

Both sides have done this before on similar issues and both sides were willing partners against a divided opposition of absolutist anti-taxers, an increasingly isolated far left that opposes anything that could possibly benefit business simply because it could possibly benefit business, and individuals with individual grudges.

It's hard to work with a divided coalition, as the No side found out with its mixed messaging, so unity is important. And unity is difficult if your erstwhile ally in the school bond Yes coalition is getting ready to fight you tooth and nail two months later in the city council election. So it served the interest of both the Chamber conservatives and the pragmatic progressives to put the city council election on the back burner.

Progressives made a half-hearted search to find a challenger for Susan Mims (who is switching from the vote for two at large race she won in 2009 and 2013 to the vote for one district B race), but that fizzled. Meanwhile, the old guard has essentially conceded the seat of the retiring Terry Dickens. He currently holds the B seat, but with Mims switching seats, the vacancy is in the at large contest.  The Chamber faction is making only a token effort behind a so-far invisible Angela Winnike (whose seemingly hip "Night-time Mayor" role is really just a Downtown Association PR angle).

Dickens was first elected, along with Mims, in the record low turnout 2009 election that was decided on filing deadline day when they drew opposition only from three obscure students. Dickens will go down in Iowa City history as the last of his kind, an unreconstructed Love The Hawkeyes Hate The Students townie who literally ran for the council because he wanted to force the homeless to stop begging in front of his jewelry store.

There will be no more Terry Dickens or Ernie Lehmans or Dean Thornberrys or Dee Vanderhoefs, because even the old timers know that there's no longer a majority in Iowa City who will vote for someone like that. They know that to win, they need to win over some of the soft-liberal vote with someone with some University ties, like a Tim Conroy (who came close in 2015 but very noticeably sat this cycle out) or a Mims. And the chamber crowd knows that if there's going to be ANY hope of re-taking business control of the city in 2019, they need to mollify the soft liberals and be seen as socially progressive.

Which boxes them in for this year because of who the progressives are running.

Incumbent Kingsley Botchway, a Core Four ally seeking re-election, has had a solid first term, first with two years on the short end of a 2014-15 council with a 5-2 old guard majority, then as mayor pro tem on the current 5-2 progressive council. He's taken a lead on issues like affordable housing, food insecurity, and racial equity, which mesh well with his day job as the school district's Director of Equity & Engagement. (Tangent: That's a job once held by former mayor Ross Wilburn, who's now in the governor's race.)

Rookie candidate Mazahir Salih is seeking to become the first member of Iowa City's growing Sudanese community to win an election. She arrived in America 20 years ago, settled in Iowa City a few years later to earn a medical technician degree, and helped found the Center for Worker Justice, which has been a powerful engine for helping and organizing the labor, immigrant, and low wage community.

America may be in backlash mode, but Iowa City is ground zero for the backlash to the backlash. Electing an immigrant who wears a headscarf is exactly the kind of middle finger to Trump message the People's Republic would love to send. In the long term big picture, the local business conservatives know they need to not be seen as Trump conservatives.

And since the old guard can't retake control till 2019, a 6-1 council split is no worse than a 5-2 split. They figure it'll be easier to win three of the four seats in 2019 than to win two of the three seats this year. So it's smarter for them to cede the Dickens seat rather than beat up on Salih, the immigrant woman, or on Botchway, the only African American council incumbent.

Tangent: Well worth a read is Iowa University Towns and the Twenty-sixth Amendment: The First Test of the Newly Enfranchised Student Vote in 1971, an academic look at that year's city elections.

Executive summary: Cedar Falls elected a student mayor, the old guard triumphed in Ames, and multiple Iowa City student candidates splintered the votes and lost in the primary.

But it's still OK to beat up on a student.

Ryan Hall was a late entering self-starter in the District B race but he's annexed the progressive opposition to Mims. Hall is hoping to become the first student to win a council race since David Perret won a second term in 1979. (No, Mid-American minion Michelle Payne's part time classes don't count.) Hall has an environmental and Americorps background, is a fast learner, and already seems much more up to speed than most past student candidates have been.

The bugaboo of students taking over the city has been the scare tactic of the townies since the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 in 1971, a prejudice that peaked during the three 21 bar elections (2007, 2010, 2013) and the 2011 run by Raj Patel, a successful businessman who lost solely because he was 20 years old.  Botchway, 28 when he won his first race four years ago, was the youngest winner since Perret, and despite the law degree even he faced some age-based resistance.

Kingsley and Mazahir - they both tend to be first-namers - are both are in Work Like You're 30 Points Behind campaign mode, despite the seemingly weak Winnike bid. The Botchway, Salih and Hall yard signs appear in clusters of two and three, but  the Mims signs stand alone.

It's clear that the priority of the Establishment (I laugh so hard at getting called "establishment" just because of one vote at one caucus) is keeping Mims as a voice on the council, to carry the ball through 2018 and into what will inevitably be a brutal 2019 contest. 

The Mims tagline is "trusted experience," and the squash a fly with a sledgehammer attack is beginning:

Susan’s opponent, Ryan Hall, is a 24-year-old University of Iowa undergrad who moved to Iowa City a year ago. Based on his presentations so far, there is little difference between their political leanings (sic). It does not make sense to replace her proven skills and deep awareness of our community with an unproven candidate. 

And the age old scare tactic: 

Efforts to rally undergraduate non-voters to support Hall based on his age alone is building momentum.

As I always note: Individual students come and go, but the student community is a permanent part of the Iowa City community, and a part of the community that has gone unrepresented for almost 40 years. When our community looks at its diversity, the diversity of the student population is too often overlooked, and a student would be a welcome addition to the council. So what if the old timers are shut out. Lots of parts of the community were shut out during their decades in power.

So we play out this election for field position, and the stakes are whether the establishment faction needs three out of four or a clean sweep to regain control in 2019.