Early voting looks strong in the tri-state Siouxland region, as the final day to cast ballots in the 2024 general election comes on Tuesday.
All 99 Iowa county auditor offices are open Monday for voting, and there is a second site in Woodbury Counnty and some other counties.
The Woodbury County Auditor office is predicting that more than 20,000 people will vote early, in a county where there are 64,570 registered voters. As of midday Monday, 19,806 people had requested early ballots, and 19,320 have been returned.
As of Monday morning, 332,455 registered Nebraska voters had successfully cast ballots, according to a release from the Secretary of State office.
Of those, 72,049 votes were cast early in person at county election offices, and 260,406 votes were cast early by mail, including voters in by-mail counties or precincts. Nebraska has 1.26 million registered voters.
Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen is predicting that 72 percent of voters in the Cornhusker State will cast a ballot, based on early voter turnout and trends in recent general elections. The record for Nebraska voting turnout came with 74 percent in November 2020.
“County election offices have done a remarkable job helping early voters cast their ballots securely,” Evnen said in the release. “Nebraskans continue to fulfill the new voter ID requirement before voting, and we expect that to continue on Election Day.”
Vote will settle the composition for congressional, state legislative, and county positions.
*Additionally, Vice President Kamala Harris is polling ahead of former President Donald Trump in Iowa, according to the latest Des Moines Register Mediacom Iowa Poll released over the weekend.
The survey of likely voters gathered at the end of October puts Harris ahead of Trump by 3 points — 47 percent to 44 percent.
That’s within the margin of error. It’s also a reversal from September when the Iowa Poll showed Trump leading the state by 4 points.
One finding in the latest poll is older women and independent women voters breaking sharply for Harris.
Trump won Iowa in 2020 by 8 points and 2016 by 9 points. Before that, the state chose Barack Obama for president in 2012 and 2008. In each of those four races, the final Iowa Poll before Election Day predicted the winner.
*A federal judge has ruled that the Iowa Secretary of State can carry out his plan to challenge the citizenship of more than 2,000 voters at the polls.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher on Sunday denied the American Civil Liberties Union ’s request to block the plan. Locher said about 12 percent of the people on the list apparently aren’t U.S. citizens, and it would be wrong for him to order election officials to let noncitizens vote.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said the decision is a win for election integrity. Pate said the federal government has declined to give him a verified list of citizens and noncitizens who are registered to vote. he’s still seeking the federal government to give him a list of about 250 verified noncitizens who are registered to vote.
The ACLU of Iowa sued the state last week on behalf of four naturalized U.S. citizens who are on the list of more than 2-thousand voters. Orcun Selcuk, of Decorah, is a native of Turkey who became a U.S. citizen last year. Selcuk said he voted early this fall, and then received a notice that said he was not a citizen.
ACLU Legal Director Rita Bettis Austen said she’s disappointed by the court’s decision. But she says the lawsuit put pressure on Pate to let their clients and others who prove their citizenship before voting cast regular ballots.
*Relatedly, people with disabilities make up a growing share of eligible voters in the U.S., and they’re increasingly participating in elections. But people with disabilities are still a bit less likely to vote than people without them.
To improve that situation, Iowa disability advocates’ efforts to close that gap and remove barriers to ensure equal access to the ballot box.
After years of voting in person, Bettina Dolinsek voted at her home in Ankeny this fall for the first time ever. She needed some help to do that, though.
Dolinsek is blind, and so is her husband. Because Iowa’s absentee ballots are on paper, Dolinsek and her husband were not able to read and mark the ballots themselves. She wants a home-voting process through which she can more independently vote.
“I had to have somebody who I trusted come over and mark the ballot for me. So, as they were here, I had to tell them who I wanted to vote for. It just seemed awkward,” Dolinsek said.
