Linn official: Healthy voter turnout expected in Marion; less so in CR

CEDAR RAPIDS - Early absentee voting in the Cedar Rapids city election is 'down,” according to a top Linn County election official, who predicted a lackluster voter turnout in the city Tuesday despite a library tax levy vote on the ballot.

At the same time, Tim Box, Linn County deputy commissioner of elections, said early voting in Marion was occurring at a 'good” clip - fueled, no doubt, by a three-way race for mayor among two council members and a former mayor.

Box predicted that 30 percent of voters would turn out in Marion by the time polls close at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

But he predicted only 20 percent of registered voters in Cedar Rapids would vote. Besides choosing at-large and district candidates for the City Council, voters are being asked to approve a tax levy of 27 cents per $1,000 of taxable property value to support operations of the Cedar Rapids Public Library.

By Monday evening, 1,712 voters cast early absentee ballots in Linn County. Of those, 1,155 came in Cedar Rapids and 427 in Marion.

By way of comparison, 3,167 voters in Linn County voted by early absentee ballot in the November 2013 city elections, ones that included a Cedar Rapids vote on a 10-year, 1-percent local-option sales tax to fix streets.

Mayor Ron Corbett was re-elected in that vote, too.

Requests for early voting ballots also were down in Johnson County when compared with the November 2013 city elections, which had included a hotly contested Coralville election.

As of Monday night, 2,133 early ballots had been requested, according to the Johnson County Auditor's Office. In the 2013 city elections, 6,436 ballots were requested beforehand.

In November 2009 in Linn County, 1,703 people voted by early absentee ballot. That year's city elections in the county did not have a ballot issue, though they did include a competitive Cedar Rapids mayoral race between Corbett, who won, and City Council Brian Fagan.

No one expects interest in early absentee voting in city elections to match the push for early voting that comes during presidential elections. In the president election of 2012, 40.66 percent or 48,266 Linn County voters voted by early absentee ballot out of a total vote of 118,711.

The November 2011 vote for city elections also included a hotly contested Iowa Senate race in Linn County, in which Democrat Liz Mathis won to help Democrats that year maintain a majority in the Iowa Senate. In that vote, 9,221 people in Linn County voted by early absentee ballot or 21.97 percent of the total vote of 41,964.