SD 18 Update

Hearty souls are voting as I type in Senate District 18. I cast ballot No. 164 at Wilkins Elementary this am. As of 11 a.m., 245 ballots had been cast in my home precinct. That's less than 10 percent turnout, but the day is young.

Linn County Auditor Joel Miller says it's looking like a roughly 25 percent turnout sort of election. The rule of thumb is whatever the turnout percentage is at 3 p.m., you can pretty much double it and get the final turnout.

Not everyone has been playing today's big game by the rules. Miller said a woman in the district voted twice, once by absentee ballot last week and then again this morning at her precinct. He said it happened during the first hour of polling with a brand new poll worker who didn't notice that the woman's name in the big book of voters had been marked to indicate her absentee vote.

Miller's office found out because the woman, who Miller didn't name, called and admitted her double vote. The auditor turns the whole thing over to the sheriff and the county attorney to decide how to proceed. I'm sure we'll be getting more details later. Voting twice is an aggravated misdemeanor, Miller said.

Going into today, Democrats held an absentee ballot advantage. Desmoinesdem at Bleeding Heartland has watched tSD 18 absentee votes like a hawk. The latest report:

At the close of business on November 7, the Linn County Auditor's office had received 8,609 absentee ballots for today's election. That number includes people who voted early in person at the auditor's office as well as those who filled out their absentee ballots at home. The returned ballots broke down as follows:

4,335 (50.4 percent) came from registered Democrats

2,343 (27.2 percent) came from Republicans

1,924 (22.4 percent) came from no-party voters

Seven came from voters with some other party registration.

And we've had a last minute call of shenanigans.

To make a long story short, some group calling itself "Citizens for Honesty and Sound Marriage in Iowa" made some calls in the district saying that "Homosexual marriage obviously involves homosexual sex. So before you support Liz Mathis, call her at...and ask her which homosexual sex acts she endorses."

KGAN has a story here. Nobody seems to know who these Citizens for Honesty are, at this point. And I have no idea how many people actually received calls.

But the National Organization for Marriage and The Family Leader want you to know it's not them. They're claiming it's dirty tricks, and say so in a news release:

NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR MARRIAGE AND FAMiLY LEADER DECRY DIRTY TRICKS IN IOWA'S SD 18 RACE

Groups call for Criminal Investigation of Vile Calls Claiming to be From Marriage Supporters

Des Moines, IA – The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and the Family Leader today decried bogus calls to voters in the 18th Senate District special election from a fake marriage organization and called on the Attorney General to launch an investigation into their source.

“Yesterday a phony group claiming to support marriage launched robo calls that were so offensive they clearly were designed to turn voters away from Cindy Golding because she supports marriage between one man and one woman,” said Brian Brown, president of NOM. “Neither NOM nor Family Leader had anything to do with these calls and we decry them. We call on the Attorney General to launch an investigation into this dirty trick to determine who is behind the calls, which are designed to steal the election from Ms. Golding.”

According to news reports, the calls came from a group calling itself “Citizens for Honesty and Sound Marriage in Iowa” and speak to voters about homosexual sex.

“NOM and the Family Leader have been out front advocates for Cindy Golding's election for weeks, because she will help ensure that the voters of Iowa have the opportunity to vote on the definition of marriage in our state,” said Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of Family Leader. “Our involvement in the race is well known and well documented. We would never use some phony group to deliver messages that are not only vile, they are bound to backfire.”

Continued Brown: “This is a dirty trick that is being played on Ms. Golding, NOM, Family Leader and all legitimate supporters of traditional marriage. We demand that the Attorney General find out who is trying to steal this election by the use of dirty tricks like this.”

I doubt the dirty tricks charge, and that any reasonable people on either side of this battle would see value in the call. So that means it's somebody unreasonable. The world is full of cranks, so I'm betting the investigation may take a while.