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Iowa’s early voting has quick start but so far trails past elections
Lawmakers shortened voting periods after 2016, 2020 elections
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The number of absentee ballot requests for next month's election are down about 30 percent statewide from 2016, which was before state lawmakers cut early voting days by half.
However, some county auditors say their rates of early voting are so robust that absentee vote tallies this year might eventually eclipse those of past general elections.
As of Monday morning, the Iowa Secretary of State's Office had documented about 327,000 requests statewide from those voting early in person or by mail. At that point — about 15 days before Election Day — in 2016, there were about 465,000 requests.
Both numbers were dwarfed by 2020, when state election officials sent ballot requests to all registered voters because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That year, there were about 808,000 requests 15 days before the election.
State lawmakers set the election rules, but county auditors are tasked with carrying them out. Many of the auditors worry that the state's truncated time frame for early voting might make participation difficult for certain people, and that their election employees are overburdened.
"It's hurting our voters, that's who I'm frustrated for," said Rebecca Bissell, the Adams County Auditor who is president of the Iowa State Association of County Auditors.
Iowa was among several Republican-leaning states that enacted restrictions on early voting after former President Donald Trump lost re-election in 2020. He had long complained that voting by mail leads to "crooked elections" and has not publicly acknowledged his election loss.
New rules
In the following session of the Iowa Legislature in 2021, Republican lawmakers made sweeping changes to early voting.
Voters had 40 days to vote early in 2016, but lawmakers reduced that to 29. Then in 2021 they cut it again to 20 — half what it was five years earlier.
They shortened the number of days in which voters could request an absentee ballot by 50. Lawmakers also decided county auditors shouldn't mail the requested absentee ballots to voters until 20 days before the election. That was down from 29 days, which already had been reduced from 40 days by lawmakers four years earlier.
Lawmakers also did away with a provision that allowed mail-in ballots to arrive at auditors’ offices after the election so long as they had been postmarked earlier. Now, the law requires, with some exceptions, that mail-in ballots be returned no later than 8 p.m. on Election Day.
The reduced voting-by-mail window is worrisome for rural areas where mail is slower, Bissell said. In her county in Southwest Iowa, which is the least-populated in the state, it might take between five and seven days for a ballot to arrive in a voter's mailbox, she said, and a similar amount of time for it to arrive back at her office.
That might leave just a handful of days for some voters to cast their ballots — or fewer if there are other mail delays.
"We're just stressed out and frustrated," said Bissell, who is a Republican. "All of us auditors and our staff, we all care so deeply about this process and the integrity of the election. So when you see all the flaws in this, that's what kills us."
The U.S. Postal Service said it is prioritizing election mail processing to deliver the documents as quickly as possible. That includes initial sortings to keep them from being sent to larger processing centers in distant cities.
Mail delays are a concern for large counties, too. Linn County Auditor Joel Miller said he has arranged to retrieve election mail most nights from several regional post offices. He had been hounding postal administrators to ensure election mail is not delayed, including ballot requests.
Those requests were due Monday, with some exceptions. That is five days earlier than previous election rules.
County auditors will either call voters or mail them letters to notify them their requests arrived too late.
Voting influx
Despite the election changes, Johnson County Auditor Erin Shane predicts that this year's total absentee vote might be higher than past elections because of the high daily rates of early voting.
"Yesterday was a banner day — maybe the second-largest for voting in-person of all time," she said Tuesday.
On Monday, about 3,900 people voted in Johnson County, she said. State data shows about 16,800 voters in Johnson County had requested ballots prior to that day — about 6 percent less than in 2016.
And Shane said the voting rate typically increases as Election Day nears.
Miller echoed Shane's optimism: "There's definitely voter enthusiasm. They're coming out early."
Residents can vote absentee in person at county auditors’ offices — or potentially at other designated locations — until the day before the Nov. 5 election.
In Linn County, about 20,100 voters had requested ballots as of early Monday. That's about 21 percent less than 2016.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said some people might shift to early, in-person voting if they are concerned about mailing their ballots. His office is communicating with the Postal Service and with county auditors to avoid problems with mailed ballots.
"What really counts is: What are the results at the end?" he said. "Do we still have the higher turnout we want to see?"
Erin Murphy of The Gazette Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.
Comments: (319) 368-8541; jared.strong@thegazette.com
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