Gazette Daily News Podcast, June 23

It will be back above 90 degrees Thursday, but the wind will be calm and the sky sunny. According to the National Weather Service there will be a high of 91 degrees in the Cedar Rapids area with a 5 mph wind. On Thursday night it will be partly cloudy, with a low of around 65 degrees.

Members of the Cedar Rapids Charter Review Commission say Iowa’s second-largest city should consider piloting a new way of selecting city leaders once Iowa law allows it.

Commission members voted unanimously Wednesday to recommend language directing the City Council to appoint a new commission to consider the issue if ranked choice voting, which would avoid runoff elections, becomes allowed under Iowa law.

But while the concept has found a receptive audience in Cedar Rapids, it faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Iowa Legislature. State Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, who chairs the committee responsible for advancing such bills, said he has no interest in changing Iowa law to allow for ranked choice voting.

The method allows voters to rank candidates by preference rather than selecting just their top choice.

Supporters say rank choice voting, also known as "single transferable vote" or instant-runoff voting, is less costly than a runoff election, results in higher turnout, discourages negative campaigning and leads to the election of candidates who are favored by a broader swathe of voters.

A Republican National Committee field office in Cedar Rapids was vandalized over the weekend.

RNC staff on Monday found a rock thrown through a window of their office in the 4100 block of Center Point Road NE.

The RNC, in a statement, referred to the incident as "political violence.“ Cedar Rapids Police, however, said they do not have any specific evidence to indicate the vandalism was politically motivated.

Police said it remains an open investigation, but have no video or traceable evidence from which to go on.

There was no note, message or graffiti suggesting a political motive, according to an RNC spokesman.

A statement from the RNC about the vandalism, though, referenced a "growing trend of violence and vandalism being inflicted on Republicans and conservatives across the country."

The number of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations went back down after a tiny spike last week. The overall trend over the summer months appears to be stable and getting better, which has been the pattern during the pandemic.

As of Wednesday, 3,919 new coronavirus cases had been reported in the past seven days, a decrease from the 3,987 cases reported the week before, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health.

As of Wednesday, 184 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Iowa hospitals, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Last week, 186 hospitalized Iowans had the virus — the most since the 202 patients reported on March 2.

The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care also decreased to 17 this week from 25 last week, which was the highest ICU patient count since March 9.