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NEVADA, Iowa — Across Iowa the voting lines have been long. An unofficial survey shows that somewhere around 20-25% of votes in the state have been cast.

“I did poll some of my auditor friends and just asked where they were kind of at with numbers, and a lot of them are between 20 to 25% already voted absentee,” said Rebecca Bissell, President of the Iowa County Auditors Association. “The time crunch going down to 20 days to vote via mail, a lot of people are not, they’re not trusting the mail process or the mail that they had to get their ballots in and out so then they’re coming up and voting in person.”

Bissell is the Adams County Auditor, in Corning. She said that the change from a 29-day period to mail out and send back absentee voter ballots by mail has people worried. Those who were mailing are now, to be safe, coming to vote in-person at the county auditor’s office.

Story County Auditor Lucy Martin has also noticed more people coming in to her office. This voting cycle there have been 500 people a day coming into the auditor’s office to vote early absentee. That is double the total four years ago, when the mail in period was 29 days.

“It’s like putting your thumb on a hose, right, so that those absentee ballots used to be like this and then they took time off both ends and now it’s like this,” said Martin. “People that used to get a mail ballot maybe decided to come in person.”

Martin said all county auditors offices will be open on Saturday November 2. Story County will also have absentee voting at the Ames Public Library on Saturday, and also the auditor’s office will be open. She said in Ames four years ago, the college students had left, due to the pandemic. This year, she wonders if they will vote here, or back home.  She also believes Election Day will be busy as well, in terms of lines at the polls.

“A lot of people just really want to have their vote counted, which is exactly what auditors are wanting and so if they’re busy on Tuesday,” said Bissell. “A lot of people are going be out of town for business or just maybe back in the field after we got some rain here, so just to make sure that they can get it done, and so we’re seeing a lot and come in to our office.”

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