Tuesday noon vote recount could be contentious

Winneshiek County Supervisors at 12:00 noon Tuesday will conduct a recount of the results of the November 6th election.

The spotlight will be on votes cast for Iowa House of Representatives District 55, where Republican Mike Bergan--the incumbent--holds a 7-vote lead over Democratic challenger Kayla Koether.

However, 42 ballots arrived in the County Auditor's Office after the election, but within the deadline for being counted.  On Friday morning, a three-person committee decided 29 of those ballots could not be counted because they were not postmarked.  Of the 13 ballots that did have a postmark, 6 were cast for Bergan and 7 for Koether.

Since Monday was the Veterans Day holiday, the Waterloo Post Office, which handles the processing of all mail from Decorah, was not open for business.  There has been no statement from Waterloo because the holiday meant the office was closed.

However, another possibility has surfaced--that the ballots were scanned electronically, which the Post Office does with some of its mail through the Informed Delivery program.  Most often the program is used for letter-sized envelopes instead of the larger envelopes used for absentee ballots.  Again, because the Waterloo Post Office was closed for Veterans Day, there's no way of knowing whether this was the case with the ballots.