Winneshiek County Auditor Ben Steines: This month's Primary "went very smoothly"

The Winneshiek County Board has approved a formal canvas of votes cast in last week's Primary.

Winneshiek County Auditor Ben Steines added four late-arriving ballots to the totals from Tuesday, ending with a figure of 4,126 ballots being cast.  Steines says there were no issues with the conduct of the balloting.

He credits Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate's move to send out to every Iowan an absentee ballot request form and his own efforts to send out news releases promoting the use of absentee ballots as reasons there were no issues on the day of the primary.  More than 85 percent of all ballots which were cast in the June 2nd election were done using absentee ballots--a big factor Election Day went smoothly, despite having just three polling places.

None of the results from June 2nd were close enough to automatically trigger a recount, but candidates within a certain vote percentage can request a recount by formally filing a request by 5:00 p.m. Thursday.  However, they would have to write a check for $100 and would lose that sum of money if the recount didn't overturn the results of the primary.