QC Iowa voters receive multiple absentee ballot request forms

The popularity of mail-in voting really picked up during the pandemic and it’s a critical component of the get-out-and-vote work done by the parties now.

“Absentee ballots are very important because a lot of people, either they work or they or they have trouble getting out on election day,” said Kay Pence, chair of the Scott County Democrats. “So it’s always been a way to expand the vote and make voting more accessible to people.”

“We do expect a lot of absentee voting,” said Jeanita McNulty, chair of the Scott County Republicans. “It has been really pushed by the party, from the national level on down. We know people know how it saves the party money, they don’t have to do any ballot chasing, they know those votes are in so they can move on to other voters.”

So that’s why voters have been bombarded in some cases with applications for absentee, leading to confusion for some.

“We had one voter who reached out an said he had seven forms sent to him,” said Kerri Tompkins, Scott County auditor. “One was us, and the rest obviously were different. So yes, you can get those forms, we have people that call us and say ‘I already filled it out do I need to do it again?’ No.”

The Scott County’s auditors office assures voters that even if a person fills out multiple applications, they’ll only vote once.

“We just take it and check it in the system and if you already have one in our system, then we don’t use that,” Tompkins said.

Scott County’s Democratic chair just hopes the ones in the mail get there on time. They now have to be in the auditor’s office by the end of election day.

“Some ballots take as long as 10 days to be returned, so there’s a lot of concern of the ballots not getting back in time,” Pence said.

Anyone in Iowa who wants an absentee ballot must have it delivered by 5 p.m. Monday. Mail-in ballots must be received by the county auditor by 8 p.m. Nov. 5.

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