Good afternoon!
The upcoming City Elections will be held on Tuesday, November 6th. Polls will open at 7am and close at 8pm.
If you wish to vote in city elections, your voter registration application must be received in the Auditor’s Office no later than 5pm on Friday, October 26th. If you are already registered to vote in Linn County, but you have moved to a different address, you can change your address today or wait until election day to change it.
The Auditor’s Office will offer absentee ballot voting until 5pm on Monday, November 5th. If you have received an absentee ballot, you can mail the absentee ballot to the Auditor’s Office (please ensure it’s postmarked November 5th or before) OR you can return the absentee ballot to the Auditor’s Office on Election Day OR hand over the absentee ballot at your precinct and request to vote in-person at the precinct.
In Cedar Rapids, we have three races and 10 candidates. We have 4 candidates running for Council At Large, 3 candidates running for Council District 2, and 3 candidates running for Council District 4.
To avoid the December 4th Runoff Election, a candidate must garner 50% + 1 vote. If no candidate garners 50% + 1, then the top two vote getters will face off in the December 4th runoff election.
As of today, October 24th, the Auditor’s Office has received 380 absentee ballot requests for the Cedar Rapids election. Of those requested, 154 have been for Council At Large, 156 have been for District 2, and 70 have been for District 4. Obviously, the District races also vote for the At Large candidate. A total of 230 absentee ballots have been returned.
For the November 8th, 2005 election, the voter turnout in Cedar Rapids was 30% and 9% of those were absentee ballots. This was the first election for the new charter government.
For the November 4th, 2003 election, the voter turnout in Cedar Rapids was 43% and 10% of those were absentee ballots. This was the last election of the commission form of government and included the riverboat gambling referendum.
For the November 6th, 2001 election, the voter turnout in Cedar Rapids 46% and 10% of those were absentee ballots.
Unfortunately, the voter turnout percentage trended downward from 2001 to 2005 even though we had more candidates on the ballot in 2005 than ever before.
For the first time in any county election, my office has undertaken a project to post city candidate profiles on our web site. Our web site is located at www.linncountyauditor.org Go to the site and click on the Elections Services link. You will find profiles on 24 of the 98 city candidates running for office in Linn County. As of October 24th, those profiles have been viewed at least 532 times since we started posting the profiles on Monday, October 15th.
If you have any questions, I would happy to answer them at this time or after the forum.
### --Joel @ 4:05pm