Nearly 450,000 Iowans have already voted in the 2018 general election, according to figures the Iowa Secretary of State’s office released on November 2. Early voting is on track to far exceed the number of Iowans who cast ballots before election day in 2014. But as of Friday, county auditors had not yet received some 82,000 absentee ballots mailed to Iowa voters this fall.

If you’re among the roughly 35,000 Iowa Democrats, 25,000 Republicans, or 22,000 no-party voters who have not yet returned their absentee ballots, you still have time. But don’t simply drop the ballot in the mail if you want to guarantee your vote will count. Here are your options:

Continuing a Bleeding Heartland tradition, I encourage readers to post their general election predictions as comments in this thread before 7 am on Tuesday, November 6. Predictions submitted by e-mail or posted on social media will not be considered. Please contact me if you want to participate and need to create a Bleeding Heartland account.

Anyone can enter, whether you now live or have ever lived in Iowa. You can change your mind, as long as you post your revised predictions as an additional comment in this thread before the Tuesday morning deadline.

No money’s at stake, just bragging rights like those most recently claimed by Bleeding Heartland user rf for 2016 general election predictions and David Osterberg for having the best guesses about this year’s primary elections.

Latest analysis of U.S. House prospects by Dan Guild. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In my last post here I wrote about the close seats that will decide who controls the House. I will get to that in a forthcoming post. For now, I want to focus on the possibility of a wave larger than people are expecting.

Des Moines attorney Gary Dickey has filed an unusual civil action charging that Jason Besler “is unlawfully holding the public office of district court judge” in Iowa’s Sixth Judicial District. In a November 1 court filing, enclosed in full below, Dickey argued that “all publicly available information” indicates Governor Kim Reynolds failed to appoint Besler within the 30-day window specified by Iowa’s constitution. Bleeding Heartland reported in September that Reynolds took no formal action to appoint Besler until four days after her authority to fill the judicial vacancy had lapsed.

Tanya Keith‘s first-person account from Representative Steve King’s November 1 appearance in Des Moines. -promoted by desmoinesdem

On Tuesday, I got a Facebook wall post from a friend of mine in California that said, “Go get em Tanya and call him out on his anti-Semitism.” The post included a link to a Des Moines Partnership event: “2018 Candidate Forum with Congressman Steve King.”

I live in Des Moines, outside Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. I am well known for not ever being a fan of King–especially lately, as a Jew who used to live on the edge of Squirrel Hill while attending Carnegie Mellon University. I had an appointment until 11:30 am on the day of the event, but I sat smoldering in disgust that the Partnership would give a platform to a racist who uses anti-Semitic language.

Iowa’s two largest public sector unions have defeated Republican efforts to diminish their power for a second straight year.

A personal reflection from Ira Lacher, inspired by the tragic events of the past week. -promoted by desmoinesdem

When I was 22, I left New York and moved to America.

It’s a line I have used over the years to introduce myself. I use it in jest, and it gets a laugh. Most folks who hear it realize that New York City and the Northeast are worlds apart from the land between the coasts.

But I never realized how far apart until now.

Just before Halloween last year, Beth Lynch contributed a fascinating post about witch hazel, a native plant that blooms in the fall.

Since most Iowa wildflowers have gone to seed by late October, I’m reaching back to the late summer for this week’s edition. Marla Mertz took all of these photos in August while exploring prairie habitats in Wilcox Wildlife Area (Marion County).

Rose mallow (Hibiscus laevis) is native to most of the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains. Sometimes known as halberdleaf or halberd-leaved rose mallow, it thrives in “marshes, swamps, low areas along rivers and ponds, and soggy islands in the middle of rivers or ponds.” According to the Minnesota Wildflowers site, this plant is a “Robust grower but needs some water in dry weather.” The Illinois Wildflowers site concurs: “The preference is full or partial sun, fertile soil, and wet conditions. Flowers require exposure to sunlight to open up properly. This wetland species doesn’t like to dry out.”

Latest deep dive by Tyler Higgs on money in Iowa politics. -promoted by desmoinesdem

There’s nothing more Iowan than farming, and there’s nothing more dangerous than a corrupt politician. Those idyllic Grant Wood images of Iowa farms and hard-working Iowa farmers are being replaced by logos of the Big Ag monopolies that exploit the Iowa family farmer for financial gain. That is how you corrupt Iowa agriculture.

In this article, I will show the finances of both candidates for Iowa secretary of agriculture, Republican Mike Naig and Democrat Tim Gannon. You can decide who is fighting for the family farmer and who is in the pocket of big agribusiness companies.

The Cook Political Report changed its rating on Iowa’s fourth Congressional district today from “likely” to “lean” Republican. Although eight-term U.S. Representative Steve King carried this R+11 district by more than 20 points in 2016, several factors make a winning path for Democratic challenger J.D. Scholten seem more plausible than a few months ago, when forecasters moved IA-04 from “safe” to “likely” Republican.

Change Research announced last night that its new survey showed King leading Scholten by just 45 percent to 44 percent. The incumbent quickly released results from an internal poll by WPA Intelligence, showing King ahead by 52 percent to 34 percent, with 11 percent undecided and 3 percent inclined to support a third-party candidate.

FiveThirtyEight.com still gives King a 5 in 6 chance of winning a ninth term, but he could have set himself up much better for next Tuesday. Consider:

Iowa law prohibits corporate campaign contributions, so it seems like big news for a business lobby group to seek a “one-time investment of corporate funds” on behalf of a statewide candidate whose election “could return dividends for a decade or more to come.”

Yet media gatekeepers have mostly decided the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation’s plan to elect Republican Mike Naig as secretary of agriculture isn’t newsworthy.

While most print and broadcast outlets ignore the story, pro-Naig advertising that strongly resembles the Republican’s campaign messaging has reached hundreds of thousands of voters.

Robert Niederklopfer is a cartoonist and active Democrat in Des Moines. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Comic books taught me not to be anti-Semitic, and I have my anti-Semitic father to thank for that.

Bruce Lear on the stakes in this midterm: “Public education as we know it hangs in the balance,” which has never been the case before in Iowa. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In January 1976, I trudged through the Pella, Iowa snow to go to my very first presidential caucus because it was the “most important election of our lifetime.” I caucused with about eleven over-eager college students in the basement of the student union. We were a small but determined group. After all, it was a Democratic caucus in Pella, in January.

By the way, I caucused for Fred Harris, a little-known and soon-forgotten senator from Oklahoma. His only claim to fame was he drove around in a recreational vehicle and never used hotels. Instead, he stayed at supporters’ houses and in exchange, gave them a card good for one night in the White House. None were redeemed.

That’s how my involvement with the “most important election of our lifetime” began. For the next 30-plus years, every two years that phrase roared to life on radio, TV, and in countless mailings soon deposited in the circular file to be forgotten until the next most important election of our lifetime.

It got old. It got cliché–until now.

Mike Carberry remembers his friend and fellow Johnson County supervisor Kurt Friese, who was also an occasional guest author at Bleeding Heartland. -promoted by desmoinesdem

“Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.” –Paul Wellstone

A friend posted this on Twitter last Thursday evening and I reposted it. Friday afternoon our world was rocked by the news of the death of Kurt Friese. I immediately thought that quote was perfect for my first post about my dear friend, colleague, and comrade in arms.

President Donald Trump seems unable to behave appropriately in any situation, so his tone-deaf reaction to the murder of eleven people in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on October 27 was on brand.

A commentary by correctional officer Mark Masterson. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Can I introduce you to my friend and co-worker? His name is Jason Moats. Jason is running for Iowa House district 84, left open by retiring Republican State Representative Dave Heaton. This district includes Mount Pleasant, where I live and work.

ReShonda Young of Waterloo has been an advocate for small business owners on a variety of issues. -promoted by desmoinesdem

My U.S. House Representative Rod Blum, along with his Iowa colleagues David Young and Steve King, has repeatedly voted to take away health care from me, my brother, my employees, and many other Iowans.

This is personal for me, as it is for most of us. I have a serious health condition and, as a business owner, have employed people with serious conditions of their own.

John Norwood is a candidate for Polk County Soil and Water Commission. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Nutrient leaching from land use activities is a national issue. Solutions require systems thinking and robust financial support.

In some surprising news this week, Ohio Governor John Kasich, a former Republican presidential candidate with three months remaining in his term, fired his state’s Agricultural Director David Daniels over his slow response to Lake Erie algae. The algae are feeding on nutrients from fertilizers that drain into the lake and fuel these blooms. [Note to readers: In the State of Ohio like many others, the Governor appoints the state’s Agriculture Director.]

A year ago this week, State Auditor Mary Mosiman released the findings from her office’s only examination of the wide-ranging scandal surrounding former Iowa State University President Steven Leath’s use of university-owned airplanes.

To say the self-styled “taxpayer’s watchdog” failed to properly investigate Leath’s personal trips on the taxpayer’s dime would be an understatement.

Mosiman did not try to find out how many times Leath misused ISU’s airplanes or how much his personal travel cost the university. Because the auditor looked the other way, Iowans will never know the scope of a top official’s misconduct at a large public institution.

Katie Byerly shares her images of a rare wetland plant she researched and photographed this summer. -promoted by desmoinesdem

“It’s pinstriped!” was a comment regarding my picture of Grass of Parnassus, posted in the Iowa Wildflower Report Facebook group. Its green-veined petals makes this plant easy to identify. . . if you can find it.

Marsh Grass of Parnassus (Parnassia glauca), also called Fen Grass of Parnassus or Bog-Stars, grows in wet calcareous habitats like fens, open ground water seepage areas, and wet prairies. The Minnesota Wildflowers and Illinois Wildflowers webpages both comment on the rarity of these habitats and subsequently this flower. Calcareous means to contain calcium carbonate occurring on chalk or limestone, and that’s exactly where I found my grass of Parnassus.