When Iowa Republicans enacted new restrictions on absentee voting in 2021, they increased the risk of voting by mail. At least 150 ballots (and probably more) that Iowans mailed before the June primary election were not counted because they arrived too late.

The latest figures released by the Iowa Secretary of State’s office suggest that more than 35,000 absentee ballots requested for this general election had not reached county auditors by the close of business on November 2. In Polk County alone, 7,636 ballots mailed to voters are still outstanding.

If you have not yet returned your absentee ballot for the November 8 election, do not put it in the mail now. All ballots must arrive at the county auditor’s office by 8:00 pm on election day. Late-arriving ballots will not be counted, regardless of any postmark or barcode on the envelope. Many of the ballots not counted in the June primary were mailed several days before that election.

Here are four options:

Below are the edited remarks Nick Covington made in Des Moines at the Public Funds for Public Schools press conference, organized by Progress Iowa on November 2.

My name is Nick Covington. I taught social studies at Ankeny High School from 2012 to June of this year. As a teacher, I saw first-hand that most Iowans, including teachers and parents, want the same thing: strong, quality public schools that give every student the freedom to reach their full potential. All students, no matter what they look like or their zip code, deserve the freedom to learn and succeed. 

Governor Kim Reynolds’ website currently reads: “School choice allows public education funds to follow students to the schools or services that meet their needs—and allows parents to choose what’s best for their children, whether that’s a different public school, a private or charter school, home school or other learning environment.”

Emma Schmit is senior Iowa organizer with Food & Water Action.

The hazardous carbon pipeline proposals rocking Iowa are on the ballot this year. Next year’s legislative session will be key to stopping these dangerous pipelines. Iowans need to elect leaders who will stand up for their constituents, not scheming carbon pipeline corporations. 

“Here in this field of dreams that we call home, anything is possible,” Governor Kim Reynolds declares near the end of her last television commercial before the November election.

Although the ad is superficially upbeat, its script and carefully chosen images convey an exclusionary message. To Reynolds, the place “we call home” is for people like herself: straight, white Christians from rural areas.

It’s another divisive move for a candidate who already spent heavily to bring racist tropes to Iowans’ tv screens.

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

It is safe to assume Kirk Ferentz has not enjoyed the glorious autumn in Iowa the way he would prefer.

He has feverishly worked his Bubble Yum during the Hawkeyes’ games this season. He has been worked over during his post-game press conferences and again at his weekly meetings with the media on Tuesdays.

Being a college football coach is never a picnic. But this year, life for the longest-tenured football coach in big-time college athletics has been more stressful than most years.

We saw that last week when the normally measured coach referred to the media session with journalists following the Hawkeyes’ 54-10 loss to Ohio State University as an “interrogation.” 

But I come today to sing Kirk Ferentz’s praises, not to dog-pile on him.

Bruce Lear: Voters must stop reacting to red meat appeals and start voting like compromise isn’t a dirty word.

A few times during my career, a problem-solving meeting morphed into a scene from the Walking Dead. 

Adrenaline surged and the sides shifted into attack mode. Anger trumped reason. Both sides worked to score a knockout. By the end, no one remembered why we met. Everyone was hungover from anger and worn out from attacks. Nothing was solved.

What happened in those meetings reminds me of what our elections have become. Based on recent polling, it’s not a surprise. 

According to a recent NBC News nationwide poll, 80 percent of Democrats and Republicans “believe the political opposition poses a threat that, if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.”

You’ve likely read about some of the Broadlawns candidates, so please allow me to introduce myself.

I’m a trilingual CPA who has worked in a dozen countries and lived in Brazil. I experienced what it is to be a minority in a different country, with or without a language barrier. My languages and multi-cultural experiences enhance reaching out to help Polk County residents achieve better health outcomes and lower the long-term cost of care.

I often see health disparities while serving clients in my private CPA practice. I’ve helped some clients qualify for Obamacare or expanded Medicaid programs to improve access to care and reduce their out-of-pocket costs for that care.

State Representative John Wills bragged in a recent Facebook post that he had reassured an elderly housebound voter, who was worried about getting an absentee ballot. The third-ranking Iowa House Republican told the story to show the “mantra that Republicans are trying to prevent people who don’t think like us from voting is false.”

More than a dozen Iowa Republican lawmakers and legislative candidates liked Wills’ self-congratulatory post.

There was just one problem: thanks to changes Wills and his colleagues enacted in 2021, the deadline for that woman to request an absentee ballot had already passed.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

“It could be worse.”

At the start of 2022, friends may have uttered those four words to console or comfort us.

As the midterm elections approach, those four words may be prophetic.

Every election in a democracy —from township to presidency — is threatened by voters who are ill-informed, misinformed, and/or uninformed.

What’s going on with early voting in Iowa after new Republican-backed laws restricted the practice in many ways?

Overall numbers are way down compared to the same point in the previous two midterm election cycles, and Iowa Republicans are further below their early voting benchmark than are Democrats.

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register, where this essay first appeared. He serves as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

Hang in there, it won’t last much longer. This election cycle is winding down, although a new season will begin even before we fully understand what took place this go-‘round. With politics top of mind, I drove to Charles City last week to meet with someone about whom I’d heard positive reports.

This someone is Dené Lundberg, her first name rhyming with “Renee.” Dené seeks to represent House District 58 in the Iowa legislature.

“Strong Island Hawk” is an Iowa Democrat and political researcher based in Des Moines. Prior to moving to Iowa, he lived in Washington, DC where he worked for one of the nation’s top public interest groups. In Iowa, has worked and volunteered on U.S. Representative Cindy Axne’s 2018 campaign and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 caucus team. 

Agents from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation division took the rare step in May of raiding Alliantgroup, a Houston-based firm specializing in energy tax credits Senator Chuck Grassley helped enact. Alliantgroup and its executives are frequent donors to Grassley; its National Managing Director, Dean Zerbe, is a former high-ranking Grassley staffer.

Months later, little is known about the raid, which followed IRS subpoenas and requests for documents. Some have speculated that the investigation is focused on Alliantgroup’s use of tax credits, including one provision Grassley and Zerbe had a big role in adding to the tax code.

Penny Vossler is the Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 48.

A letter to the Republican Party of Iowa:

What were you thinking? I received a mailer last week calling me “too liberal” (which is not quite the insult you think it is) and containing ridiculous lies – the same lies being told about many Democrat candidates across the nation – and vague statements with no details.

Zach Elias grew up in Bettendorf and is a graduate student in philosophy who studied at the University of Dubuque.

I consider myself a curious person. Sometimes that quality has been to my benefit. Sometimes it has been to my detriment.

My curiosity particularly emerges during any election season. Every time, my political voice is reenergized when I see signs in the yards of my neighbors, political ads, and announcements of candidates coming into town.

The first cold winds of the winter season call an end to a fun, untethered summer. The beautiful fall leaves in the frame of the big combines put me in a reflective mood. Who wouldn’t stop to admire all the change? It’s as if nature knows a big decision looms, and is doing its best to sober you up from the summer sun.

Senator Joe Bolkcom has represented Iowa City in the legislature since 1999.

Governor Kim Reynolds continues to take victory laps for how she has managed the COVID-19 pandemic. She touts her efforts to be the first state to command kids back to school and to keep Iowa “open for business,” as Iowans were filling hospital beds and clinging to life on ventilators.  

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

Polling is fundamentally broken, and political forecasting is broken as a result. As a result reporting on politics is broken and focuses on minor differences in polling, rather than discussing what the candidates believe and want to accomplish in office.

Some of the biggest misses in 2016 and 2020 came from what were once thought to be gold-standard pollsters. The most accurate pollsters turned out to be firms with right-wing associations like Trafalgar. The 2020 polling misses were not uniform—they were not as large in Nevada or Georgia—and no one is really sure why. There are various theories.

Let’s start with the data.

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

I try to stay atop the day’s news. But I must have dozed off last week — because I missed the response from Iowa Republican leaders to the Biden administration’s announcement of $1.3 billion in debt relief to 36,000 farmers who have fallen behind on their farm loan payments.

In making the announcement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “Through no fault of their own, our nation’s farmers and ranchers have faced incredibly tough circumstances over the last few years. The funding included in today’s announcement helps keep our farmers farming and provides a fresh start for producers in challenging positions.”

I am not here to question the wisdom of the federal assistance. But the silence from Governor Kim Reynolds and U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst is markedly different from their criticism after President Joe Biden announced in August that the government would forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loans for most borrowers.

John and Terri Hale own The Hale Group, an Ankeny-based advocacy firm focused on making Iowa a better place for all. Contact: terriandjohnhale@gmail.com.

It was October 1973. A recent college graduate took the oath of office as an employee of the federal government in Ottumwa, Iowa. He swore to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic….”

He would spend the next 25 years as a public servant focused on Social Security and Medicare, working with colleagues across the nation to make complex laws understandable and to ensure that people were treated fairly and served well.

That young man was one of this column’s authors.

Anne Schechinger is Senior Analyst of Economics for the Environmental Working Group. This report first appeared on the EWG’s website.

A new EWG analysis has found that the overwhelming majority of Midwestern counties with increased precipitation between 2001 and 2020 also had growing crop insurance costs during that period due to wetter weather linked to the climate crisis. 

In all, 661 counties got a crop insurance indemnity payment for excess moisture at some point during that period, adding up to $12.9 billion – one-third of the $38.9 billion in total crop insurance payments for all causes of loss in these counties.

This is the first analysis of the link between recent wetter Midwestern weather caused by climate change and rapidly ballooning crop insurance payments in the region for crops that have failed or been harmed by rain, snow, sleet and other wet weather – issues lumped together by the federal Crop Insurance Program under the term “excess moisture.”

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has built her political brand by highlighting her expertise as a doctor and former director of the Iowa Department of Public Health. Her official communications and campaign advertising routinely play up her medical background.

So it’s disheartening to see Miller-Meeks join the ranks of Republican politicians who spread falsehoods about COVID-19.

She just did it again in Davenport.