20 hours Ago By SARAH WATSON [email protected]
Davenport Democrat Monica Kurth will head back to the statehouse for another term. Kurth won by just 45 votes against opponent Republican Nathan Ramker, a total that remained pretty much unchanged after a machine recount of the more than 13,000 votes cast in the House District 98 race. The district represents west Davenport and Buffalo.
Ramker requested the recount. The recount was conducted by a three-member board consisting of people picked by each of the candidates and a judge-selected third member. The board fed ballots into machines as opposed to doing the recount by hand.
Kurth lost a vote in one precinct and gained a vote in another, Ramker said in an interview Monday, plus a situation with a write-in vote for Kurth, leaving the results essentially unchanged. Kurth recalled the same. With such little change, the board opted to stick with the initial tallies, the candidates said.
Democratic State Rep. Monica Kurth won reelection, a recount board confirmed, in a narrow race against Republican candidate Nathan Ramker to represent House District 98 in Buffalo and west Davenport. The recount finished on the afternoon of Tuesday, Nov.
26, ahead of Thanksgiving. “Everything went well,” Ramker said. “We just wanted to double check since it was so close.
Appreciate the work everyone put in to do it. It was an experience. We ended up doing better than we thought we were going to do.
” Ramker said they knew the recount “was kind of a long shot going into it” for the margin to swing by 45 votes in his favor. “We were there, we watched it all,” Ramker said. “They took every vote for Scott County and ran it through the machine and the tally didn’t really change at all.
” Kurth said it was a “relief to have the recount done.” “Even though people said it’s not going to change, you have this feeling of apprehension until it’s been determined,” Kurth said. “It was an interesting process, watching the recount.
There were a lot of people doing a lot of work for a lot of hours. I’m very grateful for the people who worked so hard to get this completed.” Votes cast on Election Day were counted by older DS 200 machines, said Scott County Elections Manager James Martin.
Absentee ballots were counted using DS 450s, which are newer and more powerful counting machines. After the District 98 recount board determined they would do a machine recount, they used the newer DS 450s to tally the ballots. Because the recount board accepted the initial tallies without change, the Scott County Board of Supervisors did not need to recanvass the results.
Diane Holst, Ramker’s recount board member pick, said she advocated for the board to do a hand recount or a combined by-hand and machine recount. But the Iowa Secretary of State handed down guidance that a so-called hybrid recount, in which some ballots are counted by machine and some by hand, would cause ballots to be handled unfairly and advised against it. Holst said she couldn’t convince the other members of the recount board to do a hand-count, which would’ve taken a long time.
The machines were not programmed to sort out ballots cast in a specific House race, meaning if the recount board had opted for a by-hand recount, members would have had to check every ballot by hand for the House District 98 race and then count the vote by hand. Martin said that the Secretary of State’s guidance to election workers was that the machine’s programming had to be the same as on Election Day, and the machine had not been programmed to sort out ballots of a specific statehouse race to count by hand. Holst said this inability to sort out the ballots with House District 98 made the possibility of a hand count look like an insurmountable task to the board members.
Recounts needed to be completed before the state’s board scheduled certification of Iowa’s results on Monday. “My candidate wanted a hand count to verify the results,” Holst said. “But with all the days that are allowed, you run out of time.
I couldn’t win the argument then. When you’re sitting with a wall of 233 boxes and are down to how many days before the deadline, nobody wants to do that. We would’ve had to go through every ballot checking for that race then count it by hand.
” Holst said she declined to sign off on the recount results in protest of the inability to conduct a hybrid recount. She emphasized, though, that the election workers did a “wonderful job”, and she thought that the counting process itself went very smoothly. However, she said she thinks state law should be changed to allow a hybrid method in order to lessen the hurdles for doing a human check of the machines.
While the the Kurth-Ramker race results remained mostly unchanged, Scott County's results for the southeast Iowa Congressional race did by a handful of votes. The Associated Press called incumbent Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican, the winner last week after the 20-county recount concluded.
Miller-Meeks won by about 800 votes. Democrat Christina Bohannan conceded the race. Iowa's state board of canvassers certified statewide results Monday, including the congressional race.
In Scott County, Miller-Meeks' vote total went down by one and Bohannan's went up by six, Martin told the Scott County Board of Supervisors Monday morning. There were no new ballots counted, Martin said. For the recount all the ballots were counted by newer, better scanners in the DS 450s, which caught some votes that were read as under or over votes by older DS 200s used for in-person Election Day vote counting.
Martin gave an example of someone not filling in an oval completely on Election Day. That may have been misread by the scanner in a DS 200, which is seven-year-old technology, but was read correctly by the DS 450, which is a year old. "Because of this discrepancy in the scanners, we have moved the replacement of the DS 200s up until before the next presidential election," Martin said.
"We want to make sure we have the best possible technology." President-elect Donald Trump visited the White House for a nearly two-hour meeting with President Joe Biden on Wednesday, and committing to a straightforward transition of power despite actively working to disrupt the same process four years ago. A string of Iowa voters stand in line outside the library on Fairmount in Davenport shortly after the polls opened on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, Montsho Mcnair votes in the Presidential election as her daughter, Tamadj Burch, and niece and nephew, Atlantis and Travis Lopez, wait patiently for her to finish filling out her ballot at the Martin Luther King Center on Tuesday, November 5, in Rock Island.
A man fills in his ballot for the presidential election at Western Illinois University-Quad Cities on Tuesday, November 5, in Moline. Post-voting stickers were available at ImpactLife, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, hoping some voters will take the time to donate blood before leaving their facility.
Iowa voters line the hallway at the library on Fairmount shortly after the polls opened on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Davenport. Iowans took to the polls like this voter pictured at ImpactLife in Davenport on Tuesday, Nov.
5, 2024. A poll worker hands out "I voted" stickers to voters at the Martin Luther King Center on Tuesday, November 5, in Rock Island. A voter using an electronic voting machine to cast his ballot at Martin Luther king Center on Tuesday, November 5, in Rock Island.
Poll workers help voters at Western Illinois University-Quad Cities on Tuesday, November 5, in Moline. Mandy Babcock is pictured with her daughter Katy, 18, and Ben, 21, prior to casting their vote on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, at ImpactLife in Davenport.
Both Katy and Ben are first-time voters. A voter fills out his ballot at Western Illinois University-Quad Cities on Tuesday, November 5, in Moline. A roll of stickers sits on a table at Western Illinois University-Quad Cities on Tuesday, November 5, in Moline.
A voter fills out their ballot at Martin Luther King Center on Tuesday, November 5, in Rock Island. Voting booths are set up at the Martin Luther King Center on Tuesday, November 5, in Rock Island. Election workers pack up polling equipment after the polls closed at the UAW Hall on Tuesday, November 5, in East Moline.
Polling place signs are brought inside after Illinois polling closes at UAW Hall on Tuesday, November 5, in East Moline. Election judge Brad Burkland brings a "Vote Here" sign indoors after the polls closed in Illinois on Tuesday, November 5, in East Moline. Mandy Babcock is pictured with her daughter Katy, 18, and Ben, 21, prior to casting their vote on Tuesday, Nov.
5, 2024, at ImpactLife in Davenport. Both Katy and Ben are first-time voters. A poll worker hands out "I voted" stickers to voters at the Martin Luther King Center on Tuesday, November 5, in Rock Island.
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