Washington County canvases election results

The Washington County Board of Supervisors canvassed results from last week’s city and school elections at the end of its board meeting Tuesday morning.

Washington County Deputy Election Administrator Sue Meeks said the process would make results official in most of the county’s city elections, but not its school elections.

"For school boards, we go into other counties and they go into our county, so we have to share our information from today and then do a final canvas,“ Meeks said. ”This is final for cities, except for Coppock, because it is a shared city.“

Finalized numbers didn’t change the winners of any city elections, but they did name the victors of write-in races, which were not available on election night. That’s a big deal for West Chester, where only two names — incumbents Ronald Carey and Justin Banks — were on the ballot for the city’s five council seats.

Bryan Tobin, Julie Tobin and Andrew Barnhart were the three write-in winners elected to the West Chester City Council, bringing in 19, 12 and 12 votes respectively. The three will serve their two-year terms alongside Carey and Banks, as well as Mayor-elect Vanessa Wasson.

Even if they didn’t win, the canvas announced names for write-in candidates who exceeded 5% of the vote, including Riverside candidate Travis Riggan, who totaled 85 write-in votes in the Riverside City Council election, 25 ballots shy of the number needed to tie for an at-large council seat.

While school election results have yet to be officially compiled, tentative data from the Iowa Secretary of State’s website suggests results are unlikely to change.

In the hairsplitting Mid-Prairie school board election, the one-vote difference between third place Candidate Jake Snider and fourth place Candidate Abbie Yoder grew to a 16-vote gap when accounting for ballots in Iowa and Johnson counties, which the district also reaches.

The three-county tally does up the district’s historical election turnout to an even 2,900 ballots cast, shattering its turnout records in recent memory, despite a similar spike of 2,200 voters in 2019.

With all Washington school board races adding fewer than five out-of-county votes and no competitors in Highland’s school board races, Washington County’s other school races look similarly unlikely to change.

As for Coppock, Washington County’s results also seem likely to hold true. With only three out-of-county ballots tallied in the state compilation of unofficial results, Dakota Knerr, Dustin Palmer and Jennifer Stoderl still appear to lead the race for city council.

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com