The county reports a 70% voter turnout with 58% of votes from absentee voting. | Stock Photo
The county reports a 70% voter turnout with 58% of votes from absentee voting. | Stock Photo
The Muscatine County auditor recently reported a record 70% voter turnout for the recent election, according to an article by the Muscatine Journal.
“I thought (the election) went pretty well,” Auditor Leslie Soule told the Muscatine Journal, as her team was cleaning up and packing things away until the next election. “Everything went smoothly, for the most part. I think we had our ballots all counted by around 10:15-10:20 at night.”
Soule said that the turnout and absentee voting set new records for Muscatine County and of the 70% voter turnout, 58% was absentee voting, a sharp increase from the county’s usual 40% absentee voting.
“We’ve made it pretty close to 70% before, but we’ve never actually hit it before,” Soule told the Muscatine Journal. “We’ve also never hit over 20,000 voters before. We usually hit around 19,000. Not a huge difference from previous years, but definitely a record both ways.”
Soule believes that these high numbers are the result of a presidential election year, with both sides vigorously encouraging their supporters to vote.
“We had a couple who were 90 years old that came in and had never voted before,” Soule told the Muscatine Journal.
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