Voters pass ballot measures in Sept. 10 special election

By Roz Weis,

The results are in from Tuesday’s special election, and both ballot measures for the Decorah Community School District passed.

Breakdown is as follows:

*Decorah School – Public Measure D, which extends the school district’s revenue purpose statement through 2051. Unofficial totals: 1,829 YES votes and 594 NO votes.

YES – 75.48%

NO – 24.52%

*Decorah School – Public Measure E – which increases the district’s debt service levy by 86 cents per thousand dollars of assessed taxable value to help finance a proposed new elementary school. Unofficial totals: 1,678 YES votes and 700 NO votes.

YES – 70.56%

NO – 29.44%

According to unofficial totals from the office of the Winneshiek County Auditor’s Office, an estimated 2,433 ballots were cast from 12,277 eligible voters in the county.

According to a news release from the office of Winneshiek County Auditor Ben Steines, the Decorah CSD Special Election had high turnout. For reference, the last Special School Election held for Decorah (and North Winn) was the School Consolidation Election in 2018, which had just under 1,000 voters participate. Some other bond referendums in recent years garnered between 1,500 and 1,800 voters. Steines noted it was an unexpectedly high turnout, and the polling site ran out of pre-printed ballots midway through the day. Steines made arrangements to have more ballots printed at a local print shop. Because of security features made into the pre-printed ballots, the votes cast at the end of the day needed to be hand-counted by the bi-partisan 5-person team of Precinct Election Officials working the polls on Tuesday. Steines reported no inconsistencies or irregularities with this process, with the only issue being that the results took a longer to be tabulated.

Steines reports that after the Sept. 10 Special School Election process wraps up, he will begin preparations for the upcoming General Election on Nov. 5. Candidate certifications have been finalized. Sample ballots should be posted on the County’s website by the end of next week.  Absentee voting for the November Election begins Oct. 16, with in-person voting at the Auditor’s Office and ballots going out in the mail that day.

Winneshiek County and Howard County voters also endorsed the Howard-Winneshiek School Public Measure changing the district’s revenue purpose statement to allow the district to borrow against future SAVE dollars. Unofficial reports indicated 205 YES votes and 42 NO votes cast.

See more details in Thursday’s Decorah Leader.

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