Earlier today we told you about the shenanigans taking place in the Scott County Auditor’s office. If you haven’t read it, please do.
Conservative Republican Luana Stoltenberg won on election night by 29 votes according to the Scott County Auditor’s website and by 24 votes according to the Iowa Secretary of State. There were a total of 10,110 votes in the House District 81 race until this administrative recount.
Now there are 80 more votes. And the total votes end with 10,190. How crazy the numbers both are perfectly round numbers.
After the administrative recount, Stoltenberg trails 5,093-5,087.
One major red flag is the fact the Secretary of State’s website had Stoltenberg winning by 24 votes while the Scott County Auditor had her winning by 29 votes. Those numbers didn’t even add up.
And we are told that every day the recount missed the mark. The numbers never reconciled.
The Secretary of State’s Office said the country experienced “issues” with reporting accurate results of its absentee ballots on election night.
“Accuracy is the most important factor in elections, and we want to make sure the results are correct before they are certified,” Secretary of State Paul Pate said. “The checks and balances we have in place caught the error and I extend my thanks to Scott County for fixing it in a transparent, bipartisan manner. The integrity of Iowa’s elections is once again upheld.”
We’ve asked how this happened and why it happened. We’ve asked where these ballots were found and how they were found. We’ve asked if images of these uncounted ballots exist showing the ballots are properly postmarked and should legally be counted.
All of those questions remain unanswered.
The Secretary of State’s Office said the ballots were in possession of the “bipartisan” Absentee and Special Voters Precinct Board on Election Day.
“We are sending a letter of inquiry to the Scott County Auditor to determine what human error caused them to not be counted on election night. However, we are confident they are lawful ballots that were accepted and eligible for counting. Today’s publicly attended machine and hand recounts returned the same number and we are also confident in those numbers.”
