Few voters turned out in Preston, only 8.7 percent of the 713 registered voters in town, and some of those were confused about who to vote for. Two of three open city council seats had candidates officially file to run by the deadline, but later former police chief Curt Gruver announced publicly he would be a write-in candidate.
It appears some folks thought it was Curt's son Chad, also a former Preston police chief, who wanted to be on the council and wrote his name instead. In the end, Curt Gruver received 21 write-in votes to his son's 15 to be elected to the city council.
* In Maquoketa's contested races, voters elected three young city leaders. Mayor-elect Jason Hute and Councilmen Eric Pape and Amy Moore have an average age of 31.3 years. Hute, 38, opined on why voters sent such a youthful team to City Hall.
"I think they see that we need new ideas and, in general, young people don't think so conservatively as the old guard," he said.
* Jackson County was one of 44 counties in Iowa to use electronic poll books at each poll site, according to Auditor M. Joelle Deppe.
"The Precinct Atlas program has the names of all the county's registered voters electronically on laptops, making it much easier to find names than with the large paper poll books. After our poll workers got over their apprehension about the new technology, they all loved it," Deppe said.
The new poll book program also was used in Clayton, Delaware and Dubuque counties.
