SIOUX CITY, Iowa (Iowa Media Wire) — Woodbury County held its 2024 post-election audit Thursday afternoon at the Woodbury County Courthouse.
The audit is required by law. After an election, Iowa’s Secretary of State will randomly draw a precinct from each county to hand count the votes to make sure that the ballot machines accurately counted them properly.
This year’s random selection turned out to be one of the smallest precincts for Woodbury County, where only 10 votes had to be counted. It was a prime showcase of just how small this year’s turnout was.
“We had under 5,000 people vote, so about seven percent of what the registered voters are in Woodbury County,” Woodbury County Commissioner of Elections Pat Gill said. “So there obviously wasn’t a lot of interest in these elections that we held yesterday, the primary elections. It seemed to be something that people were paying attention to, yet they didn’t turn out.”
Gill believes that the low turnout number could be due in part to the new restrictions on absentee voting.