Early voting started today in South Dakota, and also in Minnesota, for the first opportunity by people in the Siouxland region to cast ballots in the 2024 general election that ends on November 5.
Early voting, often still called by the longstanding phrase of absentee voting, will also begin in the area on October 7 in Nebraska, and October 16 in Iowa.
In addition to the presidential contest, there are a host of congressional, legislative, county and special ballot measures that will be on the tri-state ballots.
Additionally, the Nebraska Secretary of State’s office has received several questions and complaints regarding early voting applications being sent from third-party organizations and campaigns.
That Nebraska office in a release noted that those aren’t coming from the state office, but are from organizations seeking to get people to vote. County election offices in Nebraska began sending their own early voting postcards to their respective early voters in July and August.
*In other news, officials in Crawford County, Iowa, and the city of Denison are continuing work to build a new Crawford County Wellness Center costing roughly $18.5 million.
The wellness center has been sought by some residents, and most all the needed funding has been set. This month, the Denison City Council held a special meeting to accept bids for some of the construction work.
The center will contain a rarity, with indoor soccer fields, that some see as a key piece that could draw people to Denison. There will also be a multi-use gym, a walking track on the second level, and many pieces of exercise equipment.
It will be located at the corner of North 16th Street and Eighth Avenue North, adjacent to Denison High School. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in July.
Denison City Manager Jessica Garcia told Siouxland Public Media that the Crawford County Wellness Center ideally will be finished by 2026. The construction pieces were set in two bid packages, and now both are done, with the construction manager to be a firm from Fort Dodge.
Revenues have come from grants, federal funding, substantial fundraising and more. Currently, the city of Denison and Crawford Counties have directed money to the wellness center.
*Additionally, recent research from Iowa State University shows that Iowa’s private well owners aren’t testing their water regularly enough.
The study showed that only 5 to 10 percent of well owners test their water annually. Bacteria, nitrate, and arsenic have all been detected in Iowa wells, which over time lead to various health complications.
Catherine DeLong is the Water Quality Program Manager for Iowa State University-Extension. She says one of the barriers to testing is a misunderstanding of what quality well water should be.
“I think a lot of the time, private well owners think that if you have a private well, it’s a normal thing to have bacteria, but it really isn’t. It means there’s something potentially structurally unstable with the well, that there’s a way for things from the surface to get into the well, so it is something to take seriously,” DeLong said.
About 230,000 people in Iowa rely on private wells for their drinking water.
*Iowa Auditor Rob Sand held events throughout Siouxland on Friday, as he continued his town hall tour of visiting all 99 counties in Iowa.
Sand had previously planned the events, but late June catastrophic flooding in Northwest Iowa moved him to postpone those. The places that Sand held town hall meetings through 4 p.m. Friday were in Lyon, Sioux, Plymouth, Cherokee, O’Brien, and Osceola counties.
Other elected officials, such as U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, also annually carry out holding events in all 99 Iowa counties.
