Supervisors break tie vote for Shannon City council seat

Gary Richie’s name was drawn by Union County Board of Supervisors Monday to break a tie vote between write-in candidates for one of the Shannon City Council seats.

Gary Richie and Glen Hoyt Jr. each received the same number of votes for one of the two council seats. As per legislation, supervisors draw one of the names to determine a winner. Chairman Rick Friday drew the name. There were no formal candidates for either seat. Randy Lilly received four votes for the other seat.

“Your vote does make a difference,” said supervisor Dennis Hopkins while reviewing the results from the Nov. 7 election of city councils and school boards.

One of the Creston City Council seats was decided by one vote.

Supervisors will continue the canvass next week. Auditor Sandy Hysell, whose office oversees elections, said additional results will be reviewed next week. Southwestern Community College board members are from an expansive section of the region involving multiple counties which are also canvassing results.

Hysell said there were no significant issues with the Nov. 7 election although new equipment and software had some minor issues that had no impact on the final tallies. Hysell said the Iowa Secretary of State office asks for an audit of an election question in each county. The one for Union County was the race for Afton Mayor. The audit reflected the final results.

“It went really well,” Hysell said about the day.

Voter turnout in the county was about 19%. Since 2019, Iowa voters have had city council and school board member elections on the same ballot. School elections had been in September. Iowa legislators thought combining the elections would improve voter turnout. Hysell said the combined election does have its challenges as school district boundaries, school districts that do not have all at-large members and city limit borders create multiple ballots.