Linn County officials in spat with Linn-Mar over pre-election postcards

CEDAR RAPIDS - Linn County officials are in a spat with representatives of the Linn-Mar Community School District over a voter turnout initiative designed by Linn County Auditor Joel Miller, the cost of which local school districts are being asked to pay.

Linn-Mar Superintendent Katie Mulholland has told Miller that the district won't pay $4,892.91 for postage for bright-yellow information postcards that went out to district residents before an April 1 special election on a physical plant and equipment levy or PPEL.

'It's a matter of principle,” Mulholland said this week. 'And actually, I don't believe that it is the county auditor's role to perform a get-out-the-vote campaign (for a school-district vote).”

Miller brought the issue up this week with the Linn County Board of Supervisors. he said it's been a top priority of his after seven years in office to increase the number of people who vote, particularly in school district votes where voter participation routinely is abysmally low.

He said people especially have complained to him about being left in the dark when special school district votes are being held on tax or bonding issues.

'If you believe what people say, school districts are very selective about who they inform about school elections. That's not me. That's people complaining to me,” Miller said.

In March, Miller began mailing out postcards to voters to inform them that a vote was coming up and where and when to vote. The first cards went to voters in the Linn-Mar school district and the Center Point-Urbana school district, both of which subsequently approved ballot measures during April 1 special elections.

Miller, who lives in the Linn-Mar district, said the district never reached out to his address to let him know about the special election.

'I'd be more than happy to have discussion (with the Linn-Mar school board) about this because I belong to that district myself, and I wasn't informed of this election in any manner except by me sending a postcard to myself,” Miller said.

Any conclusions drawn from election data compiled by Miller's office - which compares the four school-district special elections in 2014 in which postcards were sent out to previous elections when they were not - is open to debate, Miller said. Generally, more people vote on tax and bond matters than in routine elections of school board members, he said some will argue.

According to county election numbers, 4.7 percent of voters voted in September 2013 in the Cedar Rapids school district on a PPEL issue without Miller's postcards, and 7.6 percent voted after postcard notification in September 2014.

Linn-Mar saw its participation increase from 1.2 percent to 4.5 percent with postcards, but the comparison is between the September 2013 school board election and the April 2014 vote on PPEL, a money issue.

Similarly, Springville school district saw its turnout go from 4.9 percent to 44.1 percent and Center Point-Urbana from 9.6 percent to 27.5 percent with postcards, but the comparisons are between regular school board elections and votes on money issues.

Nonetheless, Miller's data shows smaller percentage increases in the Central City and North-Linn school districts - 4.5 percent to 9 percent, and 10.9 percent to 22.6 percent - between regular school board elections and subsequent votes on money issues when no pre-election notification cards were sent out.

Mulholland said the Linn-Mar district had its own aggressive public-information effort before its April 2014 vote on the PPEL, which she said easily could be the reason for any uptick in voting in the district. In turn, most of Miller's postcards might have gotten lost in the mix of mail that gets little notice before it ends up in the trash, she said.

The Linn County Board of Supervisors generally agreed this week that the county again should ask the Linn-Mar district to pay the $4,892.91 bill for postage on the pre-election postcards.

At the same time, Supervisor Lu Barron said Miller's postcard initiative is new, and said she would have contacted the Linn-Mar district first to let them know about the postcards and the expense. Even so, she said she just had taken down from her refrigerator the yellow postcard she received from Miller's office before the Cedar Rapids school district PPEL vote on Sept. 9.

For his part, Supervisor Brent Oleson said voters have some responsibility to keep informed about elections, and he said he was not sure about another upcoming initiative of Miller's to register voters on Cedar Rapids city buses.

However, in the dispute with the Linn-Mar district where he lives, Oleson called the Miller's postcards a 'valid expense” that he expected the school district to pay.

'It's frustrating to me that Linn-Mar won't bat an eye for a $5 million football stadium,” Oleson said. 'But we're going to war for a $4,000 effort to increase voter turnout in these school elections when a tiny fraction of the population votes and we've been talking about trying to increase this? So I want to do whatever we can to collect this.”

Miller said the Center Point-Urbana school district has paid the $816.18 postage bill that his office billed it.

The bills for two other postcard campaigns have not yet gone out to the Cedar Rapids and Springville school districts for special September votes.

Dave Benson, Cedar Rapids school superintendent, said this week that the Cedar Rapids school district supports voter turnout, and he said the district 'certainly had a better voter turnout” for the September 2014 PPEL vote than the September 2013 PPEL vote.

Miller's postcards went out for the just completed PPEL vote, but did not in 2013. The PPEL passed this time, too, and failed in 2013.

Benson said he had not seen Miller's bill for the postcards and so it is 'premature” to comment on it and whether the district would pay it.