Nov. 3 unofficial election results

HOWARD COUNTY - (Disclaimer: All results are unofficial as of press time on Monday morning.) Polls closed at 9 p.m. in Howard County, but it wasn’t until two hours later they were released. This year had an unusually large number of mail-in ballots, both locally and nationally, and it took extra time to open all the ballots. 

Some states did not have enough help to open the envelopes and count the votes on election night. They waited until the next day. In addition, it took four days to announce Joe Biden as the presumptive President-elect of the United States for the next four years. 

 

Howard County

Howard County has a total of 6,386 registered voters with 4,996 ballots (absentee — 2,553; in-person — 2,443) turned in, for a rate of 78.23%.

Results are currently unofficial, until they are canvassed at a Nov. 10 Supervisor meeting. 

Several races had multiple candidates. The closest of which ended up being Supervisor District 3, to fill the vacancy left by the death of Jerry Steven. It had just 26 votes difference, a difference of 2%, with Dean Eastman (R) over Mike Bigley (D).

See graphs.

Races that only had one person running included:

County Auditor (1)

Julie Chapman

County Recorder (1)

Roxann Vokaty

Townships (1)

Albion: Gerald George

Forest City: Randall Cray

Chester: Jayden Burns

Oakdale: Janet Mayer

Jamestown: Darrel Harken

Saratoga: Kenneth Gronwoldt

Howard Center: Arthur Schwarzhoff

Vernon Springs: Chad Reinhart

New Oregon: Jeff Hrdlicka

Paris: Sylvester Mrachek

Howard: Glen Pietan

Afton: Gary L. Ries

Afton, to fill vacancy: Michael Marr

Soil and Water Conservation District Commissioner (3)

Brian Hrdlicka

Harlan Hickle

Bart Wilson

County Agricultural Extension Council (4)

Susan Easler

Rhonda Vobr

Dean Schwade

Dallas Linkenmeyer

County Agricultural Extension Council, to fill vacancy (2)

Jim Zajicek

Brent Mehmert

Judges

All were re-elected

 

Presidential

Howard County has been the topic of many national news media reports over the past four years. Some media were curious as to how the county could have flipped from Democrat to Republican by 40 percentage points. Representatives of their newspaper or network were eager to visit the county and chat with locals.

Democratic President Barrack Obama won the county in 2012 with 59.8% of the votes over Mitt Romney’s 38.8%, a difference of 21 points.

Then in 2016, residents cast their vote, and Republican candidate Donald Trump won the county with 57.9% over Hillary Clinton’s 37.1%, a difference of 20.8 points. That made the flip a total of 41.8 points.

This year, voters again went with Trump, with him winning over Joe Biden by even more, 27.35 points. Trump ultimately won the entire state.

 

U.S. Senate/House

Before the election, Democrats needed to flip just four seats to take the majority in the U.S. Senate.

The race between incumbent Joni Ernst (R) and Theresa Greenfield (D) was one that was of interest to many in the nation. Ernst held onto her seat, with 51.8% versus Greenfield’s 45.2% statewide total.

Republicans had a tougher time of trying to flip the House. In 2016, Republicans had 235 vs. 194 Democrats. It totally flipped in 2018 with Democrats having 241 vs. the Republicn 199. In 2020 the count was not in at press time, but showed Democrats with 215 vs. 196 for Republicans with 24 contests not called yet. The golden number is 218 for a majority.