(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s secretary of state is proposing that candidates in Iowa school board and city elections file the petitions to get their names printed on ballots with their county auditor. School board secretaries and city clerks have been handling that paperwork for years. However, at least 34 local candidates were left off ballots this past November after city clerks and school board secretaries in seven counties missed the deadline for submitting the petitions to county auditors.

The bill also clarifies when recounts are permitted in bond elections that require 60 percent approval. Cerro Gordo County Auditor Adam Wedmore is president of the Iowa State Association of County Auditors, which backs the bill. “It’s making some timely tweaks to current election law,” Wedmore said. “It does clean up some of the things that we have found over the last few elections.”

The bill would give county auditors authority to decide when to convene the boards that count absentee ballots on election day. Under current law, those boards are required to begin at 9 a.m. That would continue for statewide and federal elections, but officials say in low-turn-out elections for bonding issues or city and school board elections, it doesn’t take that much time to count absentee ballots.