DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa election officials in each of the state’s 99 counties will hand count votes in one randomly selected precinct for the general election as an added security measure.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate says the manual vote count process was added to Iowa’s election security process in a 2017 law and will be used for the first time in Iowa this year.

Pate says his office will select a precinct in each county and officials will hand count votes to be sure the totals match the electronic counter that scanned and counted ballots. Iowa uses paper ballots counted by machines.

Pate said Monday personnel from homeland security, public safety, Iowa National Guard, and the Iowa chief information office will oversee an election day security operations center to respond if any problems develop.

The Iowa State Patrol says a man from Prairie City died during a collision between his van and a pickup pulling a piece of ag equipment. 50-year old Rex Lynn Chickering was driving a 2015 Chevy van eastbound on Highway 163 in Jasper County, when he ran into the back of an implement being pulled by a slow-moving pickup truck. The accident happened at around 8-a.m. today (Monday).

Chickering died at the scene. The driver of the pickup, 53-year old Curtis Wayne Kaisand, of Monroe, was injured and transported by ambulance to the hospital in Pella. The accident remains under investigation. Earlier reports indicated Chickering may have been blinded by the sun prior to the collision.

MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa (AP) — Attorneys for an Iowa father charged in the death of his infant son are challenging the potential makeup of the jury. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports that Zachary Koehn is charged with murder and child endangerment. Police say officers found the maggot-infested body of 4-month-old Sterling Koehn in an infant swing on Aug. 30 last year at the couple’s Alta Vista apartment. The baby’s mother, Cheyanne Harris, is having a separate trial. His trial was moved to Henry County because of pretrial publicity in Chickasaw County .

Defense attorney Steven Drahozal asked the court last week to reconsider the jury pool because of an under-representation of Latino or Hispanic people. Drahozal says Koehn has a Hispanic or Latin background and is entitled to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community. The attorney says that of the 82 people who indicated their race on the jury questionnaire, only 2.4 percent marked Hispanic or Latino.

Des Moines – The Iowa Finance Authority and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources today (Monday) announced that 58 Iowa communities have received a total of more than $171 million in low-interest loans through the State Revolving Fund to assist in advancing water quality projects.  State Revolving Fund Construction Loans are a low-cost construction financing option available for Iowa cities and municipalities for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure. Planning & Design Loans are zero percent loans that assist with the first-phase of project expenses. In the KJAN listening area:

• The City of Lewis was awarded $225,00 for Sewer Planning and Design.
• Council Bluffs Water Works was awarded $5.025-million for Water Transmission Improvements.
• Denison Municipal Utilities was awarded $10.206-million for Sewer Treatment improvements.
• Malvern was awarded $228,000 for Water Planning and Design.
• Manning was awarded $436,000 for Sewer Transmission Improvements.
• Mt. Ayr was awarded $275,000 for Water Transmission Improvements.
• And Winterset was awarded $105,000 for Sewer Planning and Design.

Iowa Finance Authority Interim Executive Director Carolann Jensen said “The State Revolving Fund has loaned more than $3.4 billion to more than 600 Iowa communities to date and we look forward to helping to advance many more water quality improvements.” Iowa Department of Natural Resources Acting Director Bruce Trautman said “The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is proud to partner with the Iowa Finance Authority to provide communities with affordable, accessible financing that will allow them to move pertinent water quality projects forward.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provides annual capitalization grants to states. Leveraged bonds and loan repayments expand the reach of the federal investment. More than $3 in assistance has been leveraged for Iowa water quality projects for every $1 of federal funds. The State Revolving Fund has awarded Iowa communities and municipalities with more than $3.4 billion in Construction Loans and more than $198 million through Planning & Design Loans since the program’s inception.  The low-interest loans have saved communities millions of dollars in interest. More information is available IowaSRF.com