(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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County attorney will not prosecute recent election misconduct [1]
['Jared Strong', 'More From Author', '- February']
Date: 2023-02-13
A candidate for the Carroll County Board of Supervisors illegally acted as a poll watcher in her election last week, but the crime will not be prosecuted, the county attorney said Monday.
Cindy Scaturico, a Carroll Republican, handily won a vacant seat on the board in a special election — 601 votes to 396 — to replace another Republican who resigned in December. But Scaturico also was a poll watcher designated by her party who went to at least two polling sites in contravention of state law.
“It just didn’t occur to me to say, ‘Gee, I wonder if a candidate can be a poll watcher or not,’” said Craig Williams, a Carroll County Republican leader and former state senator. “And perhaps I should have known it, but I didn’t.”
Political parties can deputize up to three people to oversee voting, but state law bars candidates from those roles. Violations of that provision are considered misdemeanor election misconduct and are punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,560.
The violation was first reported by the Coon Rapids Enterprise. Its publisher, Charlie Nixon, witnessed Scaturico at a local polling site on Election Day, which was Feb. 7.
On Monday, as the sitting supervisors held a meeting to certify the results of the election, County Attorney John Werden, a Republican, said no one would be prosecuted for the infraction because there was no “willful” violation.
Additionally: “If every vote in those precincts was thrown out, the winner is the same,” he said. “So I see no bearing on the results of the election.”
The three supervisors who attended the meeting — two Republicans and one Democrat — voted to certify the results of the special election.
“I think we need to be more cognizant of what the rules and regulations are,” said Gene Meiners, the lone Democrat on the board. “But this should not happen, especially when we’re spending $10,000 for a special election.”
Election misconduct was a focus of new state legislation in 2021, when Republican lawmakers passed an “election integrity bill” that restricted absentee and early voting and implemented new penalties for election officials who violated state law.
The Iowa Attorney General’s Office, which under proposed legislation would have a greater role in prosecuting election misconduct, did not respond to a request to comment about the situation.
“If you’re going to ignore violations of election laws, then you’re setting a precedent for future elections,” said Tim Tracy, the Democrat who lost the election to Scaturico. “Do the election laws matter? Do we just do whatever we want to do?”
Scaturico could not be reached to comment for this article.
Werden said if anyone were to be prosecuted, it would be County Auditor Kourtney Payer, a Republican, whom he expects to certify poll watchers. Payer said she does not have final say on who watches polls but that she notified Williams and Scaturico via email on Election Day after the polls opened that Scaturico could not act in that role because she is a candidate in the election.
She further notified the Secretary of State’s Office, which oversees elections. Payer said the office told her to refer the matter to the county attorney.
“I did have permission,” Scaturico said during the Monday supervisors meeting. “I did everything that I knew to do. And as soon as I was made aware that there was an issue, we changed course.”
Nixon, the newspaper publisher, was the first to question Scaturico’s presence at the Coon Rapids polling site, where he went to report on the election that afternoon.
“When I recognized her at the precinct, I just said, ‘Gee, Cindy, what are you doing?’” Nixon said. “I was standing right between her and the precinct workers, and I said, ‘Do you know who this is?’ And they shook their heads ‘no,’ and I said, ‘Well, this is the candidate.’ And I don’t think any of them for sure realized the significance of that.”
The significance wasn’t lost on Democrats who demanded a response to the election violation.
“To have it open and in the public is important, and to have some consequences because it is a violation,” C.J. Niles, a Carroll resident, said during the Monday meeting.
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