City election recounts confirm Steffens as Ward 3 winner and need for run-off election for Waukon Council At-Large

While most of the results from the Tuesday, November 5 city elections made for clear-cut winners of available city government and administration seats, a pair of races in the Waukon City Council election lingered on for an extra week, with one of those races still being unsettled and requiring a run-off election to determine a winner.

A late write-in campaign by candidates seeking the three Waukon City Council seats and the Mayor of Waukon leadership position resulted in a pair of recount situations in the week following the election. A recount of Waukon's Ward 3 Council seat was requested by incumbent Councilman John Ellingson following his narrow loss to write-in challenger Don Steffens. That recount was held Tuesday, November 12 and served to confirm Steffens as the winner of that Ward 3 seat by a vote count of 102-82.

The At-Large Council position is the one Waukon City Council seat that remains unsettled, as an initial vote count placed incumbent Councilman Joe Cunningham in front of write-in challenger Darrold Brink, but difficulties with the closing out of the voting machine in Waukon's Ward 2 and the closeness of the race results prompted Allamakee County Auditor Denise Beyer to request an administrative recount. Following that administrative recount held Friday, November 8, the results of the election showed that Cunningham received 312 votes while write-in challenger Darrold Brink received 304 votes. However, with 628 votes cast in that race, neither candidate received more than 50% of the votes cast.

Waukon's City Code requires a run-off election in such cases of no simple majority (50% plus one vote) won by either candidate, so that election has been scheduled for Tuesday, December 3. Brink also requested a recount of the votes cast in Wards 1 and 3 for the at-large council seat due to the closeness of the race, but that recount, also held Tuesday afternoon, November 12, resulted in no significant change in the results of that election.

Cunningham remained the race leader with 311 votes, topping Brink's 299 votes, but his vote percentage of 49.68% did not earn him more than 50% of the total votes (16 ballots cast in the race were either votes for other write-in candidates or unvoted), so the run-off election scheduled for Tuesday, December 3 will go forward as planned. Further details of that run-off election, along with views from candidates Joe Cunningham and Darrold Brink, will appear in a future edition of The Standard prior to the December 3 election.