Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro said during a taping of Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” that he supports some changes to Iowa’s caucus system to quiet criticisms and make it more accessible.
I think the caucuses are fantastic, they’re great for our state, they work, we’re the most informed voters in the country but I also agree… we need to make improvements, we need to make it more accessible and I think the party has got to work that way and we’ve got to watch that fine line between caucus and primary. We’ve got our partner out there who has been very supportive of us, at least in the last election in New Hampshire, who wants to keep that first primary. But we can tweak these caucuses and I think they should be even with the crowds that they had this year and all the participation that they had there’s all kinds of ways, that’s one of them to make sure we get everybody to participate.
Mauro, Iowa’s chief election official, said he was open to ideas such as changing the caucus night from a week day to a weekend and allowing absentee voting. He also said he the state should look at funding for poll watchers for caucus night, but didn’t go so far as to say he supports the idea.
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