On August 1, Pottawattamie County is going to find out if its current county supervisors plan is going to change.
The county currently has five supervisors elected on an at-large basis. The groups that led the petition drive to change it, according to KETV, want district-based representation where each candidate must live in the district and only that district votes.
Iowa Starting Line says that four of the five supervisors live in the western half of the county, two of those in Council Bluffs. Stories from both KETV and WOWT show that a likely district map would concentrate four of the five supervisors in Council Bluffs, while the rest of the county only gets one.
Similar representation issues have come up in Johnson County, but in the other direction. One Pottawattamie supervisor said this vote is “their plan B to get to get Democrats on board.” In Johnson, meanwhile, Republicans have won one supervisor seat in half a century, in 2013. It was a special election in a snowstorm with under 7% turnout.