(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson is among a bipartisan group of lawmakers airing concerns about the delivery of absentee ballots for this year’s election. Hinson and other members of a House subcommittee quizzed the head of the U-S Postal Service during a hearing late last week.

Hinson mentioned the letter election officials from around the country sent Postmaster General Louis DeJoy earlier this month. The letter cited concerns the Postal Service had not made improvements to address the late delivery of absentee ballots that prevented those votes from being counted in 2022 and 2023 elections.

DeJoy says a year-round task force in the Postal Service has been focused on delivering mail-in ballots and he’s having meetings with Postal Service executives twice a week to review progress. Hinson asked DeJoy how complaints about ballot delivery issues will be handled.

DeJoy told lawmakers the Postal Service is pausing its consolidation of mail processing centers in October and the first half of November, to accommodate absentee ballot deliveries. The Republican who led the committee said those changes have caused broad problems with the delivery of all mail. Hinson, a Republican from Marion, says those are major systematic changes and Iowans want delivery problems fixed.

DeJoy says nearly all mail-in ballots in the last presidential election were delivered within seven days, which he describes as the commonsense and recommended time frame for processing and delivering mail.

[UPDATED] (Radio Iowa) – A Sioux City man was found dead in his pickup after it went off Interstate-29 and into the Missouri River Friday. Sioux City Police Sergeant Tom Gill says it happened around 5:30 p-m Friday.

Gill says a passenger in the truck was able to get out and made it to shore.

The driver has been identified as 55-year-old Delana Jackson of Sioux City. The passenger in the truck has not been identified.

(Greenfield, Iowa) – The Adair County Sheriff’s Office reports a man from Nebraska was arrested Thursday morning (Sept. 26) in Nebraska. 56-year-old James Mut Nyang, of Bellevue, NE, was picked-up from Nebraska authorities, on an Adair County warrant for Violation of Probation. Nyang was being held in the Adair County Jail on a $2,o00 bond.

(Radio Iowa) – Dozens of utility workers from Iowa are now in Ohio, helping restore electricity to thousands of homes and businesses in areas where the remnants of Hurricane Helene caused widespread damage over the weekend. Geoff Greenwood, a spokesman for MidAmerican Energy, says they sent about 70 line workers and support crews to Cincinnati after staging with their big bucket trucks in Des Moines and Davenport on Friday night.

There are areas of the south and southeastern U-S that were much harder hit by the storm’s remnants than Ohio, and Greenwood says the Iowa crews that are now in the Cincinnati metro are expecting to get another assignment very soon.

It’s still unclear where the Iowa crews will be heading next to lend a hand.

At the peak, about 140-thousand Cincinnati area customers were without power, and by 9 A-M on Monday, only three-thousand or so remained offline, so the Iowa crews should be wrapping up there very soon. While Ohio is a long way from the ocean, the former hurricane still caused severe damage.

Des Moines-based MidAmerican Energy serves 820,000 electric customers in Iowa, Illinois and South Dakota, and 797,000 natural gas customers in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota.