DES MOINES, Iowa— Iowa officials sued the Biden administration on Tuesday to obtain information about the citizenship of over 2,000 registered voters, whom they had questioned in the weeks leading up to the 2024 election.
The lawsuit discusses the back-and-forth with the federal government after state election officials matched voter records to a list of people from the state’s Department of Transportation who claimed they were not citizens. After some time, the majority of the 2,176 names had either registered to vote or voted, implying that some of those individuals may have become naturalized citizens.
According to the lawsuit, Secretary of State Paul Pate’s office requested information from the United States Department of Homeland Security about those individuals’ citizenship status but did not receive it.
Because the federal government failed, the state had to rely on the best, if imperfect, data available to ensure that no Iowan vote was invalidated due to an illegal, noncitizen vote, Pate and Attorney General Brenna Bird said in a joint statement.
In an email on Tuesday, a DHS representative stated that the federal agency does not comment on cases that are still in litigation. The spokeswoman also stated that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has “engaged with Iowa and will continue to correspond with them directly through official channels.”
Early voting began two weeks before Election Day, and Pate directed county election officials to dispute any of the mentioned people’s ballot cases and have them vote provisionally instead.
On October 30, the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa filed a lawsuit against Pate on behalf of four new citizens who appeared on the list. They said Pate infringed their right to vote and put the DOT’s information into question. On November 3, a federal judge denied their motion to stop ballot challenges.
Non-US citizens are not able to vote in federal elections, but there is no evidence that many of them do so. Some jurisdictions, such as Iowa, claim to have discovered dozens of incidents of this happening.
Some Iowans registered to vote or voted before informing the DOT that they were not citizens, so Pate’s office forwarded their names to police and Bird’s office for investigation and possible prosecution. persons who disagree with Pate argue that even those persons could be incorrectly identified as noncitizens because DOT data isn’t always reliable.
The ACLU and the ACLU of Iowa agreed that the state could obtain the necessary information from the federal government as long as it did not abuse it.
The statement continued: “Out of the many millions of people who vote, studies, news reports, and repeated efforts by government officials in Iowa and across the country have found very few non-citizens who have voted.” “This pointless court case won’t change that.” Our state’s leaders should focus on the real issues.
Pate’s office has not released any additional information regarding how many people went to the polls, had their votes challenged, or had their citizenship status certified. Based on preliminary data from 97 of the state’s 99 counties, the Des Moines Register discovered that at least 500 of the identified individuals were citizens and had their votes tallied.
Another 74 votes were rejected, largely because the senders did not confirm citizenship.
County officials told the Register that the majority of persons on Pate’s list did not vote in the 2024 election.
This year, President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans have expressed concern about noncitizens voting in American elections, even though this occurs infrequently.
Pate attempted to distinguish Iowa from other states, such as Virginia, where more than 1,600 persons have been removed from the voter registers in the last two months as part of a program launched by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s order on August 7.
In early October, the Justice Department and a collection of private groups sued Virginia, alleging that election officials violated federal law by breaching the “quiet period” that begins 90 days before an election. The appropriate majority in the United States Supreme Court ruled that Virginia could proceed.
This was before the November 5 election. Pate stated that the DOT information was the “only list that we have available to us” because they were unable to get federal immigration records.
“We’re keeping this process in check.” We need everyone to be able to vote. So, none of them have been removed from the list of eligible voters, he said. “But we do have a duty to make sure they are citizens now,” he claimed.
