Iowa state officials are asking a court to require the federal government to share some Iowans’ citizenship information so the state can determine who is ineligible to vote.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in federal court by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate.
The Republicans’ lawsuit asks the court to require U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to “promptly” provide the immigration and citizenship status of each person on a list of 2,176 Iowans provided by the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office.
“The State seeks the information to ensure that its elections were and will be safe and secure,” the lawsuit states. “The ‘purpose authorized by law’ was investigating to determine whether criminal conduct occurred in connection with an election and to ensure the integrity of future Iowa elections.”
Pate’s list was composed of Iowans who live in the United States legally but at some point indicated to the state transportation department that they were not full U.S. citizens. Pate developed the list in his effort to ensure no Iowans without U.S. citizenship attempted to vote illegally in the 2024 elections.
Pate tried to get information on the 2,176 individuals’ citizenship from the federal agency. According to Pate’s office, the agency’s office in Des Moines went over the list and prepared the information sought, but the lead office in Washington, D.C., would not permit the information to be shared with Iowa state officials.
According to the lawsuit, Citizens and Immigration Services told the state in an email it could not release the information to the state because the list of names would “require extensive research and review by multiple oversight offices.”
ADVERTISING
“The role of Iowa Secretary of State requires balance between participation and integrity. We have identified solutions that will allow us to verify voter eligibility at registration — not at the time of voting,” Pate said Tuesday in a joint news release with Bird. “The combination of access to the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) list, citizenship verification already completed by USCIS, and the ability to verify using social security numbers will not only make processes more efficient but will also provide another important tool in our toolbox to safeguard our elections process.”
For the November election, Pate instructed elections officials to require any individual on the list to vote via a provisional ballot, which gave those voters a week to provide proof of U.S. citizenship.
The ACLU of Iowa and the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa sued Pate’s office over the policy less than a week before the election, but a federal judge ruled that Pate’s directive could continue.
Some county auditors were able to determine the citizenship of residents in their counties before Election Day. At least 200 Iowans’ ballots were challenged in the state’s most populous counties, according to what those counties’ auditors told The Gazette.
Some auditors discovered examples of noncitizens having voted or registered to vote in previous elections, both of which are Class D felonies in Iowa, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $750 to $7,500.
In a statement, the ACLU of Iowa and ACLU National called the Iowa lawsuit “a waste of time and money” and accused Pate of using faulty and dated state data and alleged that due to his directive, “perhaps thousands of naturalized citizens were improperly targeted and challenged at the polls.”
"Studies, journalistic efforts, and repeated attempts by government officials in Iowa and nationally have found very few noncitizens who have voted out of the many millions of people who vote,” the ACLU statement said. “This wasteful lawsuit isn’t going to change that. State leaders should spend their time on actual problems that face our state.”
Bird, in the joint news release, said her office filed the lawsuit to force Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration to release “the election integrity data that it has been hiding from Iowa.”
“The Biden-Harris administration knows who the hundreds of noncitizens are on our voter rolls and has repeatedly refused to tell us who they are. But the law is clear: voters must be American citizens,” Bird said in the statement. “Together, with the (Iowa) Secretary of State, we will fight to maintain safe and secure elections that Iowans can count on.”
When asked why the state did not file the lawsuit before the election, when a ruling in its favor could have produced the citizenship information in time to be useful for the Nov. 5 general election, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office said it had hoped the federal government would deliver the information without the state “having to resort to a lawsuit.”
The spokeswoman said Pate’s office would “continue to ask for the information and exhaust every avenue available to us.”
The lawsuit asks the court to require the federal agency to “promptly” provide the immigration and citizenship status of all 2,176 individuals on Pate’s list without cost, and cover the state’s attorney fees and other litigation costs.
In the lawsuit, the state claims there are 65,000 people registered to vote in Iowa whose citizenship the state cannot verify. There are nearly 1.8 million active registered voters in Iowa as of Dec. 1, according to Iowa Secretary of State figures.
“The federal government has those resources,” the lawsuit states. These are individuals who registered to vote in Iowa without using an Iowa-issued driver’s license or ID card, according to the lawsuit.
“Those voters have never had their citizenship status verified,” the lawsuit says. “Thus, it is possible for a non-U.S.-citizen to register to vote without using a driver’s license or ID card.”
www.thegazette.com
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in federal court by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate.
The Republicans’ lawsuit asks the court to require U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to “promptly” provide the immigration and citizenship status of each person on a list of 2,176 Iowans provided by the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office.
“The State seeks the information to ensure that its elections were and will be safe and secure,” the lawsuit states. “The ‘purpose authorized by law’ was investigating to determine whether criminal conduct occurred in connection with an election and to ensure the integrity of future Iowa elections.”
Pate’s list was composed of Iowans who live in the United States legally but at some point indicated to the state transportation department that they were not full U.S. citizens. Pate developed the list in his effort to ensure no Iowans without U.S. citizenship attempted to vote illegally in the 2024 elections.
Pate tried to get information on the 2,176 individuals’ citizenship from the federal agency. According to Pate’s office, the agency’s office in Des Moines went over the list and prepared the information sought, but the lead office in Washington, D.C., would not permit the information to be shared with Iowa state officials.
According to the lawsuit, Citizens and Immigration Services told the state in an email it could not release the information to the state because the list of names would “require extensive research and review by multiple oversight offices.”
ADVERTISING
“The role of Iowa Secretary of State requires balance between participation and integrity. We have identified solutions that will allow us to verify voter eligibility at registration — not at the time of voting,” Pate said Tuesday in a joint news release with Bird. “The combination of access to the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) list, citizenship verification already completed by USCIS, and the ability to verify using social security numbers will not only make processes more efficient but will also provide another important tool in our toolbox to safeguard our elections process.”
For the November election, Pate instructed elections officials to require any individual on the list to vote via a provisional ballot, which gave those voters a week to provide proof of U.S. citizenship.
The ACLU of Iowa and the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa sued Pate’s office over the policy less than a week before the election, but a federal judge ruled that Pate’s directive could continue.
Some county auditors were able to determine the citizenship of residents in their counties before Election Day. At least 200 Iowans’ ballots were challenged in the state’s most populous counties, according to what those counties’ auditors told The Gazette.
Some auditors discovered examples of noncitizens having voted or registered to vote in previous elections, both of which are Class D felonies in Iowa, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $750 to $7,500.
In a statement, the ACLU of Iowa and ACLU National called the Iowa lawsuit “a waste of time and money” and accused Pate of using faulty and dated state data and alleged that due to his directive, “perhaps thousands of naturalized citizens were improperly targeted and challenged at the polls.”
"Studies, journalistic efforts, and repeated attempts by government officials in Iowa and nationally have found very few noncitizens who have voted out of the many millions of people who vote,” the ACLU statement said. “This wasteful lawsuit isn’t going to change that. State leaders should spend their time on actual problems that face our state.”
Bird, in the joint news release, said her office filed the lawsuit to force Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration to release “the election integrity data that it has been hiding from Iowa.”
“The Biden-Harris administration knows who the hundreds of noncitizens are on our voter rolls and has repeatedly refused to tell us who they are. But the law is clear: voters must be American citizens,” Bird said in the statement. “Together, with the (Iowa) Secretary of State, we will fight to maintain safe and secure elections that Iowans can count on.”
When asked why the state did not file the lawsuit before the election, when a ruling in its favor could have produced the citizenship information in time to be useful for the Nov. 5 general election, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office said it had hoped the federal government would deliver the information without the state “having to resort to a lawsuit.”
The spokeswoman said Pate’s office would “continue to ask for the information and exhaust every avenue available to us.”
The lawsuit asks the court to require the federal agency to “promptly” provide the immigration and citizenship status of all 2,176 individuals on Pate’s list without cost, and cover the state’s attorney fees and other litigation costs.
In the lawsuit, the state claims there are 65,000 people registered to vote in Iowa whose citizenship the state cannot verify. There are nearly 1.8 million active registered voters in Iowa as of Dec. 1, according to Iowa Secretary of State figures.
“The federal government has those resources,” the lawsuit states. These are individuals who registered to vote in Iowa without using an Iowa-issued driver’s license or ID card, according to the lawsuit.
“Those voters have never had their citizenship status verified,” the lawsuit says. “Thus, it is possible for a non-U.S.-citizen to register to vote without using a driver’s license or ID card.”
Iowa’s Bird, Pate sue feds to release citizenship information requested before election
Pate, the state’s top elections official, had requested federal citizenship information for more than 2,000 Iowans in his effort to prevent non-citizens from voting in the Nov. 5 elections
www.thegazette.com
