Iowa sues Biden administration seeking citizenship status of over 2,000 registered voters

DES MOINES —  Iowa officials sued the Biden administration Tuesday for access to information on the citizenship status of more than 2,000 registered voters they had challenged in the weeks leading up to last month’s election.

The complaint details a back-and-forth with the federal government after state election officials checked voter rolls against a list of people who had identified themselves as noncitizens with the state’s Department of Transportation. The vast majority of the 2,176 individuals had subsequently voted or registered to vote. Some of them could have become naturalized citizens in the time that lapsed.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate’s office requested information from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on the citizenship status of those individuals but did not receive it, the complaint alleges. The Associated Press left email messages with Homeland Security on Tuesday seeking comment on the lawsuit.

Federal authorities’ “failure meant that the State had to rely on the best — imperfect — data it had available to ensure that no Iowan’s vote was canceled by an illegal, noncitizen vote,” a joint statement from Pate and state Atty. Gen. Brenna Bird said.

Two weeks before election day, when early voting was underway, Pate told county election officials to challenge those voters’ ballots and have them cast provisional ballots instead.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa then sued Pate on Oct. 30 on behalf of four naturalized citizens who were named on the list, calling into question the accuracy of the Department of Transportation’s information and alleging that Pate had infringed upon their right to vote. Their request to stop the ballot challenges was denied by a federal judge on Nov. 3.

It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and there has been no indication that they are doing so in significant numbers, though Iowa and some other states say they have identified some such cases — numbering in the dozens.

Some individuals in Iowa had registered to vote or voted before identifying themselves as noncitizens to the Department of Transportation, so Pate’s office sent those names to law enforcement agencies, including Bird’s office, for investigation and potential prosecution. But Pate’s critics have said even those individuals might be wrongly identified as noncitizens since the Department of Transportation data has proved unreliable.

Pate’s office has not released any additional information on the number of individuals who turned out to vote, whose ballots were challenged or whose citizenship status was ultimately confirmed. The Des Moines Register reported that, based on preliminary information collected from 97 of the state’s 99 counties, at least 500 of the identified individuals proved their citizenship status and had their votes counted.

An additional 74 ballots were rejected, according to the Register, mostly because those who cast them did not return to prove their citizenship status.

The majority of the people on Pate’s list did not vote in the 2024 election, according to the Register’s data from county auditors.

Concern about elections being undermined by noncitizen voting had been a focus of political messaging this year from Donald Trump and other Republicans, even though such voting is rare.

Since no voters had been removed from Iowa’s lists, Pate tried to differentiate Iowa from other states, such as Virginia, where more than 1,600 voters were purged from the registration list in the last two months in a program enacted through an Aug. 7 executive order from GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

The U.S. Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued Virginia in early October, arguing that state election officials were violating the legal mandate for a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of elections. The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority said that Virginia could proceed.

Ahead of the election, Pate said the Department of Transportation’s information was the “only list” available to state officials unless they gain access to federal immigration records.

“We’re balancing this process. We want everyone to be able to vote. That’s why none of them have been taken off the voter rolls,” he said. But “we do owe an obligation to make sure that they are citizens now.”

Fingerhut writes for the Associated Press.