By BY SETH BOYES, DECORAH LEADER WITH ROBIN OPSAHL, IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate (Photo submitted)
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate announced on March 20 that his office had confirmed a total of 277 noncitizens either voted or registered to vote during the November 2024 general election — about 12 percent of the individuals state officials initially suspected. Pate’s office said 35 ballots cast by noncitizens in November were included in the state’s final totals. About 1.67 million Iowans voted during the 2024 election, according to totals from the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office.
Winneshiek County Auditor Ben Steines previously said nine individuals in Winneshiek County were listed as potential noncitizens by Pate’s office, but none of the individuals were ultimately required to cast provisional ballots. The county auditor previously reported to the Winneshiek Board of Supervisors that eight of the local voters on Pate’s list provided appropriate documentation, establishing their right to participate in the November election — Steines had said the ninth individual was listed as residing at Luther College in 2017, which he said might indicate the person was a student there at the time and may no longer reside in the area.
Pate had issued guidance to Iowa’s county auditors in mid-October of 2024, directing poll workers to challenge the ballots of more than 2,000 individuals the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office suspected were not U.S. citizens. The voters were labeled as potential noncitizens after an audit conducted by Pate’s office found that, in the past 12 years, the individuals had identified themselves to the Iowa Department of Transportation or another government entity as noncitizens and had registered to vote or participated in elections. Pate said this directive was necessary, adding the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services initially would not share access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — or SAVE — database and allow the state to confirm the individuals’ status. He and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird filed a federal lawsuit in December accusing USCIS of unlawfully withholding information from the state as it worked to confirm the list voters’ citizenship status — federal officials have since provided access to the database.
“Access to the SAVE program has allowed the Iowa Secretary of State’s office to significantly reduce the former estimate of 2,176 potential noncitizens to 277 confirmed noncitizens,” Pate’s office said in a statement last week, later adding that information on noncitizens confirmed to have illegally participated in the election was to be turned over to the Iowa Attorney General’s Office and the Iowa Department of Public Safety.
Opponents of the decision responded to Pate’s initial guidance by claiming most of the voters listed by Pate’s office had gained citizenship in the years since they identified themselves as noncitizens. Advocacy groups also argued thousands of voters would be unfairly subjected to additional scrutiny in order to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Several individuals affected by Pate’s instructions — including Orcun Selcuk, a professor at Luther College who was born in Turkey and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2023 — joined the League of United Latin American Citizens in filing a federal case, naming Pate and election officials in five Iowa counties — including Winneshiek County — and requesting a preliminary injunction to block Pate’s guidance.
“The secretary’s scheme discriminates against naturalized citizens by creating a process that, by design, burdens the right to vote for many recently naturalized citizens, while imposing no burden at all on U.S.-born citizens,” the League of United Latin American Citizens wrote in a motion filed in late October of 2024. “Voters who are similarly situated — all are citizens who attested to that fact when they registered to vote — are treated differently, with Iowa citizens who were not born in the United States, and only that class of citizens, subjected to voter challenges requiring them to prove their citizenship at the polls. The program thus creates a suspect classification that discriminates against naturalized citizens and treats persons differently with respect to a fundamental right based on that classification.”
U.S. District Southern District Judge Stephen Locher noted in a decision filed Nov. 3, 2024, that Pate’s instructions placed local election officials in what he called “an untenable position.”
“On the one hand, they face criminal sanctions for failing to follow Pate’s guidance,” Locher wrote. “On the other, they also face criminal sanctions for performing their duties in a way that hinders the Iowa Legislature’s goal of allowing all eligible citizens to vote. This conflict is more than abstract.”
Locher went on to note Pate had “backed away from the bright-line positions” outlined in the initial letter sent to Iowa’s county auditors earlier that year and would no longer be challenging the eligibility of the voters involved in the lawsuit who had confirmed their citizenship as part of the case.
“Likewise, but more generally, Secretary Pate has advised county commissioners not to challenge the ballots of persons know by the commissioners or other local election officials to be United States citizens,” the judge wrote.
Locher ultimately denied the request for an injunction, saying the Secretary of State’s guidance had not caused irreparable harm to the affected voters and saying the context of Pate’s instructions was an important consideration.
“Secretary Pate did not impose an extra, across-the-board requirement on all naturalized United States citizens in Iowa,” Locher wrote. “Instead, his office compared voter registration records with Iowa Department of Transportation records to identify inconsistencies in self-reported citizenship status. In other words, it was the inconsistency that resulted in a name appearing on his list, not national origin in and of itself. As a result, in contrast to the 79,000 naturalized United States citizens in Iowa, there are only 2,176 names on Secretary Pate’s list. This is less than 3 percent. And even that number is falling thanks to Secretary Pate’s clarification that local election officials retain discretion not to challenge the eligibility of voters on the list of 2,176.”
Jonathan Topaz, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the organization was disappointed in Locher’s decision, which the ACLU felt threatened to “disenfranchise eligible voters simply because they are people who became citizens in the past several years.” Topaz went on to say the ACLU was glad the case did result in the individual voters named as plaintiffs being able to cast standard ballots later that month.
Last week’s statement from Pate’s office said 18 of the 35 noncitizens found to have illegally voted in November cast standard ballots on Election Day, while another 15 successfully voted using absentee ballots and another two cast provisional ballots — ballots which reviewed by election officials before being counted — which were ultimately accepted. Another pair of noncitizens submitted absentee ballots which were rejected, according to Pate’s office, and three more cast provisional ballots on Election Day which were also rejected. The Secretary of State’s Office also said 22 noncitizens who were registered to vote in 2024 did not cast a ballot in November.
Pate went on to note in his March 20 statement that state lawmakers are currently considering proposals from Pate’s office related to the maintenance of Iowa’s voter list, and the proposed legislation would allow Iowa’s Secretary of State to verify a voter’s citizenship at the point of registration. The legislation, Senate File 550, has received committee approval in the Iowa Senate but had yet to be debated on the floor as of press time.
Pate is also pursuing legal action against U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The lawsuit asks the federal government to provide information Pate’s office said would streamline citizenship verification and allow election officials to compare voter registration lists with the SAVE program data using social security numbers.
“Maintaining election integrity is a team sport, and we need cooperation from multiple agencies, including the federal government,” Pate said in last week’s statement. “We are hopeful that between our legislative proposals and this lawsuit, we will have the tools we need to verify voter eligibility during the voter registration processes, allowing us to ensure, in the future, only eligible Iowa voters are participating in Iowa elections.”
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