December 12, 2024
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A federal judge ruled Sunday that Iowa can continue challenging the validity of hundreds of ballots from potential noncitizens.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher, an appointee of President Joe Biden, sided with the state in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in the Iowa capital of Des Moines on behalf of the League of Latin American Citizens of Iowa and four recently naturalized citizens. The four were on the state’s list of questionable registrations to be challenged by local elections officials.
The state’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state argued that investigating and potentially removing 2,000 names would prevent illegal voting by noncitizens. GOP officials across the U.S. have made possible voting by noncitizen immigrants a key election-year talking point. Their focus has come with former President Donald Trump suggesting that his opponents already are committing fraud to prevent his return to the White House.
In his ruling Sunday, Locher pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court decision four days prior that allowed Virginia to resume a similar purge of its voter registration rolls. He also cited the Supreme Court's recent refusal to review a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision on state electoral laws surrounding provisional ballots. Those Supreme Court decisions advise lower courts to “act with great caution before awarding last-minute injunctive relief,” he wrote.
Locher also said the state's effort does not remove anyone from the voter rolls, but rather requires some voters to use provisional ballots.
In a statement on Sunday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, celebrated the ruling.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for election integrity," Reynolds said. "In Iowa, while we encourage all citizens to vote, we will enforce the law and ensure those votes aren’t cancelled out by the illegal vote of a non-citizen.”
After Locher had a hearing in the ACLU’s lawsuit Friday, Secretary of State Paul Pate and state Attorney General Brenna Bird issued a statement saying that Iowa had about 250 noncitizens registered to vote, but the Biden administration wouldn’t provide data about them.
Pate told reporters last month that his office was forced to rely upon a list of potential noncitizens from the Iowa Department of Transportation. It named people who registered to vote or voted after identifying themselves as noncitizens living in the U.S. legally when they previously sought driver’s licenses.
"Today’s court victory is a guarantee for all Iowans that their votes will count and not be canceled out by illegal votes,” Bird said in the statement issued after Sunday's decision.
Federal law and states make it illegal for noncitizens to vote, and the first question on Iowa’s voter registration form asks whether a person is a U.S. citizen. The form also requires potential voters to sign a statement saying they are citizens, warning them that if they lie, they can be convicted of a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
In Iowa’s case, noncitizens who are registered are potentially only a tiny fraction of the state’s 2.2 million registered voters.
But Locher wrote that it appears to be undisputed that some portion of the names on Pate’s list are registered voters who are not U.S. citizens. Even if that portion is small, an injunction effectively would force local election officials to let ineligible voters cast ballots, he added.
