Federal judge lets Iowa keep challenging voter rolls although naturalized citizens may be affected

DES MOINES, Iowa — A federal judge ruled Sunday that Iowa can continue to challenge the validity of hundreds of ballots from potential non-citizens, even as critics say the efforts threaten the voting rights of people who recently became U.S. citizens.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher, an appointee of President Joe Biden, sided with the state a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in Iowa’s capital, 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 election officials.

The Republican attorney general and secretary of state argued that investigating and possibly removing 2,000 names would prevent illegal voting by non-citizens. GOP officials in the US have allowed non-citizen immigrants to vote an important topic of discussion in the election year even it’s rare. Their focus is on former President Donald Trump wrongly suggest that his opponents are already committing fraud to prevent his return to the White House.

In his ruling on Sunday, Locher pointed out one The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling four days earlier allowed Virginia to resume a similar purge of voter registration, even as it affected some American citizens. He also cited the Supreme Court’s recent refusal to review a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision on election laws surrounding provisional ballots. These Supreme Court rulings advise lower courts to “act with great caution before granting last-minute injunctive relief,” he wrote.

Locher also said the state’s efforts are not removing anyone from the voter rolls, but rather requiring some voters to use provisional ballots.

In a statement on Sunday, Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, celebrated the ruling.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for election integrity,” Reynolds said. “In Iowa, we encourage all citizens to vote, but we will enforce the law and ensure those votes are not nullified by the illegal vote of a non-citizen. ”

A spokesperson for the ACLU said the organization had no immediate comment.

After Locher had a hearing in the ACLU’s lawsuit on Friday, Secretary of State Paul Pate and Attorney General Brenna Bird issued a statement saying that Iowa had registered about 250 noncitizens to vote, but that the administration -Biden did not want to provide data about them.

Pate told reporters last month that his office had to rely on a list of potential noncitizens from the Iowa Department of Transportation. It cited people who registered to vote or who voted after identifying themselves as noncitizens living legally in the U.S. when they previously sought a driver’s license.

“Today’s court victory is a guarantee to all Iowans that their votes will count and not be nullified by illegal votes,” Bird said in the statement issued after Sunday’s decision.

But ACLU attorneys said Iowa officials admitted that most people on the list are eligible to vote and should not have been included. They said the state is violating the voting rights of naturalized citizens by improperly challenging their registrations and investigating them when they vote.

Pate issued his directive On October 22, just two weeks before the November 5 election, attorneys for the ACLU argued that federal law prohibits such a move so close to Election Day.

“It is very clear that the Secretary of State understands that this list is composed primarily or entirely of American citizens who have exactly the same fundamental right to vote as the rest of us Iowa voters,” said Rita Bettis Austen, legal director of the ACLU. of Iowa, said during a Zoom briefing for reporters after the hearing.

The people on the state’s list of potential noncitizens may have become naturalized citizens after their declarations to the Department of Transportation.

Pate’s office told county election officials to challenge their ballots and let them cast provisional ballots instead. That would leave the decision of whether they will be included among local officials upon further review, with voters having seven days to prove their U.S. citizenship.

In his ruling, Locher wrote that Pate backed away from some of his original hardline positions during an earlier court hearing. Pate’s attorney said the secretary of state no longer plans to require local election officials to contest the votes of every person on his list or force voters on the list to submit provisional ballots even if they have proven their citizenship at a polling station.

Federal law and states already make it illegal for noncitizens to vote, and the first question on Iowa’s voter registration form asks whether someone is a U.S. citizen. The form also requires potential voters to sign a declaration that they are citizens, warning them that if they lie, they could be convicted of a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Locher’s statement also came afterwards a federal judge had stopped a similar program in Alabama is being challenged by civil rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice. Testimony from government officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the more than 3,200 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens.

In the case of Iowa, registered non-citizens may only make up a small portion of the state’s 2.2 million registered voters.

But Locher wrote that it appears to be undisputed that some of the names on Pate’s list are registered voters who are not U.S. citizens. Even if that portion is small, an order would effectively force local election officials to allow ineligible voters to cast their ballots, he added.

Democrats and Republicans have been at it an extensive legal battle for months about this year’s elections. Republicans have filed dozens of lawsuits challenging various aspects of voting after they were repeatedly rebuked by judges in 2020 for filing complaints about the way the election was conducted only after votes were counted. Democrats have their own team of dozens of staffers fighting GOP issues.

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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas, and Goldberg, from Minneapolis.