Iowa House modifies ‘election integrity’ bill, sends it back to Senate

DES MOINES - The Iowa House spent more than five hours Monday night debating a GOP-sponsored 'election integrity” bill it had passed earlier in the session.

Despite Democrats' labeling House File 516 a 'voter suppression” bill that also would raise costs to county taxpayers, the House voted 56-40 to amend the Senate version and send it back to that chamber for concurrence. The Senate earlier vote 26-21 to amend the House's original bill.

HF 516 would require all voters at the polls to provide proof of eligibility as well as all absentee ballot requests to contain a personal voter identification number.

That's a lot of changes - costly changes, Rep. Vicki Lensing, D-Iowa City, said during nearly 5 1/2 hours of debate. They would make changes to voter registration cards, absentee balloting, early voting and acceptable IDs to use when voting and proof of identity.

'It create barriers, hurdles, for Iowans without driver's license, the elderly, students, for minorities and chances are it will produce some problems for constitutionality,” she said. 'So it's evident we will need money for these constitutionality cases.”

'Efforts to improve this amendment were rejected by the body and at what cost? Not just in dollars. Not just in ease or access to voting, but in integrity,” Lensing said. 'This bill will cost us dearly.”

In route to approving the bill, the House amended it to postpone the absentee ballot provision until Jan. 1, 2018; take the bill back to the original House language saying the Secretary of State would issue the initial voter identification cards to the 5 percent of Iowans who are voters but don't have a driver's license or non-operator ID, with county auditors issuing subsequent cards. It also would postpone until Jan. 1, 2019, a provision that would allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries if they will be 18 by Election Day.

Among Democratic amendments were ones to require a voter ID be sent to every registered voter and another to require overnight delivery of those IDs, to expand the forms of ID accepted at the polls to include fishing licenses, public assistance cards, college IDs and credit cards, delay implementation until the state has had three consecutive fiscal years without a budget de-appropriation or spending cash reserves, upgrade the statewide voter registration system that now runs on Windows 95, restore 11 days of early voting cut in the Senate amendment and restore voting rights to felons who have served their sentence, parole or probation even if their fines, fees and restitution have not been paid.

They were defeated, largely along party lines, during debate that continued until 11:30 p.m.

l Comments (319) 398-8375; James.Lynch@TheGazette.com