Iowa’s 2021 election reforms were misguided

Weeks ago, we voted in local city and school elections. In a couple more weeks, Iowa legislators reconvene for the second half of the 89th legislative session. Last year, they made extensive changes to state voting laws through Senate Files 413 and 568 on top of the substantial changes of 2017’s House File 516.

Iowa legislators are, of course, state employees — employees of the voters. Now that we’ve tried all of these changes out for one election, let’s see how well they’ve performed.

These laws modified everything from candidates’ signature requirements to absentee ballot processes. Writ large, the changes fall within two categories. One set affected the voting process. Examples include shrinking the early voting period from 40 days to 29, then to 20 days; prohibiting your friends from returning your ballot for you; and closing the polls earlier.

The other set affected how elections are run. Examples include giving political parties (not just candidates) standing to challenge election results; restricting county auditors’ local control of elections; and adding serious penalties for auditors’ errors.

Why make these changes? Many nonpartisan groups assert that these laws are blatant voter suppression. But Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, one of the bills’ proponents, claims that they were designed to “[protect] Iowans’ right to vote and … [add] certainty and security to it.”

“Election security” could mean many things. Legislators said they were focused on preventing voter fraud, on stopping someone from stealing another’s ballot or identity.

Voter fraud is extraordinarily rare. In Iowa specifically, there were 12 cases of election misconduct in 2019 and 2020, out of more than 2 million ballots cast during that period. Similarly, 2012 to 2016 included only 15 felony charges.

We’ll allow our charity to border on naivete by assuming that voter fraud, which occurs in at most 0.0025 percent of votes cast, merits serious action. Would these laws address it?

Sadly, they would not. Closing the polls earlier adds no security. A mail delay does not make a ballot any less legitimate. Giving auditors less time to follow up on ballot irregularities seems, if anything, to make the process less secure.

These new restrictions also fail their stated goal of protecting Iowans’ right to vote. The shorter time frame for early voting and ballot requests, combined with longer mail delivery times, caused more than 500 citizens’ absentee ballot requests to be refused in just 3 of our 99 counties. More than 200 of those citizens didn’t vote, perhaps because they were snowbirds or military personnel and could not vote in person.

At least 200 Iowans were disenfranchised in a single election through laws meant to prevent 12 cases of fraud over a two-year period.

Embarrassingly, the 2021 laws were passed while real problems in our state election laws were on national display. The 2nd Congressional District’s near-draw election was before the House of Representatives. A bill meant to add “certainty” to elections should have addressed the inconsistent recount procedures and limited recount resources that were at issue. Nothing in either 2021 law did so.

These changes impose serious costs on Iowans without fixing the problem they are allegedly meant to address. And they ignore more pressing issues.

We’d be deeply embarrassed to present such shoddy proposals to our bosses, and our lawmakers should be, too. Legislators need to step up, admit their error and reverse course. You can encourage them to do so by signing the League of Women Voters of Iowa’s petition to repeal these changes (lwvia.org/petitions). To head off future problems, also encourage Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst to prevent ill-conceived election meddling by passing the Freedom to Vote Act.

Shannon Patrick and Kelcey Patrick-Ferree live in Iowa City. Shannon is a member of the board of the League of Women Voters of Johnson County, but his opinions are his own.