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Urgent need to update Iowa’s recount laws, top elections official says
Secretary of State Paul Pate is imploring state lawmakers to pass legislation that would streamline the state’s recount process after inconsistencies were found during the 2020 recount of a historically close congressional election
Jan. 3, 2024 5:21 pm
DES MOINES — By a scant six votes out of more than 394,400 cast, Mariannette Miller-Meeks was elected to Congress from Iowa in 2020.
The recount procedures that certified that historically narrow election revealed some inconsistencies and inefficiencies in Iowa’s recount laws, election officials found.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, the state’s top elections official, said Wednesday he is imploring state lawmakers to use the upcoming legislative session to streamline and strengthen the state’s recount laws.
The 2024 session of the Iowa Legislature begins Monday at the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines.
In a Wednesday interview, Pate spoke with urgency in describing the need for updating election recount procedures.
He said elections officials across the state are already preparing for the 2024 general election season — Iowa’s primary election is June 4 and the general election is Nov. 5 — and if any elections laws are going to be changed, those officials would appreciate knowing that sooner than later.
“My conversations with legislative leadership (have been), ‘We have to have the conversation.’ They’ll need to have this done. And it needs to be done soon because the filings for candidates starts Feb. 26,” Pate said. “So we want to make sure that we’re getting these things ironed out and done.”
State lawmakers during the 2023 session considered legislation that would have addressed the issues Pate would like to see addressed. But lawmakers ultimately put the bill on hold and left the Capitol without passing it, pledging to return to the issue in 2024.
“It’s so important to assure the details are there, and we get to that point of being able to say, ‘Yep, Iowa got it right again.’ And that makes the voters much more confident,” Pate said.
Pate said his office is proposing a bill very similar to the one briefly considered last year. Under that proposal:
- The deadline to request a recount would be moved from the third day following the canvass of election results to two days after the canvass, and a recount board must convene within six days of the canvass.
- Recounts would be required to be completed within 17 days of the canvass for a presidential election, within 21 days of the election for Congress or state office, and within 13 days of any other election.
- A recount request would be required to include all precincts in a county, the request must state whether a machine recount is requested or a machine and hand recount. Any request for a hand recount must include all counties in a district.
- More populous counties would be given the ability to add more workers to its recount board, which oversees the process. Under current law, each county — regardless of its size — can have only three recount board members.
The 2020 recount
Many of those proposed changes to state elections law were inspired by the recount process in the 2020 congressional election in Eastern Iowa’s 2nd District.
That recount spanned 24 counties, with counties conducting some of their recount operations differently than others, including the use of hand vs. machine ballot counts.
“We saw the need to improve that (recount) process,” Pate said. “So we spent a lot of time listening to voters, listening to county auditors, listening to poll workers, our own staff taking a look at it, to make sure that we improve that process so that everything is much clearer and much more consistent, so if you’re going to start counting a ballot or a race, it’s done the same way all the way through.”
Pate said his proposed legislation also will include new funding for elections staff and more training for Iowans who volunteer to work at poll sites on Election Day.
Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com
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