Election law changes shouldn’t create barriers to voting

I remember a comment a voter once made as he handed me his driver’s license at the polling place where I was working as a precinct election official (PEO) in 2018. That was the first year that PEOs were required to ask voters for ID after voter ID requirements were signed into law in 2017.

“Catch any voter fraud yet?” the man said, smirking.

The thing is, voter ID isn’t about catching fraud. It’s about preventing it. It’s always been that way.

Big strides have been made over the last decade to uphold the integrity of Iowa’s elections by preventing voter fraud, namely in passing House File 516 in 2017. At the time, 69% of Iowans, including 48% of Democrats, supported requiring government-issued ID to vote. The suppression of votes Democrats had wailed about wasn’t to be — an Iowa Poll taken six weeks before the 2018 election found that 92% of Iowans were confident that the new law wouldn’t prevent them from voting. That year saw record turnout for both the primary and general elections.

But even Iowa’s successful 2017 law required specific provisions in order to make sure that the ID requirement indeed did not burden certain voters. One such provision was the creation of a new voter identification card to be immediately issued to any registered voter not listed in the files of the Iowa Department of Transportation as having been issued a driver's license or non-operator’s ID. In late 2017, over 123,000 brand-new voter ID cards went out to registered voters not listed in the Iowa DOT database to ensure those voters could abide by the new requirements.

That set an important standard: Changes to Iowa’s voting law should not impose barriers for voters.

More voting law changes have since been made in recent years. I’ve weighed in on a lot of those changes in this column from my personal perspective as an election official. With each change comes renewed criticism — almost entirely from Democrats and their allies — and claims that they will hinder an eligible person’s right to vote.

Much of that is overblown. In 2021, election law changes including closing polling places an hour earlier (at 8 p.m. instead of 9 p.m.) and requiring 100 signatures of eligible electors to set up an early voting satellite. Neither has marred voters’ access to the ballot in the three consecutive years they’ve been in effect. My journalism colleagues on the reporting side did great work informing the public about the new polling place hours. In larger counties, establishing voting satellites so far seems more contingent on worker availability than signature requirements. In smaller counties with fewer voters to sign a petition, voting satellites were already limited by potential expense and lesser reach.

Still, any change, controversial or not, still necessitates consideration of how it will impact voters’ ability to cast their ballots — and have them counted — and, specifically, of whether the need for the change is enough to warrant its potential impacts on voters.

The 2021 change shortening the early voting period from 29 days to 20 is an example. Short and sweet early voting periods, in my opinion, reduce the risk of voter’s remorse — when a voter realizes they would have voted differently if they’d waited until closer to Election Day and regret that they cannot change their vote. Over the last eight years, damaging information emerged about a top-ticket candidate in each the Republican and Democrat parties only after early voting was in full swing, causing some to regret voting early for that candidate. That’s why I cheered the 2017 reduction of the early voting period from 40 to 29 days — there is such a thing as voting too soon. But from 29 to 20 days? That’s a tight time frame for some mail ballots to be sent out and returned — especially if issues such as a marking error or delivery problem arise and a replacement ballot needs to be sent.

Thus, the standard set by the 2017 law remains relevant: Changes to the law should not impose barriers for voters.

More election law changes are currently proposed in the Iowa Legislature. I wrote about several last week in my partial analysis of House Study Bill 697, now renumbered as House File 2610. To briefly recap: Good changes include adding two days back on to the early voting period and banning headache-inducing ranked choice voting. Bad changes include moving the hard deadline for mail ballots up by 27 hours and entirely banning secure ballot dropboxes.

A concerning change in HF 2610 that I did not discuss last week is a new requirement for the mail balloting process which, if not followed explicitly by the voter, would complicate a ballot’s ability to be counted.

Currently, a voter must write their voter verification number — either their Iowa driver’s license or nonoperator’s ID number or the four-digit PIN on their Iowa Voter Identification Card — on their written request whenever they seek to vote absentee, either by mail or at an early voting site. HF 2610 adds a requirement for the voter to write their voter verification number a second time on the affidavit they sign when they return the voted ballot.

A signature on the affidavit upon returning the ballot has long been required for an absentee ballot to count. But requiring the voter verification number on the affidavit upon return — that’s new. And if that requirement indeed becomes law, a returned absentee ballot that does not bear one’s voter verification number would be considered “defective.” The defective ballot would either need to be cured — meaning the voter would visit the elections office to add the voter verification number — or a replacement ballot would need to be issued to the voter. If the voter of the defective ballot just decided to go to their local polling place instead, few options — each with additional steps — would be available to them there.

That strikes me as a barrier to voting.

On one hand, I can understand why some feel that the measure is needed. They might argue that mail ballots are not a secure measure of voting, as elections staff cannot stop a delivered mail ballot from falling into the wrong hands, and that requiring a unique identifier at the time of the ballot’s return will ensure that it really is the voter casting that ballot.

But I wouldn’t characterize the process of voting by mail as not secure. Not when the voter must first state their desire to vote absentee. In doing so, they assume responsibility for the security of that ballot, just for a longer period of time — from the time their blank ballot leaves the county office to the time their voted ballot is returned.

Yes, sometimes a voter might not exercise ideal control over the security of their ballot. They might skim the instructions and miss a required step. They might set their ballot aside and forget about it until it’s too late to mail it back. They might accidentally discard it. I once served a voter who threw away her required affidavit envelope after her toddler had gotten a hold of it and chewed on it. The voter opted to go home and dig through her trash, triumphantly returning with a slobber-wrinkled affidavit envelope bearing tiny teeth marks.

Frankly, those mistakes, innocent (and even amusing) as they are, are why I find in-person early voting (where I’m assigned as an election worker) such a valuable option. Like mail voting, in-person early voting is considered an absentee ballot, but the ballot never leaves the voting site. It’s issued, voted, sealed and secured by elections staff in one great visit.

But not everyone is able or willing to vote in person. Iowa does not require a specific reason or excuse to vote absentee, and not enough legislators have the guts to limit voting by mail to those with an approved excuse. (Nor should they.) Those who seek a mail ballot and assume responsibility for its security do so at their own behest. That’s another boast about the security of our elections — anyone who votes outside of their assigned Election Day polling place must put their intent in writing.

We have Republicans to thank for that gold standard of election integrity. If Democrats were in charge, it would disappear — 14 Iowa House Democrats foolishly introduced a dead-on-arrival bill earlier this month aiming to automatically send mail ballots to every single registered voter without their consent. That would force additional steps on any voter who didn’t want to vote by mail and essentially upend Iowa’s entire voting system. Talk about insane.

But our gold standard of election security shouldn’t be stretched to impose actual barriers for absentee voters. If a voter verification number has to be placed on a returned ballot affidavit and a large number of voters forget to include it, that makes more work — for voters and elections workers both — if those ballots are to count.

Like the other proposed changes this term, requiring a voter verification number before a ballot can count is done with good intent. But it would have a bad effect. So unless majority Republicans can point to another poll showing that 69% of Iowans support it, this election worker hopes that this idea that ends up in the trash.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are those of its author and do not represent the views or opinions of the Linn County Auditor’s Office.