Iowa auditors directed to reinstate voters improperly removed from rolls

Iowa county auditors plan to reinstate eligible voters improperly removed from registered voting lists before the Nov. 5 election, Iowa’s top election official said.

Some Iowa voters were improperly removed from registration rolls by county election officials after challenges to their registration status were filed too close to the election, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said Wednesday.

Pate’s office emailed county auditors and county attorneys last week about challenges to Iowa voters’ registrations occurring across the state, and reminding them that state and federal laws, with some exceptions, prevent them from removing voters from their voting lists shortly before the election.

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The Oct. 23 email states the Secretary of State’s Office was alerted by VoteShield, a vendor used by the office to monitor voter registration data for anomalies, that a number of counties were improperly processing challenge-related cancellations.

Pate, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, said county auditors are to refrain from removing voters from registration lists during the 90-day quiet period before a federal election, except for removals based on the death of the voter or other specified exceptions. State law provides another layer of protection, with a 70-day quiet period for state elections.

“They (county auditors) need to put some of those folks back on” the voter rolls, Pate said.

“To the best of my knowledge, most, if not all, those counties have went back and done that,” he said. “Clearly, we're going to be following back up on that to make sure. But it has been addressed, and we hope that it's been corrected.”

Pate did not say how many voters were actually removed.

The American Civil Liberties Union and its Iowa affiliate sent letters Friday to all 99 Iowa county auditors urging them to reinstate any voters they may have improperly removed. The letter references complaints from impacted voters about challenges from private parties asking for the voter registration cancellation of thousands of voters in Johnson, Muscatine and Pottawattamie counties.

The requests for mass removal of Iowa voters from the voter registration lists is separate from Pate’s directive issued last week to county auditors to have poll workers challenge more than 2,200 registered voters based on citizenship.

Deadlines exist so voters can appeal before Election Day

Iowans are able to challenge voter registration information at any time, if they believe the information is incorrect or fraudulent. However, Iowa law specifies that voter challenges cannot be processed less than 70 days before the next election. Federal voting law also generally prohibits purging individuals from voter rolls 90 days ahead of the election.

Challenges may be processed again after an election, and both state and federal laws contain some exceptions.

Those deadlines are in place to make sure that if someone's registration is challenged, they have enough time to appeal it before Election Day, said Ari Savitzky, a senior staff attorney with ACLU Voting Rights Project.

Speaking to The Gazette, county election officials said they believe those challenges fell outside the state's 70-day window and were eligible to be acted upon. They cited confusion over differences between state and federal laws, and said those voters whose registration was canceled were generally inactive voters who had moved out of the state.

The National Voting Rights Act prohibits states from systematically removing the names of ineligible voters from the official list of eligible voters less than 90 days before a federal election, so that legitimate voters are not removed by errors that cannot be quickly corrected.

“This deadline also applies to list maintenance programs based on third-party challenges derived from any large, computerized datamatching process,” according to guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Justice in September.

Voters, though, may still be removed if they request it, if the voter has died, or due to mental incapacity or criminal conviction as provided by state law.

Pottawattamie auditor removed more than 400 voters in September

A Pottawattamie County resident challenged the registration of 605 voters in the Western Iowa county that includes Council Bluffs. The list appeared to include people who had moved out of state but had not notified the auditor’s office, as indicated by national change-of-address information supplied by the U.S. Postal Service, county elections manager Marilyn Kennedy told The Gazette.

Auditor Melvyn Houser said his office received the challenge 71 days before the election. Letters were sent to those addresses on the county’s voter rolls and to the forwarding address provided by the challenger notifying voters their registrations were being challenged. Of the 605 letters sent, 179 responded. Only two people asked to keep their registration, stating they had moved back and reregistered at their new residences, Kennedy said.

Many mailed notices “bounced back as undeliverable,” Houser said.

The 422 who did not respond were removed from the rolls following a Sept. 18 hearing for any voter whose registration had been challenged.

“But nobody showed up,” Houser said.

Houser said he was unaware of the 90-day federal rule, and said he understood the state's directive to mean that if a challenge comes outside of that 70-day window, auditors can proceed with processing voter cancellations.

Kennedy argued the challenges were individual and not based on systematic list maintenance prohibited by federal law. And because they were filed outside the 70-day state window, the auditor’s office could proceed under state and federal law.

Houser, though, on Wednesday said his office plans to reinstate voter registrations based on guidance from the Pottawattamie County Attorney.

Johnson County Auditor Erin Shane and Muscatine County Auditor Tibe Vander Linden did not respond to messages seeking comment Wednesday.

Linn auditor removed voters in July, outside 90-day window

Linn County Auditor Joel Miller said his office received more than 900 challenges early this summer and subsequently removed voters in July, outside the federal 90-day window and the state's 70-day window.

Miller said the challenges were filed by a group of two or three Linn County residents who have filed previous challenges to voter registration files in recent elections.

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Miller said the challenged voters were people who had changed their addresses but had not notified the auditor's office, and that the list was compiled by cross-matching county voter rolls with a national change of address database.

The Linn County office sent letters to voters notifying them that their registration was challenged. Many did not respond. Those that did chose to self-cancel their registration because they had moved out of state or out of the county, Miller said.

The rest were generally inactive voters who had moved out of state and did not respond to a National Change of Address postcard from the county auditor’s office.

“These were legitimate challenges, in my view, because these people moved out of state and we did clean up our voter rolls,” Miller told The Gazette. “They were legitimately getting people off the rolls in a quicker time frame,“ he said, but added he is ”surprised“ some counties are receiving voter registration challenges so close to the election.

“That’s bothersome,” said Miller. “They should be ignoring those right now, because we’re in the blackout period.”

Erin Murphy of The Gazette Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com