3 on list of possible illegal Linn County voters are eligible, Auditor Miller says

DES MOINES — Three Linn County people flagged by the state as having unknown citizenship — who already voted early in the 2024 general election — all have full U.S. citizenship, Linn County Auditor Joel Miller said Friday.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, the state’s top elections official, this week sent to county auditors a list of over 2,000 Iowans who live in the United States legally, but as of their last documentation with the state were not U.S. citizens, who have recently attempted to vote or register to vote.

Pate has instructed local elections workers to challenge the ballots of any of those individuals who attempt to vote in the 2024 election. Pate said they would be allowed to vote with a provisional ballot, which will be held until their citizenship and voting eligibility is determined.

Voting or registering to vote in Iowa without U.S. citizenship is a Class D felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $750 to $7,500.

Miller said the state list included 150 names in Linn County. He said after an initial scan of the list, he discovered three individuals who already had voted and a fourth who had requested an absentee ballot to vote by mail.

Miller said he forwarded those four names to the Linn County Sheriff’s Office, which then sent them to federal immigration officers. The federal officers informed the county that all four individuals are U.S. citizens.

The Gazette reached out to the Linn County Sheriff’s Office to confirm the account, but had not heard back as of Friday afternoon.

Miller said as of Friday afternoon he had not yet completed his review of the list, but that he suspected “maybe half a dozen other people” on the list have voted early or requested a ballot.

“I’m guessing they’re going to be U.S. citizens, too,” he said.

Miller said his initial review of the list also revealed 17 more individuals with active voter registration, six with inactive registration — meaning they are registered but did not vote in the 2022 election — and three with their voter registration pending.

How the state list was created

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Pate said his office found potential state elections law violations during a review of 2.3 million Iowa voter records. The violations were discovered after a cross-check with Iowa Department of Transportation records, Pate said. Most commonly, the voter registration and voting data would coincide with individuals who indicated on their driver’s license or other Iowa DOT documents that they are not U.S. citizens.

Pate’s office said it found 87 cases of legal Iowa residents without U.S. citizenship who illegally voted and 67 more who illegally registered to vote in previous election cycles spanning back to the 2000s.

Pate said his office is working with the Iowa DOT to refer those 154 names to the Iowa Department of Public Safety for further investigation and potential referral to the Iowa Attorney General’s Office, which has exclusive jurisdiction over state elections crimes.

Meantime, the citizenship status of another 2,022 Iowans at the time they voted or registered remains unclear, Pate said. Those individuals — who make up the list sent to county auditors this week — at some point indicated to the state they are not U.S. citizens and later registered or voted in an election, Pate said. It is unknown whether they became U.S. citizens before registering or voting.

In at least four cases in Linn County, according to Miller, they did become U.S. citizens before voting or registering in 2024.

Miller criticizes Pate’s directive

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Miller, who ran for Iowa Secretary of State as a Democrat against Pate in 2022 — Miller after the election changed his party affiliation to no longer affiliate with Democrats — has been critical of Pate’s directive, especially how it requires volunteer poll workers to automatically challenge the ballots of any Iowans on the state list who attempt to vote.

Miller said he believes asking poll workers to challenge voters’ ballots is an undue burden that will turn them off to volunteering in future elections, and he worries about the potential for confrontations when an individual’s ballot is challenged.

“I still think it’s wrong that the Secretary of State is using precinct election officials to clean up his work. I think it’s fundamentally wrong for him to do that,” Miller said.

Pate, in an interview earlier this week, told The Gazette he has faith in Iowa’s county auditors and poll workers.

“We’re doing what we can. And I want to really put a strong plug in support of what our county auditors are doing, and those poll workers — those 10,000 poll workers who are your friends and neighbors, the people you go to church with, you work with — they’re the ones that are really going to be the ones who are going to help get it done,” Pate said.

“And that’s how I sleep at night, quite frankly, on elections because I know they’re there and they’ve all gotten the training and they are going to be doing the best they can, and that’s what we can count on,” Pate said.

Miller also questioned the timing of Pate’s directive, which was issued exactly two weeks before the Nov. 5 election and well into Iowa’s early voting period, which started Oct. 16.

The Iowa Secretary of State’s Office requested information from the Iowa DOT on Oct. 1, and the department provided the information Oct. 7, according to an Iowa DOT spokeswoman.

Pate’s office delivered the instructions to county auditors Oct. 22.

“I think it’s just twisted political theater, trying to make a point,” Miller said, “and all of those people are probably going to turn out to be naturalized citizens.”

Pate earlier this week expressed his frustration with state elections officials not having access to a federal database that verifies the immigration status and U.S. citizenship of applicants seeking benefits or licenses. Pate said acquiring the list can take months and is expensive.

“There are things we’ve been asking the federal government to do for us, and they either have not or they are so slow — a snail moves faster,” Pate said. “And that is frustrating because we have an election now — not a month from now, not two months from now. So we need them to respond to our needs immediately.”

Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com

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