Iowa Voter ID change part of broader balloting proposal

CEDAR RAPIDS — In the timing is everything category, Secretary of State Paul Pate thinks this is the ideal time for Iowa lawmakers to require voter IDs and institute other measures to increase confidence in voter registration and absentee voting.

His proposed $1 million upgrade to the state's election systems to guard against fraud comes on the heels of a campaign cycle marked by worries of fraud and Russian cyberhackers.

Pate, who also served as Iowa Secretary of State in the 1990s, said there always are people concerned about electoral integrity, 'but this election cycle it was unusually high.'

'We were bombarded with questions about the Russian thing and every kind of hacking,' Pate said Friday, saying that whatever Russian interference there was, 'they didn't hack a single election system anywhere.'

Any suggestion of fraud — a campaign theme struck often by Republican Donald Trump — plants doubt in the minds of some who think their vote won't count. So Pate, also a Republican, says he is trying to prevent any loss of confidence in Iowa's voting system by proposing that voter identification — including existing Iowa driver's licenses, passports and military IDs — be required and signatures be verified at polling sites.

Read more: 23 convicted of Iowa voter fraud in last 5 years

Eligible voters, out-of-state students and others who lack approved identification would be issued free ID cards, including an ID number that would be required for all absentee ballot requests, under his proposal.

He hopes the GOP-controlled Legislature, which begins its annual session Monday, shares his sense of urgency.

County auditors share Pate's pride in a clean election process, but not all are enthusiastic about his proposal.

Checking ID cards at the polls doesn't guarantee the elimination of fraud, said Linn County Auditor Joel Miller, and adds steps to the process.

'It's not a slam dunk,' the Democrat said. 'You've taken something that already has a lot of moving parts and variables and added more moving parts and variables, and cost.'

Pate's proposal would, for instance, require Linn County to have four to five computers at each of its 86 precincts. That would mean buying close to 300 additional computers at a cost of more than several hundred dollars, Miller said.

Johnson County keeps a minimum of three computers at each of its 57 precincts, Auditor Travis Weipert said. In addition to the cost of equipment upgrades, Pate's plan also may require the county to spend more money training poll workers to use new equipment and better spot fake IDs, the Democrat said.

Pate wants the state to pick up some of those costs. His proposal calls for the state to provide poll books to the counties without them and security updates for the counties using poll books now. The state would provide poll worker training, too.

There would be costs to counties associated with his proposal, Pate said, but they need to upgrade and update their technology anyway. Much of the 'new' voting equipment was purchased more than 10 years ago after the disputed 2000 presidential election.

'You have to keep up with the pace of what's out there to do our jobs better,' he said. 'How many cellphones and laptop computers have you had in the last 10 years?'

Hardin County Auditor Jessica Lara, a Republican, called Pate's proposal unnecessary.

'There's already laws and administrative rules in effect that require people who are not preregistered to show an ID at the polls. That's already taken care of, so there isn't a mass number of unidentified people showing up at a polling place and voting and nobody knowing who they are,' she said.

However, Pate said election integrity goes beyond preventing fraud. The upgrades he's calling for would help prevent human error that is bound to occur with 1.58 million people voting in a presidential election.

'We have 99 great county auditors, but a lot of things can happen on Election Day,' he said.

Reactions from legislative Democrats, now a minority in both chambers, are not positive.

House Minority Leader Mark Smith, D-Marshalltown, called voter ID laws 'a solution in search of a problem.'

Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Waterloo, said it would disenfranchise older Iowans, younger Iowans and people of color.

Iowa's elections 'must be the most accurate, secure and efficient in the country, without disenfranchising a single Iowan,' Danielson said. 'Those values will guide our decisions to support or oppose proposed Republican changes to Iowa's election laws.'

Pate acknowledged similar changes in other states have prompted legal challenges. The results are a mixed bag.

For example, North Carolina's far-reaching election restrictions were rejected by a federal appeals court that found legislators intentionally made it harder for minorities to vote.

But the same court upheld Virginia's voter ID law, which unlike Pate's proposal would always require a photo ID, to be constitutional because it is more flexible than other states' measures and was not designed to discriminate.

That gives Pate confidence his plan could withstand a lawsuit.

'We are not profiling, we're not putting any voters out in any respect at all,' he said. 'It's so passive. I just don't see where they can challenge it.'

The biggest challenge may be winning legislative approval for a $1 million expenditure at a time lawmakers face cutting $100 million from the current state budget.

With that in mind, Pate is calling for the upgrades to be in place for the 2020 presidential election. But finding $1 million in the $7 billion general fund budget is not too much to ask, he said, for more election security.

l Comments: (319) 398-8375; james.lynch@thegazette.com

Mitchell Schmidt and Erin Jordan of The Gazette contributed to this report.