Iowa elections bill takes up recounts, mail-in ballots IDs, ban on private funding

DES MOINES — State lawmakers are considering an elections bill that would streamline Iowa’s recount procedures, prohibit private funding to help election operations and require one more step on mail-in ballots.

Identical bills containing those provisions — House Study Bill 719 and Senate Study Bill 3143 — began making their journey through the legislative process Wednesday.

The proposals come from Sen. Roby Smith, R- Davenport, and Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton.

Though Republican elections bills in the past have created strong political divides — with Republicans calling for measures they say strengthen election security, and Democrats blasting those measures as making it more difficult for Iowans to vote — there was none of that heated rhetoric Wednesday.

During the House subcommittee hearing, Rep. Mary Wolfe, D-Clinton, said she could see the latest proposal earning “at least some bipartisan support.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, only two lobbying groups were registered as opposed to the bill: the Iowa Newspaper Association (the bill eliminates the requirement that notice of a precinct caucus be printed in a newspaper) and the Sierra Club.

By contrast, the Republicans’ 2021 elections bill — which among other things reduced the amount of time voters can cast a ballot by mail and placed other constraints on early voting — was opposed by 25 lobbying organizations and supported by three.

“It sounds like there are some things we agree on in this bill. That’s good,” Smith said during the Senate subcommittee hearing. “It’s easy to vote in Iowa and hard to cheat. This is a good bill.”

Recount provisions

In the case of election recounts, the bill would require all precincts to be recounted; require the challenging candidate to request a recount by machine or machine plus hand count; set the size of county recount boards relative to population; and require recount boards to file a report 17 days after the canvass for a presidential election and 21 days after an election for Congress or state office.

The recount reform is in response to the exceptionally close 2020 election in Eastern Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District.

After a full recount, Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks was declared the winner by six votes out of nearly 400,000 cast. Democrat Rita Hart’s campaign claimed 22 ballots were legally cast but not counted due to errors by election workers and, for a time, asked the Democratic-controlled U.S. House to review the election results. The Hart campaign eventually dropped that request.

Wolfe served as the Hart campaign’s designee on the Clinton County recount board.

Jamie Cashman, a lobbyist representing local election officials’ statewide organization, said the group appreciates the bill’s recount reform, one of the group’s top legislative priorities.

Private money

The proposed bills also ban Iowa elections offices from accepting donations or grants from private businesses or groups to fund elections operations upgrades.

During the 2020 election cycle, some Iowa counties accepted grants from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit whose goal is to modernize U.S. elections and help local elections officials address costs during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The organization was funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. In October 2020. The Iowa Voter Alliance sued Scott and Black Hawk counties after those counties’ auditors accepted grant money from the center. A federal judge rejected the lawsuit.

“Private money in public elections, I understand those concerns,” Wolfe said. “I guess what I think is a shame is that our county auditors felt the need to supplement their funds — their public money with private money — in order to be able to ensure that their elections proceeded in a good way and that everybody who had a right to vote was able to vote.”

Mail-in ballots

The bills also would require voters to sign and place their driver’s license or state-issued voter identification number on the affidavit envelope when returning a ballot by mail.

“It’s the final loop. We’re closing the loop on voter ID,” Kaufmann said. “Iowa will now by a 100 percent voter ID state.”

House Study Bill 719 was approved by a subcommittee Wednesday morning and was scheduled for consideration Wednesday afternoon by the full House state government committee, where it was expected to pass.

Senate Study Bill 3143 was approved by a subcommittee Wednesday and will be debated in the full Senate state government committee Thursday.

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