Judge declines to intervene in Iowa voter challenge case, but local officials can use their judgment

The Iowa Secretary of State’s order to poll workers remains in effect after a judge declined to intervene. The judge said Pate has walked back the parameters of his original order that the court took issue with. Registered voters on the list—including naturalized citizens—will need to prove their citizenship to have their ballot counted.

Over the weekend, a federal judge declined to get involved in the Secretary of State’s order requiring 2,176 registered voters prove their citizenship to have their ballots count. 

Iowa Starting Line has demonstrated that the state’s still secret list contains voting-eligible US citizens. US District Judge Stephen Locher said based on the evidence the number of ineligible voters on the list was “relatively small—no more than twelve percent.” But were the court to get involved, the outcome would “force local election officials to permit those individuals to vote.”

“Today’s ruling from the Federal District Court is a win for Iowa’s election integrity,” Secretary of State Paul Pate said in a statement Sunday night. “U.S. elections are for U.S. citizens, and ensuring only eligible voters participate in Iowa’s election process is essential to protecting the integrity of the vote.”

In his ruling, the judge wrote Pate’s waffling since his initial order to poll workers helped the merits of his case. Initially, Pate said if a poll worker finds a voter is on the list, they are required to make them fill out a provisional ballot. In other words, even if the poll worker knew the voter was a citizen, whether through their available documentation or the poll worker’s knowledge, they were required to fill out a provisional ballot. But as Pate’s order was challenged, his position changed.

“Secretary Pate backed away from the bright-line positions in his letter,” Judge Locher wrote. “… (H)e has implicitly admitted that local officials retain the authority to make independent judgments as to whether a valid basis exists for challenging a voter’s eligibility.”

Attorneys argued that the list was created in such a way that it targeted naturalized US citizens. But he drew a distinction between a list including naturalized citizens and a list consisting of naturalized citizens. There are more than 79,000 naturalized citizens in Iowa. While Pate’s list includes some naturalized citizens, he did not make the list to include people of certain national origin but because there was a mismatch between voter registration information and information provided to the Iowa Department of Transportation. Therefore, the equal protection grounds were not sufficient, he ruled.

Timing was an important factor here. Pate made his order two weeks before Election Day. The judge’s decision came two days before Election Day. The judge cited recent case law demonstrates high standards for courts intervening in the immediate run-up to an election. In one, Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights v. Beals, election officials removed voters from the rolls altogether based on mismatches between voter registration records and records held by other state agencies with respect to citizenship. 

Pate isn’t removing voters on the list from voter rolls. He’s only requiring they fill out provisional ballots. The judge said this minimized the harm done. 

“In essence, this Court would be disregarding how the Supreme Court handled a situation in which the plaintiffs had an even stronger legal argument than Plaintiffs have here. This the Court cannot do,” he wrote.

“We are obviously disappointed with the court’s decision not to outright block Secretary Pate’s directive, which we still fear threatens to disenfranchise eligible voters simply because they are people who became citizens in the past several years,” ACLU of Iowa Legal Director Rita Bettis Austen said in a statement. “Meanwhile, we encourage every citizen—and especially our new fellow citizens—to go vote in this week’s presidential election. Voting is your right.”

With the order in effect, anyone needing to prove their citizenship at the poll will need to present a valid U.S. passport, certified US birth certificate, report of birth abroad, or certificate of citizenship or naturalization from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.