WIN: Federal Judge Rules Iowa Officials Can Challenge Ballots of Non-Citizen Voters

Iowa elections won’t be tainted by the nasty effects of mass migration for now.

On November 3, 2024, a federal judge ruled that Iowa election officials may continue enforcing Secretary of State Paul Pate’s directive to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters who have been identified as potential foreigners who may not be eligible to vote. 

The ruling came on the heels of a recent Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll projecting Vice President Kamala Harris ahead in Iowa by three points against former President Donald Trump, while other polling organizations put Trump in a safe lead against Harris. For example, the latest poll from Emerson has Trump ahead 53% to 43%. 

Iowa’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter filed a lawsuit on behalf of four naturalized citizens on October 30, claiming that Pate’s directive to check registered voters’ citizenship status was in violation of the equal protection clause of the US Constitution.

On October 22, Pate instructed Iowa county auditors to challenge the ballots of voters who had previously informed the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) that they are non-citizens. 

In response to the ACLU’s complaints, Pate announced that voters will be allowed to cast a provisional ballot instead, which will be counted if they can demonstrate their citizenship. 

U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher refused to grant a preliminary injunction, pointing to how “some portion” of the registered voter names on Pate’s list have actually been identified as non-citizens.

“This portion appears to be relatively small—no more than 12 percent—but, still, the injunctive relief requested by Plaintiffs effectively would force local election officials to permit those individuals to vote,” Locher declared in a November 3 ruling.

The plaintiffs claimed that Pate’s directive violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which mandates states finish any program for taking out ineligible voters within 90 days prior to an election.

However, Locher ruled that the NVRA was not germane in this case because the state government had not removed any voters from the voter rolls, and was just ordering them to cast provisional ballots.

“Secretary Pate’s letter is likely to impose a modest additional burden on at least some voters who should not have to bear that burden. All the same, those voters are still permitted to vote and have their ballots counted. The harm is therefore not irreparable,” the judge stated.

Pate recently criticized  the federal government for preventing his office from complying with the 90-day rule, arguing that the audit was postponed all the way to October because of a lack of cooperation by the Department of Transportation, which did not provide access to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database for verifying citizenship.

In a statement, Pate praised the court’s ruling as a “win for Iowa’s election integrity,” stressing the need for guaranteeing that only eligible voters can be involved  in Iowa’s election process.

He added that his office would continue to thoroughly verify the citizenship status of voters who had previously identified themselves as non-citizens, while calling on the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office to let the Iowa field office to publish information about those voters.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird posted on X that the ruling guaranteed that Iowans’ votes will not be trained and crowded out by illegal votes.

“I was glad to lead the fight in court to defend Iowa’s long-standing election integrity laws. Only American citizens can vote in Iowa elections,” she proclaimed in a statement.

Iowa will safely go to Trump on November 5, despite what the pundits say. Measures like the ones implemented by Pate will help keep it in the Republican win column. Other red states should vigorously pursue and build upon these measures. These are the best methods of upholding election integrity.