Iowa election officials have sued 4 naturalized citizens who say their voting rights were violated

DES MOINES, Iowa — Four voters and a Hispanic civil rights group are suing Iowa’s top election official after he ordered poll workers to contest the ballots of people who might be naturalized citizens, claiming that the state violated their rights in an attempt to prevent ineligible citizens from voting illegally.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa filed a legal challenge in federal court late Wednesday on behalf of four people identified by Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate as registered voters who may not be citizens. They are naturalized citizens, according to the complaint.

Pate’s office said last week it provided county auditors with a list of 2,022 people who told the state Department of Transportation they were not citizens but later registered to vote or voted. Because those people could have become naturalized citizens in the past, Pate’s office told county election officials to contest their ballots and have them vote provisionally instead.

They would have seven days — one more than usual because of a federal holiday — to provide proof of their citizenship status so their vote would be counted.

According to the complaint, a new voter registered last year, one day after becoming a US citizen.

“However, he was placed on the Secretary’s secret list and wrongfully subjected to an investigation and election challenge because he followed the law and exercised his right to vote,” the complaint says.

The ACLU also represents the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa.

It is illegal for non-US citizens to vote in federal elections, but there is no evidence that this occurs in significant numbers, although Iowa and other states have identified dozens of such cases.

Before the lawsuit was filed, Pate told reporters at a news conference Wednesday that the DOT list was “the only list we have” without access to federal immigration records.

“We are balancing this process. We want everyone to be able to vote. That is why none of them were removed from the voters’ lists,” he said. But “we have an obligation to make sure they are citizens now.”

With early voting underway and just days before the Nov. 5 election, the suit calls for the list to be voided and voters on it not to be challenged on that basis. It claims Iowa election officials burden the right to vote and discriminate against naturalized citizens by treating those voters differently than others, violating their constitutional right to equal protection.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said in a statement Wednesday before the ACLU lawsuit that the U.S. Department of Justice “subpoenaed the state in an attempt to pressure Iowa to let non-citizens vote.” .

“Every legal vote must count and not be nullified by an illegal vote,” she said. “In Iowa, we will defend our election integrity laws and protect the vote.”

In an email, a Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

The Associated Press left email messages Thursday for Pate and Bird seeking comment on the ACLU’s lawsuit.

Pate sought to differentiate Iowa from other states, such as Virginia, where more than 1,600 voters were removed from voter registration rolls in the past two months in a program enacted through an Aug. 7 executive order by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued Virginia in early October, arguing that state election officials violated federal law’s 90-day “quiet period” before elections.

The National Voter Registration Act requires that quiet period so that legitimate voters are not removed from the rolls because of bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that cannot be quickly corrected.

The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court said Wednesday that Virginia can proceed, overruling a federal judge who said the state’s purge was illegal. A federal appeals court previously allowed the judge’s order to stand.

In a similar lawsuit in Alabama, a federal judge this month ordered the state to restore eligibility to more than 3,200 voters who were deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that about 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were inactive were actually legally registered citizens.