Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate are suing the federal government for withholding information on the citizenship status of voters.
Pate’s office suspected more than 2,000 voters registered in Iowa were noncitizens trying to cast a ballot in the general election.
Pate and Bird, both Republicans, filed the suit in federal court on Tuesday, asking the court to compel federal immigration authorities to respond to Iowa’s requests for information on the citizenship status of those flagged by Pate. They’re demanding the information for their current request be handed over and that the federal government be compelled to answer future inquiries.
“The Biden-Harris Administration knows who the hundreds of noncitizens are on our voter rolls and has repeatedly refused to tell us who they are,” Bird said in a news release Tuesday. “But the law is clear: voters must be American citizens. Together, with the Secretary of State, we will fight to maintain safe and secure elections that Iowans can count on.”
In late October, Pate sent a letter to Iowa’s county auditors directing them to challenge the ballots of registered voters on a secretive list who they alleged might be noncitizens.
Pate’s office compiled the list by cross-referencing Iowa’s voter registration rolls with an Iowa Department of Transportation database that contains the names of people who marked they were noncitizens on Iowa DOT forms.
The lawsuit alleges that two days after Pate’s announcement, a Des Moines-based U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agent approached his office offering to help verify the citizenship of those on the list. However, when Pate’s office reached out to the Washington, D.C., office they refused to provide the information.
The list of more than 2,000 voters contained many who were naturalized citizens. Before the election, Johnson County officials confirmed the citizenship of 60 of the more than 200 registered voters on the secret list located in the county. A Des Moines Register survey of 97 of 99 Iowa counties found that more than 600 voters on the list cast ballots, and roughly 87 percent proved their citizenship.
The directive was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa in federal court. The organization alleged that the directive was unconstitutional and violated federal law. A federal judge denied their motion for an injunction and let the state move forward with plans to challenge the ballots.
Pate’s office has referred 154 voters on his list for further investigation by the Iowa Attorney General’s office. It is a crime under Iowa and federal law to register to vote or vote if you are not a U.S. citizen.
According to the lawsuit, after the election, the federal government offered the state access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program. Pate has said the program would help verify citizenship status for voter registration.
“The role of Iowa Secretary of State requires balance between participation and integrity,” Pate said in a news release Tuesday. “We have identified solutions that will allow us to verify voter eligibility at registration – not at the time of voting.”
Pate said the access to the SAVE list, getting access to the names on the list already verified by the USCIS, and the ability to verify identities using Social Security numbers would make the citizenship verification process more efficient.
However, in the lawsuit, Pate and Bird argue that access to SAVE isn’t sufficient, as it requires a “unique DHS-issued immigration identifier,” and they would not be able to cross-reference information unless the voter used their identifier to sign up for a driver’s license.