Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird announced Friday her office is leading the prosecution of a non-U.S. citizen charged with election misconduct for illegally registering to vote and voting.
According to Bird’s office, 42-year-old Jorge Oscar Sanchez-Vasquez of Marshalltown was arrested and charged for allegedly voting in a July special election for the Marshalltown City Council. He is a legal resident of the U.S. but is not a citizen.
The attorney general’s office has sole authority to prosecute state-level election crimes, after a state government reorganization law took that power away from county attorneys in 2023.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, said he has not seen widespread problems with noncitizens voting in Iowa’s elections.
I don’t believe, in Iowa, we have any of those types of massive voter fraud.Paul Pate, Iowa Secretary of State
“The law says very clearly you have to be a U.S. citizen to vote,” he said. “We have voter ID, so we are establishing a baseline of, you have to prove who you are. We also are working with our partners. We work with the court system. There’s various partners who help us identify those folks who are here legally, but not U.S. citizens.”
Pate commented on national concerns about noncitizens voting during a taping of Iowa Press on Iowa PBS last Friday, before Bird announced the charges against Sanchez-Vasquez.
“Our role is to make sure only eligible voters vote,” Pate said. “Even one, two, five, 100 — whatever the number might be — is not acceptable. So, we’ll keep trying to make sure we’re protecting and keeping that away. I don’t believe, in Iowa, we have any of those types of massive voter fraud.”
Pate said in an earlier interview with IPR that noncitizen legal residents sometimes think they are eligible to vote. He said immigrants who are not authorized to be in the country probably don’t want to draw attention to themselves by trying to vote illegally.
Former President Donald Trump has been spreading a baseless claim that Democrats are urging noncitizens to vote illegally, setting it up as a potential basis for calling the election results into question if he loses the presidential election in November.
Some Republican-led states have recently pushed new initiatives to clear noncitizens from their voter lists, but many eligible voters have been wrongly flagged, according to NPR.
