Iowa naturalized U.S. citizens sue to block challenges of potential noncitizen voters

Naturalized U.S. citizens sued Iowa’s top election official in federal court Wednesday night to try to stop his plan to challenge voters’ citizenship at the polls if they appear on a flawed, confidential list of more than 2,100 people flagged as possible noncitizens.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of people who are newer U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote, as well as the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa.

They allege Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate is wrongly keeping eligible voters from voting with a regular ballot in violation of the U.S. Constitution and federal voter protection laws.

Pate has said public pressure and a new source of citizenship information led him to flag more than 2,100 of the state’s 2.3 million registered voters as potential noncitizens just two weeks before Election Day.

He referred 154 people to law enforcement last week for allegedly voting or registering to vote and later identifying themselves as noncitizens on Department of Transportation paperwork. Pate has also directed county auditors to require an additional 2,022 voters to cast a provisional ballot if they don’t prove their citizenship before voting. Those voters would have to prove their citizenship to their county auditor by Nov. 12 to have their vote counted.

The ACLU said Pate’s effort has subjected new citizens to being “targeted, challenged and investigated for exercising their basic right of citizenship.” Pate has acknowledged most of the people on the list are likely U.S. citizens.

ACLU of Iowa Legal Director Rita Bettis Austen said that makes Pate’s efforts even more disturbing.

“It is shocking that the state’s highest official charged with protecting the voting rights of Iowa citizens is spearheading an effort to disenfranchise Iowa citizens,” she said. “He is fueling a false narrative about voter fraud by noncitizens and laying the groundwork to undermine confidence in the election."

The lawsuit also accuses Pate of wrongly conducting systematic voter registration list maintenance within the 90-day period before Election Day when federal law prohibits such actions.

Courtesy of ACLU of Iowa

A new citizen's effort to vote

One of the plaintiffs, Orcun Selcuk of Decorah, is a native of Turkey who became a U.S. citizen last year. He said he voted early this month, and then received a notice that said he was not a full citizen.

Selcuk said the notice was very confusing and gave him a deadline of noon on Nov. 12 but did not say what documentation he would need to provide to have his vote counted.

“After you become a full U.S. citizen, one of the things they tell you is that you are now eligible to vote,” he said. “But the state of Iowa seems to have some questions about that.”

Selcuk said he worries that other new citizens who voted for the first time will have to go back to prove themselves again. He wants their votes to count, and he does not want new citizens to be intimidated from voting.

Pate did not directly comment on the lawsuit Thursday morning, but he said in a statement that the federal government is preventing him from verifying the citizenship of the more than 2,000 voters.

He said the Des Moines field office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reviewed the names, but the Washington, D.C. office would not allow the verified list of citizens and potential noncitizens to be shared with the state of Iowa.

"If the federal government has information that will ensure only U.S. citizens vote and ensure naturalized citizens can cast their ballot as normal, that information must be shared," Pate said.

A USCIS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Pate also said the U.S. Department of Justice has indicated they may challenge his office's process of challenging potential noncitizens as they vote.

Pate addresses questions about his directive

At a news conference about election security Wednesday, Pate said he recently found out about an Iowa Department of Transportation list his office could use to check the citizenship of registered voters. Previously, the secretary of state has used jury lists for that purpose.

He said the DOT list is not 100% up-to-date, but it was his only option. Pate said while most of the people flagged as potential noncitizens likely became citizens before registering to vote, he believes there are some noncitizens on the list.

“We’re balancing this process,” he said. “We want everyone to be able to vote. That is why none of them have been taken off the voter rolls, but we do…owe an obligation to make sure that they are citizens now.”

It is a felony for people who are not U.S. citizens to vote or register to vote.

Joe Henry, political director for the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa, previously said he was concerned about the timing of Pate’s initial announcement — just two weeks before Election Day — and called it “politically motivated.”

'Mass public pressure' prompted the investigation

Noncitizen voting has been found to be very rare across the country. Yet former President Donald Trump has been spreading false claims that large numbers of noncitizens vote, and some Republican-led states have removed suspected noncitizens from their voter rolls.

When asked in mid-September about noncitizen voting, Pate said he did not think it was a widespread problem in Iowa.

Asked if anything had changed since then, Pate said he was watching how other states were addressing concerns about noncitizen voting, looking for sources of information and trying to find a way to root out noncitizens without disenfranchising voters or inviting a lawsuit.

“The reason we sent it to counties now is because we feel the public expects us to address the issue,” he said. “Because we’ve had so much pressure put on the elections process across the country about not only noncitizens, but about anything that’s not got full transparency in an election. And this is the closest we could come to providing that transparency at this time.”

Pate’s spokesperson said there was “mass public pressure” related to election integrity, including questions about the citizenship status of voters.

Gov. Kim Reynolds said Wednesday morning she did not direct Pate to investigate potential noncitizen voters, but she asked him about it “a while back.”

“So I was just curious, you know, to make sure how that was playing out and what we were doing,” she said. “But you know, here’s the problem…the federal government is not giving us access to the SAVE file.”

Reynolds and Pate said that federal service — Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement s— would help the state to get up-to-date information on voters’ citizenship status. They said they do not know why the federal government will not give the secretary of state’s office access to SAVE after repeated requests.

A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson did not say on Wednesday why the agency has not approved the Iowa secretary of state’s office to use SAVE.

“SAVE is the most secure and efficient way to verify an individual’s citizenship or immigration status, including for verification regarding voter registration and/or voter list maintenance,” they said.

Proving U.S. citizenship

Reynolds said she is not concerned about U.S. citizens getting flagged in Iowa’s process, because they will still be able to vote when they prove their citizenship.

Pate said voters who are asked to vote a provisional ballot because their citizenship is in question must show proof of citizenship to their county auditor by Nov. 12 to have their vote counted. He said those who show proof of citizenship before voting — like a U.S. passport, certified U.S. birth certificate, report of birth abroad or certificate of citizenship or naturalization from USCIS — can vote a regular ballot.

Pate said his office is not reaching out to voters on the list because he does not want them to feel intimidated.