We are all diminished by Iowa's hunt for phantom voters
Plus, Davenport sidelines investigation
This week, Paul Pate tried to clean up his mess.
Iowa’s top election official insisted at a news conference on Wednesday it is the federal government’s fault that he ordered county auditors in this state—just two weeks before Election Day—to challenge the votes of up to 2,022 potential American citizens. He’s doing this because at one point in time, perhaps years ago, these people once told the Iowa Department of Transportation they were not citizens.
Pate freely admits he doesn’t know how many of the 2,022 people on his list have become citizens since their initial declarations. But they’re being asked to cast a provisional ballot, which will require them to provide additional proof of eligibility. And since the names on the list haven’t been publicly released, affected citizens won’t even know they’re being singled out until they go to vote.
Which means many will have to make a second trip to get their vote counted.
Late Wednesday, the League of United Latin American Citizens filed a lawsuit challenging Pate’s scheme, alleging violations of federal law and the US Constitution.
You may have noticed I’ve been writing about this a lot this past week.
The reason is simple: The more I learn about the details, the more I think about these violations of basic fairness, the more disturbing it becomes.
The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports the secretary of state tried at his news conference to distinguish his efforts from those in other states, like Virginia, where they are removing people from voter rolls because they too once told driver’s license agencies that they were not citizens.
It’s true, Pate hasn’t removed people from the rolls. Not yet. But he also hasn’t done many of the things Virginia did do.
Virginia began its effort three months ago, in August.
Then, surely knowing this kind of data’s unreliability for proving current citizenship status, it consulted federal immigration data.
After that, Virginia notified each of the people who were affected so, if they were falsely listed, they could provide to authorities their proof of citizenship.
Yet, Pate complains his mess is all the fault of the federal government.
Pate said this week he tried but couldn’t get access to federal immigration data. But Virginia clearly accomplished this task. Other states have also been granted access to federal data, too.
What’s wrong with Iowa?
Why, instead of acting earlier like Virgina, did Pate wait until October to even seek the DOT data?
It is no secret Donald Trump has been raging, falsely, about illegal voting.
The Des Moines Register also reports that Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said this week she asked Pate what he was doing about this issue after seeing “other states were looking into it.”
National Public Radio reports that Republicans in other states have filed lawsuits recently demanding the federal government check the citizenship of people on state voter rolls.
Democrats say this is all just a ploy to help Donald Trump lay the groundwork for a challenge if he loses the election. And Trump’s top ally in Iowa—Attorney General Brenna Bird—falsely claimed the LULAC lawsuit is an attempt to “let noncitizens illegally vote.”
Tell that to Orcun Selcuk, Alan David Gwilliam and Michael Brokloff. They are all Iowans. They all are US citizens who are plaintiffs in the LULAC lawsuit. They all ought to be able to vote like any other citizen.
Tingting Zhen is a US citizen, too. She suspected she was on Pate’s list, so she asked her county auditor and the secretary of state’s office to confirm it. They refused, according to the LULAC lawsuit, so Zhen will have to wait until she tries to legally cast her ballot to find out if she is discriminated against.
Zhen says she feels intimidated.
I don’t blame her. Who wants to stand in a line of people waiting to vote, only to be singled out when it is your turn?
Immigration advocates worry other immigrants, who are citizens, will be intimidated, too.
These citizens, like every other Iowan who is registered to vote, already attested they were US citizens when they registered to vote.
The political powers in this state are so paranoid about noncitizens voting they are willing to violate the rights of people they know to be citizens, all in their quest for phantoms.
It was only in September that Pate minimized the idea of noncitizen voting in Iowa.
“I don’t think we see a lot of it at this time in Iowa,” he said on Iowa Press.
The truth is, there is virtually none. The commonly cited Heritage Foundation database lists four cases in Iowa since 2011.
All of this reminds me of Pate’s decision last year to drop out of the Electronic Registration Information Center, a longstanding data-sharing group with a bi-partisan roster of states that helped with election security.
Pate once called the organization a “godsend.” The next month, Trump attacked it, and Pate joined a bunch of other Republican election officials in moving to drop their membership.
The vast majority of us aren’t among the 2,022 potential citizens who will be subjected to these violations by the state. We won’t be asked to cast a “provisional ballot.” We won’t have to return with the proof that we are, in fact, citizens.
That doesn’t mean there will be no consequence to all of us.
In the words of John F. Kennedy, the rights of every person are diminished when the rights of even one person are threatened.
Update (Nov. 2, 10 a.m.): At a court hearing Friday, the federal government said 250 people on Pate’s list are noncitizens, according to news reports. Their identities have not been disclosed to the state of Iowa. But what this means is that for each noncitizen on Pate’s list, the state of Iowa was willing to violate the rights of nine citizens by making them take extra steps to get their vote counted.
How were these people selected?
By national origin.
As a believer in the Constitution and the rule of law, I find this offensive. American citizens shouldn’t be treated unfairly just because they weren’t born here. I don’t want to see a noncitizen vote, but I am concerned for all those citizens who might be discouraged from voting because of the extra burden.
By the way, those 250 people represent 0.01% of the entire Iowa voter file of 2.3 million people.
The judge in the case said he expected to make a ruling in the case this weekend.
Listen Up!
This week’s edition of Iowa Down Ballot is now available. This week, I joined Laura Belin, Art Cullen, Ty Rushing, Barry Piatt, Dave Busiek, Dennis Goldford and Zachary Oren Smith to kick around a range of issues, including our predictions for Election Day.
I encourage you to give it a listen. Iowa Down Ballot is a production of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.
Davenport’s actions sideline investigation
The Quad-City Times reported this week that State Auditor Rob Sand said his office’s inquiry into Davenport’s controversial payment of $1.9 million to three former employees is “mostly on hold.”
Sand had previously announced he was investigating the payments, which included $1.6 million to former City Administrator Corri Spiegel. The city paid the money to settle allegations of harassment by elected officials.
It’s been a year since this story broke, and there still are questions. Sand’s inquiry was a chance to learn more and provide oversight. However, the city of Davenport, even as it claims it is being transparent, has worked to undermine accountability. Earlier this year, it contested a subpoena from Sand’s office for recordings of closed-door city council sessions last year.
A district judge had ordered Sand be given access to the recordings, which he must keep confidential, and that the recordings be turned over to the court so irrelevant material could be excluded.
However, as I have reported previously, the city is arguing this case is an “assault” on attorney-client privilege, and it asked for permission to file an interlocutory appeal with the Iowa Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court granted the city permission recently, so now the case is in their hands. A previous appeal like this drug out for more than a year, so as Sand said, his investigation is largely on hold.
This is unfortunate, and it stands in the way not only of openness but the oversight of local government that the state auditor’s office provides.
The people of Davenport should remember this the next time our elected leaders tell us how transparent they are.
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I do not recall in my years of living in Davenport ever witnessing the high degree of efforts to cover up malfeasance in city hall. Or have I witnessed the degree of public apathy as evidenced by the tiny turnout in the last election. The two are related. Citizen disregard encourages city officials to shirk their duty to the few citizens who want the whole truth revealed.
With Republicans you are guilty unless you can prove otherwise.