Iowa’s top election official says warrants have been issued for three more people suspected of illegally voting in Iowa’s 2010 election.
Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz says the latest cases of suspected voter fraud came from Page County in the southwest corner of the state and Dallas County in central Iowa, but the state agency in charge of the investigation didn’t publicize the arrests, which came in the week before Election Day.
“It was one of those situations where I don’t think the DCI wanted to make a big deal before the election,” Schultz says. “I believe there’ll be other arrests coming here shortly.”
Schultz and his staff combed through records and came up with a list of 1200 people suspected of being “non-citizens” and illegally voting in the 2010 election. So far, the single agent from the Division of Criminal Investigation who’s been working his way through that list has identified five cases in which non-citizens are accused of voting.
“It’s a slow process,” Schultz says. “I mean, keep in mind this investigator interviews these people individually, one by one. We had 1200 people who potentially may have voted when they weren’t citizens, so it takes time. That’s just the nature of the beast.”
A spokeswoman for the Division of Criminal Investigation did not respond to Radio Iowa’s request for additional information about the latest warrants issued for non-citizens who allegedly voted in 2010. Two other cases involve felons who are accused of illegally voting in the 2010 election.
On Monday Schultz announced he would ask legislators to consider requiring “signature verification” for absentee ballots, to curb fraud, since nearly half of all the votes cast in the 2012 election were from absentee ballots.
“It’s basically a reader that’s going to read the signature, match it to the signature on file and then flag potential issues,” Schultz says. “If there are, then there’ll be a process for the county auditor’s office to contact those voters.”
Schultz says each county would have to invest in the technology, since voter registration records are kept by the auditors in Iowa’s 99 counties.