Secretary of State Paul Pate is being sued for directing election workers to challenge the ballots of over 2000 people who he says got a driver’s license when they were legal residents, but may not be U.S. citizens.
The lawsuit has been filed in federal court on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens and four naturalized citizens. Orcun Selcuk, a political science professor at Luther College in Decorah, is a native of Turkey. He became a U.S. citizen in 2023 and then voted in two previous Iowa elections. “I voted early in October and then I received notice from the Winneshiek County Auditor which challenged my ballot and stated that I was not a full U.S. citizen,” he said during an online news conference organized by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, which filed the lawsuit.
Selcuk told reporters he’s concerned other Iowans who are new citizens will be discouraged from voting. “As a political science professor, I understand and feel deeply about the importance of voting in a democracy,” he said. “I know that the more hassles and bureaucracy and hoops a person has to jump through, the less likely they are to vote, to have their vote count.”
Selcuk used the word “confusing” to describe the letter he got from his county auditor questioning his citizenship status. “It gave a deadline of noon on November 12,” he says, “but did not say what I was supposed to do or what documentation I was supposed to provide or where I was supposed to present it.”
Selcuk said new citizens who are voting for the first time — and have gotten the same kind of notice he did — may not have time to act. “Maybe they have to go back again to prove themselves once again,” he said. “Maybe they don’t have the time or the transportation or maybe they will be afraid to go to the auditor’s office.”
Allen David Gwilliam, a retired attorney from Iowa City, is a native of Wales who moved to the U.S. in 1980 and got his law degree from the University of Iowa. He’s been a legal permanent resident of the U.S. for decades, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in August and had planned to vote on Election Day, but has been told he’ll have to cast a provisional ballot and return later to prove he’s a citizen. “I now have the burden of working through the bureaucracy in order to simply cast my vote, a fundamental right of citizenship that I gained after expending a lot of time, expense and effort,” he said.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Pate said none of the people on the list are barred from voting since their voter registration has not been revoked and they will be able to have their votes counted if they show proof of citizenship. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said she’ll defend the effort to ensure non-citizens do not vote.
“In Iowa, someone has to be a U.S. citizen to vote in state elections. Federal law requires someone to be a U.S. citizen to vote in federal election and that’s what that is all about,” Bird told reporters today in Oskaloosa. “We are defending our election integrity laws here in Iowa. It should be easy to vote and hard to cheat. Only a U.S. citizen can vote in our elections in Iowa and we want to make sure that’s happening.”
Pate said he has an obligation to ensure only U-S citizens are voting and the federal government has not given him access to data that would confirm the citizenship status of the two-thousand people he’s flagged as potential non-citizens.