Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and the state’s attorney general are suing the Biden Administration for refusing to provide information about potential non-citizens on Iowa voter registration rolls.
Pate and Bird are asking a federal court to order the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to hand over the data. It could then be used for criminal investigations of non-citizens who registered to vote or cast ballots in Iowa elections. In late October, Pate issued a list of over 2000 registered Iowa voters who were legal residents but not U.S. citizens when they got a driver’s license. Pate said yesterday, before the lawsuit was filed, that federal records could have confirmed which of them had become citizens.
“We could have been able to know exactly how many non-citizens were registered in Iowa, and dealt with those in a very specific and targeted way, rather than have to do the awkward approach we had to this time,” he said.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said in written statement that today’s legal action is part of the “fight to maintain safe and secure elections Iowans can count on.”
(By Katarina Sostaric, Iowa Public Radio)