Iowa Secretary of State Agrees to Settle Lawsuit After Wrongly Targeting Naturalized Citizens for Potential Voter Fraud

Des Moines, Iowa — The Iowa Secretary of State has agreed to a settlement in the federal lawsuit against him to stop the wrongful citizenship-based voter challenges of more than 2,000 Iowans who were registered to vote.

The groups and individuals who brought the lawsuit filed papers with the court this morning asking it to dismiss the case and adopt the negotiated settlement agreement, but the judge has not yet entered any order on the case.

ACLU of Iowa Legal Director Rita Bettis Austen said, "We look forward to the district court’s order in this case. We are very pleased to be able to settle this case favorably for Iowa voters. Iowans deserve elections free from this sort of unjustified, intimidating effort by our highest state officials that targeted fully qualified voters in a discriminatory and unreliable fashion, undermining both voting rights and people’s confidence in elections."

In exchange for the dismissal of the lawsuit, the Iowa Secretary of State's Office agrees to:

1. Not use the October 2024 list or any portion of it for any purpose in any future election or for any future ballot-related challenges, removals, or any other list maintenance activity.
2. Confirm the state has officially rescinded the directive it sent to county election administrators and instruct them not to use the October 2024 list for any voter list maintenance.
3. In the future, not rely exclusively on Iowa Department of Transportation data to formulate any future voter challenge lists within 90 days of an election.

The district court has formally adopted the settlement agreement in a federal court order. The order and settlement agreement can be found in our online press packet.

The lawsuit was filed Oct. 30, 2024, on behalf of numerous naturalized U.S. citizens and the civil rights organization, LULAC of Iowa. The plaintiffs were indeed eligible to vote, but right before the election, the Iowa Secretary of State issued a directive, based on outdated state data, telling county auditors to challenge the plaintiffs and the other Iowa voters on the list at the polls and not to let them vote a regular ballot.

At first, the Secretary of State told county auditors that they should tell pollworkers they were required to challenge everyone on the list. Pollworkers also were supposed to allow the people on this list to vote only a provisional ballot.

Unlike regular ballots, those provisional ballots would be counted only if the voter later provided documentation proving their citizenship to a county board, which met after the election on November 12 to consider them. (In some cases, auditors or county attorneys recognized the naturalized citizen voters personally and reached out to notify them that they were on the list.)

Bettis Austen said, “Some Iowans were not allowed to vote a regular ballot and have it counted, even though they were citizens and qualified to cast a regular ballot. Even beyond the direct impact to voters on the list, though, there was broader harm done in terms of confusing and intimidating voters just days before the election."

Making things even harder for voters was that the list was kept secret. The Secretary of State had publicly announced that he planned to challenge voters, but then repeatedly refused to disclose the actual list, and provided no notification even to the individual targeted voters themselves. That made it significantly more difficult for civil rights organizations like LULAC of Iowa, who wanted to help those on the list, to identify targeted voters and help them prove their citizenship so they could vote a regular ballot.

Another key problem with the list is that it was based solely on information from outdated Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) driver’s license records. The Secretary of State used that DOT list to find those who indicated at the time they got their driver’s license that they were lawful permanent residents (also called green card holders). But since the DOT data was years old, it wasn’t accurate for those many green card holders who had since gone on to become U.S. citizens.

Well after the election, Secretary Pate finally acknowledged that at least 88 percent of those on the list were in fact citizens eligible to vote. The citizenship status of the remaining 12 percent has not been proven, despite what the Secretary of State has reported publicly.

Secretary Pate’s directive was yet another of many examples of secretaries of state in other U.S. states, who have insisted that many non-citizens are improperly registered to vote, only to be forced to significantly or entirely walk those figures back based on their reliance on flawed or outdated data.

It's important to note that Iowa already has ample protections against voter fraud. When registering to vote, Iowans must affirm that they are U.S. citizens. Being intentionally untruthful about this is a Class D felony that can result in up to five years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

More details, including statements from impacted voters, can be found here.

The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU of Iowa, the ACLU Voting Rights Project and the Faegre Drinker Biddle and Reath LLP law firm, on behalf of LULAC of Iowa and several individuals.

Joe Enriquez Henry, state political director of the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa, said, "The actions and misinformation spread by the Secretary of State resulted in new citizens worrying about whether or not they could vote. It was intimidating for them because even though they are citizens, they didn't know if they would be able to vote, or even if they would face serious criminal charges.

"Our organization wanted to help these naturalized citizens, but Secretary Pate also made his inaccurate list secret and wouldn't disclose names, even to the people on this list themselves. This is disgraceful and we're glad his office has agreed not to do this again so close to an election," Henry said.

Jonathan Topaz, staff attorney at the national ACLU Voting Rights Project, said, “This settlement is good news for our clients and all Iowa voters because it helps prevent the eleventh-hour chaos, confusion, and disenfranchisement that Secretary Pate’s actions created just days before the November 2024 election. Secretary Pate has joined the ignoble club of secretaries of state who have breathlessly insisted that vast numbers of non-citizens were on their voter rolls, only to be forced to retract those figures significantly or entirely because they were based on inaccurate or outdated data. We will continue to keep a close eye on Iowa to ensure that this settlement is honored and all eligible Iowa citizens are able to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”

Bettis Austen said, "All U.S. citizens have a fundamental right to vote, and to do so without unfair interference or discrimination. That is, of course, no less true for naturalized citizens as it is for people who acquire citizenship at birth. It is shocking that the state’s highest official, charged with protecting the voting rights of Iowa citizens, spearheaded this misguided effort, because there was plenty of information available back in 2024 that this list was faulty," Bettis Austen said.

"As we pointed out at the time, and the data has borne out, the information this challenge was based on was not accurate. The overwhelming majority of voters wrongly put on this list, including all our clients, are naturalized United States citizens who have the right to vote. There is no lawful basis to require these citizens to vote provisional ballots instead of regular ballots like all other citizen voters. Doing so was wrong. We are hopeful today’s settlement will safeguard Iowans from this happening again in future elections," Bettis Austen said.

Joe Quinn, attorney at Faegre Drinker in Des Moines, added, “We are committed to continuing to ensure that all citizens are able to exercise their right to vote. This settlement helps ensure that U.S. citizens will not have their right to vote unreasonably challenged based on drivers license records. We will continue working to protect the right of all eligible voters to participate in our democracy.”