Judge Allows Iowa to Continue Challenging Voters
A federal judge denied a request to block Iowa election officials from challenging the eligibility of alleged noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls.
District Court Judge Stephen Locher on Sunday rejected a bid to pause Iowa’s program from the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa and four naturalized citizens.
The group sued Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate and elections officials last week after Pate sent county election officials a list of 2,176 suspected noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls with instructions to challenge the individuals’ right to vote and to keep the list secret.
“The Voter Purge Program, which [Pate] sprung on voters with just days remaining until the 2024 general election, targets recently naturalized citizens for voter challenges, law enforcement investigations, and unwarranted scrutiny for exercising their right to vote,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit alleges the list is critically flawed. “The Secretary’s October 22 letter explicitly acknowledged that only 154 of the 2,176 identified individuals purport to have registered to vote after identifying as a non-citizen—meaning the Secretary has no clue whether or not the vast majority of individuals on his list are in fact ineligible to vote.”
In defending the program, attorneys for Pate say calling the list a “purge program” is misleading because “no individual’s voter registration status has been altered.”
“All it requires is providing evidence of citizenship either that day or before November 12 to the county auditor,” the state said in a Nov. 1 filing.
The defendants also cited Purcell, which “instructs federal courts not to insert themselves into election-related disputes shortly before an election,” along with a recent order from the U.S. Supreme Court that allowed Virginia to move forward with its voter purge program targeting suspected noncitizens.
In Sunday’s order, Locher, a Biden appointee, said the plaintiffs failed to overcome Purcell. “The Court will not definitively rule on Plaintiffs’ argument beyond reiterating that this is not the type of ‘clearcut’ situation in which Purcell should be disregarded,” the order says.