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After Barack Obama won the 2008 Iowa caucuses, there were rumors floating around.
The record turnout of 240,000 — a previously unheard-of figure — prompted worries that out-of-state voters had crossed the border and voted in the caucuses. Some of that finger-pointing was aimed at Scott County.
There were stories at the time that buses had suddenly come from Illinois with new voters the night of the caucuses.
As the political reporter for the Quad-City Times, I decided to check it out. I got a list of the voters who had registered the day of the caucuses from the Scott County auditor’s office. There were a whole lot of names. I then took a random sample—also a fairly large number, as I recall — and I checked them against an Iowa Department of Transportation database.
A surprisingly large number of these new voters didn’t check out. I wondered: Could the rumors be true?
To be clear, the rumors were not true.
I dug deeper, and after some time-consuming investigation, which involved other sources, too — as well as some shoe leather visiting the homes of these newly registered voters — I found they were legitimate. There was no story there. As I recall, there was only one person in my sample that I could not locate.
One of the lessons I learned from this experience: Databases can be deceiving.
This experience came to mind when I read news articles this week that said Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate’s office reported that 87 people had voted in the state, then subsequently told the Iowa DOT they were not citizens; in addition, another 67 people registered to vote but did not cast ballots, then afterward told the DOT they were not citizens, either, the office said.
Pate said he turned over the 154 names to the Iowa attorney general’s office and the Iowa Department of Public Safety for potential prosecution.
I have no idea whether the data at issue here is accurate or not. My experience teaches me to be cautious. I learned that in 2008. The Des Moines Register also reported that Joe Enriquez Henry, political director for the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa, said it is possible some voters who were flagged as noncitizens by the DOT may, in fact, be citizens but because of language barriers, did not understand the agency’s form.
County auditors receive information on potential noncitizens ahead of 2024 election
Pate’s news release also said that they discovered 2,022 people who reported they were not citizens, and after that, they voted or registered to vote. These people may have become citizens before they registered or voted, according to the secretary of state’s office.
They will be required to vote a provisional ballot this year, which means they must prove their eligibility to a special board of review before their ballots can be counted.
Obviously, it is not legal for noncitizens to register or to vote in Iowa. And if these people knowingly broke the law, they should be held to account. I have no doubt this is something Attorney General Brenna Bird would surely pursue.
Whatever the outcome, I believe in the overall integrity of Iowa’s election system. The number of people who have been proved to have illegally voted in Iowa is small. And even if all 87 of the people that Pate flagged had voted illegally, it still would amount to a relatively insignificant number. There are 2.3 million voter records in the Iowa voter file, meaning the 87 represent one out of every 26,000. (It is important to note it is not clear when these 87 people are said to have voted. The state list goes back to the year 2000.)
Ultimately, I hope this development, coming as it does less than two weeks before Election Day, doesn’t discourage people who have a right to vote from going to the polls.
The leaders in this state talk a lot about making sure that only eligible voters cast ballots, and they can be quite threatening about it, too. That’s bound to worry people who may not speak the language well or who aren’t sure about the rules. And, as we know, the state Legislature has come up with a whole lot of new rules when it comes to voting.
Ultimately, the goal should not only be to ensure that only the eligible can vote in our elections, but we should also make sure that those who are eligible aren’t afraid to do so.
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