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This week I served on the subcommittee for HSB 245 and also voted in favor of the bill in Ways and Means committee, the bill passed out of committee to protect the integrity of Iowa’s caucus and help keep Iowa first in the nation.
There are 3 main pieces of the bill to understand:
- Requires participation in a precinct caucus to be in-person. The reasoning to this is to protect Iowa’s first in the nation status.
- Iowa is First in the Nation, but New Hampshire prides itself on being the first presidential primary election and even has a state law that requires them to be the first primary election. They make this claim because Iowa’s system is a caucus not a primary election.
- This week, the New Hampshire Secretary of State said that if Iowa allows mail in voting, essentially replacing the caucus system with a primary, they will move to jump Iowa in the presidential primary calendar.
- Requires folks to declare their party status 70 days before the caucuses. This is to limit bad actors attempting to meddle in the opposing party’s caucus.
- Removes the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). Several key states have left ERIC and therefore stopped sharing their voter data with the group. This has made ERIC a less effective of a tool in maintaining our voter rolls. Iowa’s Secretary of State has other tools it can use to maintain Iowa’s voter registration list.
As is the Democrat Party’s go-to move on election law, they are once again accusing House Republicans of voter suppression. The minority party has made the same accusation on every piece of election law we have passed over the last several years, and Iowa continues to have record-setting turnout each election.
