Last week, I led the effort in the Iowa House of Representatives to ensure that non-citizens will no longer be able to vote in our elections. On Tuesday, March 25, HF 954, legislation giving the Secretary of State new tools to verify someone’s citizenship status, passed the house chamber along party line votes, 65-31. Every House Democrat voted no.
In the 2024 election cycle, Iowa’s Secretary of State was stonewalled by the Biden Administration in his attempts to verify that Iowans registered to vote in the upcoming election were citizens of the United States and were eligible to vote. Recently, the Secretary of State announced that he had verified 277 noncitizens on Iowa’s voter rolls. Of those, 40 attempted to cast ballots in the 2024 election and 35 successfully had their vote counted, despite being an ineligible voter.
This bill aims to ensure that every voter in Iowa’s elections are US citizens. It does this by outlining efforts to clean the current voter rolls and verify the citizenship status of voters in advance of Election Day. Anyone registering to vote will be notified in advance that there is an issue, giving any US Citizens time to correct an error.
Some organizations and political leaders tried to dismiss the Secretary of State’s findings. Claiming that it was illegitimate, a political witch hunt, or that people shouldn’t care because the number of non-citizens voting was so small. Well, I can tell the public that I care, and I know my republican colleagues care too.
Over the last few election cycles, we’ve had at least 4 elections in Iowa decided by 35 votes or fewer. We’ve had several more elections determined by 277 votes or fewer. It is plausible that illegal ballots were determining the outcome of certain races. To me, this threatens what it means to be an American. We pride ourselves on the ability of self-determination through our elections. And when we allow people to use a constitutional right that they have not earned and deflect the will of the people, that is a true threat to democracy.
That is why I am proud to have led the effort to stop non-citizens from participating in our future elections and I will continue our efforts to protect the integrity of our elections.
