Guaranteeing fair and honest elections is a project on which your legislature should never stop working. Over the last several years, the Republican trifecta has placed into law many successful policies that have succeeded in giving us an election system that is recognized nationally. Probably the most important of which was to require an ID by each voter on election day. We have also made absentee voting more secure. We did this by prohibiting the practice of ballot harvesting by strangers. We also put strict restrictions on who can return your absentee ballot to help prevent losing your vote and stopping fraud. We prohibited election officials from shotgunning out ballots and applications to voters.
Each general assembly we review performance and look to tighten up inefficiencies and security risks. This year I’m looking to enact three new policies, along with some technical updates from the Secretary of State’s office.
First, I am seeking to have our statewide voter registration list checked, at least once between elections, by a real time identification technology company. These would be the same style of companies that handle identification security for our credit cards and debit cards. They are also the style of security companies I worked to have verify identification, assets, and addresses of Iowa’s welfare benefit recipients to ensure integrity in those programs. This project should be much easier. The goal is to send the statewide files to the company and receive back a report of those on the registration list who have evidence of change of address, or deceased, and other legal requirements to be registered to vote. This report can then be broken down by county and offered to county auditors to begin the process of confirming a legitimate registration. This process is already in place.
If this works well, I’d like to see a narrower project that would compare Election Day registrations against known addresses and identities to reveal whether there is fraud of any kind happening. I’ve always been worried about the rush of registrations on the day of elections.
Secondly, I would like to see an end to the ballot drop boxes that appeared due to the emergency rules during the Covid episode. We didn’t have drop boxes before 2020. It was an overreaction during Covid, and we certainly don’t need them now. There is no security benefit in having people drop their ballots into an unguarded box in front of the courthouse. We certainly don’t want to see a video of individuals dropping stacks of ballots into the box as happened in Philadelphia in 2020. It is also an unnecessary extra chore for auditors to check the box daily, even on the weekends and through holidays. If a voter would like to vote early, they can mail their absentee ballot, or go into the auditor’s office and vote in person early. I don’t think those policies are as secure as election day voting in person, but we will watch those for a while. The drop boxes aren’t needed anymore.
And the final provision for this report is the banning of ranked choice voting. Some campaign strategists have endorsed and promoted the strategy to game the election system by having voters rank their choices, in order of preference, as opposed to voting for a candidate. Then all candidates are ranked according to the preference points they receive. After running a voter’s ballot through a ranked choice system, that ballot could be cast for the candidate the voter ranked far below the candidate they meant to support. It could be a candidate who the voter actually opposes gaining office. But in ranked choice voting, the citizen lost control of that decision after casting their ballot. Ranked choice voting is un-American and has been a disaster in places where it has been tried.
As always, you have my gratitude for giving me the opportunity to work on a project like a fair and secure voting system. If you would like to send an email, send it to [email protected]
Author: Jason Schultz
State Sen. Jason Schultz served three terms in the House prior to being elected to the Iowa Senate. Schultz served seven years in the National Guard and served as volunteer fire fighter for the Schleswig Volunteer FD for 13 years, two years as the department's chief.
