Iowa’s election officials will have new tools to verify voters’ citizenship and will be empowered to question voters at the polls about whether they are citizens under a new law signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds.
The legislation, House File 954, also bans ranked-choice voting in Iowa and makes it harder for third-party groups such as Libertarians to qualify as a major political party.
Reynolds, a Republican, also signed a separate law, House File 928, overhauling Iowa’s election recount procedures.
She announced the signing of both bills in a Monday, June 2, news release.
The legislation comes in response to the chaotic weeks leading up to the 2024 election, when Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, instructed county auditors to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters who he suspected were not citizens based on a faulty list from the Iowa Department of Transportation.
The directive resulted in hundreds of registered voters being challenged at the polls and casting provisional ballots, which were only counted if they provided additional proof of citizenship.
In March, Pate said an audit of the state’s voter registration list confirmed 277 noncitizens on Iowa’s voter rolls, including 35 noncitizens who successfully voted in the 2024 election and five more who tried to vote but had their ballots rejected.
Pate praised lawmakers and Reynolds for enacting the legislation, saying the laws “add additional layers of integrity to our robust election procedures.”
“Keeping Iowa elections safe, fair and accurate is a team effort, from the Iowa Legislature and Governor Reynolds to our county auditors and local election officials on the frontlines of our elections,” Pate said in a statement. “Today, we saw a clear consensus that upholding consistent, statewide procedures and ensuring voter eligibility are key to balancing participation by all eligible Iowans with election integrity.”
During legislative debate, Democrats raised concerns about election workers being able to ask voters about their citizenship status at the polls and said Iowa’s elections are already secure.
Poll workers can question voters about whether they are citizens
Beginning July 1, election workers may challenge a voter at the polls on the basis of their citizenship status under the law, which adds to a section of current law that allows election workers to challenge voters on their age and residency.
The law also gives the Secretary of State’s Office the ability to contract with “state and federal government agencies and private entities” to check voters’ records. And it requires the Iowa Department of Transportation to send the Secretary of State’s Office a list of everyone 17 years old and older who has submitted documentation to the DOT saying they are not a citizen.
If a registered voter’s citizenship status is in question, they must provide documentation affirming they are legally eligible to register and they will be designated as an active registered voter.
Ranked-choice voting is banned in Iowa
The law bans ranked choice voting in Iowa at the state, federal and local level, although the voting method is not currently used in any elections in the state.
It says any statewide or local government cannot conduct elections using ranked-choice voting, sometimes known as instant runoff voting, which involves ranking each candidate in order of preference and reallocating votes to a voter’s second choice if their first choice fails to win a majority.
Parties need to earn 2% of the vote in three consecutive elections to qualify as a major party
Political parties will now need to receive at least 2% of the vote in three consecutive general elections in order to be recognized as major political parties in Iowa.
That’s a change from Iowa’s previous law, which allowed major party status to be awarded to parties whose presidential or gubernatorial candidates earn 2% of the vote in one general election.
Libertarians have objected to efforts to make it more difficult to qualify as a major party in Iowa.
Libertarians gained major party status following the 2016 election, lost it following the 2018 election, gained it again following the 2022 election and lost it again after last fall’s presidential election.
The party’s presidential or gubernatorial candidate has never received 2% of the vote in three consecutive general elections.
Election recounts will be conducted by county auditors and election workers, not separate recount boards
After a razor-thin congressional race in Iowa was decided by just six votes in 2020, Iowa has finally taken steps to overhaul its election recount procedures.
The law places county auditors and their staff of election workers in charge of conducting recounts, doing away with Iowa’s current system which uses a recount board with members appointed by the leading and trailing political candidates, as well as a third agreed-upon member.
Candidates face stricter thresholds for when they can request a recount
Under the new law, candidates can only request recounts in local or state legislative races if the election was decided by 1% or 50 votes, whichever is less. For statewide and federal races, candidates can only request a recount if the election was within 0.15%.
Iowa’s previous law allowed candidates to request a recount regardless of the winner’s margin of victory, but the state would only pay the costs if the results of the election were within one percentage point.
Had it been in place last year, the new recount threshold would have prevented Democrat Christina Bohannan from requesting a recount in her 2024 race against U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in southeast Iowa’s 1st Congressional District. Miller-Meeks won the race by 798 votes, or 0.2%.
The law says the state will pick up the costs of the recount in all cases.
The law requires recounts to be conducted using Iowa’s vote tabulators. Recounts can only be conducted by hand in extraordinary circumstances, defined to include machine failures, a discrepancy between the results of the election and an initial recount and a number of overvotes that exceeds the margin between the candidates.
Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on X at @sgrubermiller.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Kim Reynolds signs Iowa election laws on voter citizenship, recounts
