XPost: alt.fan.states.iowa, law.court.federal, alt.politics.elections
XPost: sac.politics, talk.politics.guns

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A federal judge ruled Sunday that Iowa can
continue challenging the validity of hundreds of ballots from potential noncitizens even though critics said the effort threatens the voting
rights of people who’ve recently become U.S. citizens.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher, an appointee of President Joe
Biden, sided with the state in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil
Liberties Union in the Iowa capital of Des Moines on behalf of the
League of Latin American Citizens of Iowa and four recently naturalized citizens. The four were on the state’s list of questionable
registrations to be challenged by local elections officials.

The state’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state argued
that investigating and potentially removing 2,000 names from the list
would prevent illegal voting by noncitizens. GOP officials across the
U.S. have made possible voting by noncitizen immigrants a key election-
year talking point even though it is rare. Their focus has come with
former President Donald Trump falsely suggesting that his opponents
already are committing fraud to prevent his return to the White House.

In his ruling Sunday, Locher pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court decision
four days prior that allowed Virginia to resume a similar purge of its
voter registration rolls even though it was impacting some U.S.
citizens. He also cited the Supreme Court’s recent refusal to review a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision on state electoral laws surrounding provisional ballots. Those Supreme Court decisions advise lower courts
to “act with great caution before awarding last-minute injunctive
relief,” he wrote.

Locher also said the state’s effort does not remove anyone from the
voter rolls, but rather requires some voters to use provisional
ballots.

In a statement on Sunday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican,
celebrated the ruling.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for election integrity,” Reynolds said.
“In Iowa, while we encourage all citizens to vote, we will enforce the
law and ensure those votes aren’t cancelled out by the illegal vote of
a non-citizen.”

Rita Bettis Austen, legal director for the ACLU of Iowa, said some
voters could be disenfranchised due to the ruling and Secretary of
State Paul Pate’s directive.

“We are obviously disappointed with the court’s decision not to
outright block Secretary Pate’s directive, which we still fear
threatens to disenfranchise eligible voters simply because they are
people who became citizens in the past several years,” Austen said in a
written statement. “Even the Secretary agrees that the vast majority of
voters on his list are United States citizens.”

Even still, Austen said the lawsuit forced Pate to back away from
forcing everyone on the list to vote provisionally only. County
auditors may permit a voter on the list to cast a regular ballot if
they deem it appropriate, and voters can prove they are citizens with documentation, she added.

After Locher had a hearing in the ACLU’s lawsuit Friday, Pate and state Attorney General Brenna Bird issued a statement saying that Iowa had
about 250 noncitizens registered to vote, but the Biden administration
wouldn’t provide data about them.

Pate told reporters last month that his office was forced to rely upon
a list of potential noncitizens from the Iowa Department of
Transportation. It named people who registered to vote or voted after identifying themselves as noncitizens living in the U.S. legally when
they previously sought driver’s licenses.

“Today’s court victory is a guarantee for all Iowans that their votes
will count and not be canceled out by illegal votes,” Bird said in the statement issued after Sunday’s decision.

But ACLU attorneys said Iowa officials were conceding that most of the
people on the list are eligible to vote and shouldn’t have been
included. They said the state was violating naturalized citizens’
voting rights by wrongfully challenging their registrations and
investigating them if they cast ballots.

Pate issued his directive Oct. 22, only two weeks before the Nov. 5
election, and ACLU attorneys argued that federal law prohibits such a
move so close to Election Day.

The people on the state’s list of potential noncitizens may have become naturalized citizens after their statements to the Department of Transportation. Pate’s office told county elections officials to
challenge their ballots and have them cast provisional ballots instead.
That would leave the decision of whether they will be counted to local officials upon further review, with voters having seven days to provide
proof of their U.S. citizenship.

In his ruling, Locher wrote that Pate backed away from some of his
original hardline positions at an earlier court hearing. Pate’s
attorney said the Secretary of State is no longer aiming to require
local election officials to challenge the votes of each person on his
list or force voters on the list to file provisional ballots even when
they have proven citizenship at a polling place.

Federal law and states already make it illegal for noncitizens to vote,
and the first question on Iowa’s voter registration form asks whether a
person is a U.S. citizen. The form also requires potential voters to
sign a statement saying they are citizens, warning them that if they
lie, they can be convicted of a felony, punishable by up to five years
in prison.

Locher’s ruling also came after a federal judge had halted a similar
program in Alabama challenged by civil rights groups and the U.S.
Department of Justice. Testimony from state officials in that case
showed that roughly 2,000 of the more than 3,200 voters who were made
inactive were actually legally registered citizens.

In Iowa’s case, noncitizens who are registered are potentially only a
tiny fraction of the state’s 2.2 million registered voters.

But Locher wrote that it appears to be undisputed that some portion of
the names on Pate’s list are registered voters who are not U.S.
citizens. Even if that portion is small, an injunction effectively
would force local election officials to let ineligible voters cast
ballots, he added.

Democrats and Republicans have been engaged in a sprawling legal fight
over this year’s election for months. Republicans have filed dozens of
lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being
chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about
how the election was run only after votes were tallied. Democrats have
their own team of dozens of staffers fighting GOP cases.

Immigrants gain citizenship through a process called naturalization,
which includes establishing residency, proving knowledge of basic
American history and institutions as well as taking an oath of
allegiance to the United States.

https://apnews.com/article/iowa-naturalized-citizens-noncitizens- voting-1bd9253dec022da5dc457b1e263f0594

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)