IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) - Iowa’s top elections official is proposing a law requiring political organizations to promptly turn in voter registration forms they collect, rebuking the Iowa Democratic Party for delaying dozens of them last year.
Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate argues that the party’s delay potentially disenfranchised those voters, but Democrats say the impact was minor and is being exaggerated for political reasons.
Pate’s plan would authorize prosecutors to file charges against parties, campaigns and others that wait longer than seven days before submitting voter registration forms to county auditors.
It’s a response to the Democratic Party’s submission of 66 incomplete forms in Johnson County several weeks after they were collected. Elections officials worried that the delay - caused by the party’s unsuccessful attempts to correct the forms - didn’t allow enough time to get voters registered before the Nov. 8 election.
“Those actions could have dramatically suppressed those Iowans’ right to vote. There’s no excuse for hoarding voter registration forms,” Pate spokesman Kevin Hall said.
Democrats are accusing Pate of mischaracterizing what happened, saying nobody should have been disenfranchised because Iowa has Election Day registration.
“The way they characterize this as ’hoarding’ is really unfortunate. We made an extra effort to track these people down with deficient voter registration forms,” said Iowa Democratic Party executive director Ben Foecke.
Foecke said the party would have no problem complying with a seven-day deadline, which was included in a Pate-backed bill released Wednesday requiring voters to show state-approved identification. Democrats say that plan will make it harder for college students, elderly and disabled people to vote.
Democratic Party organizers collected the forms in Johnson County, the state’s most Democratic, in August and September. But they had defects such as missing signatures and workers tried to contact voters to get them to make corrections.
The party submitted them Oct. 26 with an explanation to Johnson County Auditor Travis Weipert. Current law doesn’t set a deadline for submitting registration forms, but the deadline to get registered before Election Day was Oct. 29. Voters can register at the polls but must have identification.
Deputy Secretary of State Carol Olson sent a letter Oct. 27 notifying the Iowa Democratic Party that it committed a “technical infraction of Iowa’s election laws” and asking Johnson County Attorney Janet Lyness to determine whether criminal charges were warranted. Olson noted that the Democrat’s explanation said that the party had “unsuccessfully attempted to correct” problems on the forms, which parties are barred from doing under Iowa law.
The party denied making changes to the forms, saying it was following a longstanding practice of trying to contact voters to do so themselves. The infraction doesn’t carry a penalty.
Weipert, a Democrat, said he doubted the party’s delay was illegal and that he wasn’t aware of anyone being disenfranchised. But he said organizers should turn in the forms promptly to give auditors time to verify their identities by sending postcards to their addresses.
Lyness, the county attorney, said she’s still looking into the matter but doesn’t believe it interfered with anyone’s voting rights.
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