Republicans focus on election security

We have completed week 12 of the [legislative] session (April 5), which is the second funnel wherein bills from the Senate must be through a House committee to still be considered.

The House worked hard in week 11 to pass House bills over to the Senate, so week 12 was spent managing Senate bills we received through our House committees.

Since week 11 was so busy, I will recap a few bills the House passed from that week in this week’s newsletter.

Iowa House Republicans have remained diligent in ensuring Iowa’s elections remain safe and secure. It is essential that Iowans can continue to trust the results of our elections.

Iowa House Republicans are always looking for ways to improve our election system and take swift action to prevent any shenanigans we see taking place in other states from happening here in Iowa.

One area needing improvement is the way we conduct recounts. House File 928 establishes a fair and common-sense system for recounts.

Currently there is no limit on the vote difference [regulating] when a candidate can request a recount even though recounts have shown to yield minimal vote changes. Frivolous requests are a waste of time and resources.

This bill sets a threshold for requesting a recount. In this bill, recounts for statewide or federal elections are only allowed if the apparent margin of victory is .15%. Recounts for general assembly or local races are only allowed if the apparent margin of victory is the lesser of 1% or 50 votes.

The recount board is changed to consist of the county auditor, the auditor’s staff and, if necessary, people employed to count the ballots for the election with equal party representation.

The current process allows the campaigns to appoint one person to the recount board each. This essentially puts the campaigns in charge of counting their own votes, opening the system up to bias.

The County Auditor is elected and trusted to run our elections. They should be trusted to run the recount as well. Campaigns may designate up to five observers to personally verify that the recount process is conducted fairly.

The second bill we passed regarding election security was House File 954. 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.

Recently, The Trump administration has turned over the list of people that have gained citizenship, so the SOS was able to identify 277 noncitizens that were in fact registered to vote. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. Citizens time to correct an error. Additionally, this bill raises the threshold to become a political party to three consecutive statewide elections receiving 2% of the vote and bans ranked choice voting.

Next week (April 7) we will begin passing Senate bills on the House Floor, and we will soon turn to Appropriations and Ways and Means bills as the session begins to wind down. Our session is scheduled to last 110 days, putting us at a May 2 scheduled end date.