According to the Iowa Secretary of State, 87 non-citizens voted • Iowa Capital Dispatch

“My office is committed to maintaining election integrity and takes all cases of election misconduct seriously,” Bird said. “Especially when Iowans go to the polls, we must ensure that one Iowan’s vote is not canceled out by another’s illegal vote.”

The secretary of state's office also said an additional 2,022 people self-identified as not having U.S. citizenship and then voted or registered to vote. Ashley Hunt Esquivel, the office's communications director, said these were people who identified themselves as non-citizens to the Iowa Department of Transportation through processes such as obtaining or renewing a driver's license and later registered as voters.

While this group of people could also be charged with crimes if they are not U.S. citizens, there could be people in this category who have been naturalized as U.S. citizens since reporting their status to the Iowa DOT and are legally eligible to vote are, said Esquivel.

County auditors would receive a list of the 2,022 people who are non-citizens or potential non-citizens from the Secretary of State's office, she said, and precincts would receive lists of potential non-citizens in their precincts. Election workers are then supposed to challenge those ballots when the person comes to the polls, Esquivel said, at which point the person can cast a provisional ballot.

People whose voter qualifications have been challenged and people who cannot prove they are eligible to vote on Election Day will have the opportunity to cast provisional ballots.

According to the Secretary of State's website, voters who cast provisional ballots can provide proof that they are eligible to vote to county election officials or their local county auditor's office within a deadline specified on the provisional ballot envelope. The Absentee Voting and Special Election District Board reviews the voter registration documents and evidence provided and decides whether the ballot can be counted.

“From then on, they have six days to correct that ballot, which means they have to provide proof of their citizenship to the mail-in voting board, and then if they can do that, their vote will still be counted,” Esquivel said. “So the idea here is that we can ensure that everyone who is eligible to vote can continue to do so.”

If a person's ballot is rejected, the person will receive a letter explaining the reason for the decision.

According to the press release, the office has encountered “difficulties” with the federal government, Pate said, citing lawsuits in other states over the removal of non-citizens from the voter rolls too close to the election. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Virginia in early October for expelling voters from the state under Gov. Glenn Youngkin's order within the 90-day “quiet period” required by the federal National Voter Registration Act. The lawsuit also states that some eligible voters were misclassified as non-citizens and had their voter registrations canceled.

No one has been removed from Iowa's voter rolls in this process, Esquivel said. She also said the office is seeking clarification on what processes are available to take further action against non-citizens who vote or register to vote, but those efforts may not begin until after the 2024 general election.

Pate said he plans to work at both the state and federal levels to ensure non-citizen voting can be more easily identified and prevented in the future.

“We will work with both our attorney general and Iowa’s congressional delegation to ensure that the federal government gives us the tools we are certain we need before any non-citizen registers and votes in Iowa’s election can,” said Pate. “Instead of identifying non-citizens after they vote, we will work with the Iowa Legislature to strengthen our laws.”

Non-citizen voting has been a high-profile issue leading up to the 2024 election. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate and other Republican leaders claimed that Democrats were encouraging new migrants to vote in US elections illegally.

Pate said in an Iowa Press interview in September that his office is working to ensure that only eligible voters participate in elections in the state, but also said the state has not seen any major problems with the issue.

“Our job is to ensure that only eligible voters vote,” Pate said. “Even one, two, five, a hundred – whatever the number is is not acceptable. So we're going to continue to try to make sure that we protect this and keep this out. I don’t believe there is such massive voter fraud in Iowa.”