Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate is disputing an analysis that showed eight counties in the state had more registered voters than their total voting-eligible populations—by a total of nearly 19,000.
The analysis, based on 2017 and 2018 data, was released Feb. 3 by Judicial Watch (JW), a conservative nonprofit that describes itself as promoting “transparency, accountability, and integrity in government, politics and the law.” The organization says its “baseline analysis” is correct, even though it used older data.
The office of Pate, a Republican, said the JW numbers were “patently false.”
“My office has told this organization, and others who have made similar claims, that their data regarding Iowa is deeply flawed and their false claims erode voter confidence in elections.”
Where Is the Data From?
JW relied on 2018 voter registration data that Iowa provided to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in its analysis. Pate relies on data his office releases every month.“JW admitted they used old data,” said Kevin Hall, Pate’s communications director, in an email to The Epoch Times.
The original JW release did say it was based on EAC data released in 2019, but didn’t indicate the data was from 2018.
“The EAC data is the gold standard,” Fitton said in a telephone interview with The Epoch Times. He said that JW has successfully used analyses of EAC data in several lawsuits in other states. He questioned the reliability of the data on the SOS website, calling it “informal.”
Population
The SOS also said JW “greatly underestimated” Iowa’s population counts. JW relied on the Census Bureau’s 2017 counts of citizens over the age of 18. When parsed with the EAC data, eight Iowa counties indeed had registration rates of over 100 percent.The Census Bureau is only slated to release 2019 estimates for citizens over 18 years old in 2021.
Comparing the 2018 Census data and the 2018 EAC data, Iowa still had seven counties with more than 100 percent eligible population registered. Using the latest SOS numbers (from February) instead of the EAC data, five counties still had over 100 percent registration.
All five of those counties have increased their population since 2018, Hall pointed out. Indeed, 2019 Census data shows growth between roughly 0.3 and 7 percent. But those are numbers for the entire population, and aren’t limited to eligible voters.
He says 17-year-olds can register to vote in Iowa and including them “skews” JW’s numbers. He said there were 5,000 of them registered as of Feb. 4, which is less than a quarter of a percent of the state’s registrations. Also, EAC asks states to exclude “persons under the age of 18 registered under a ‘pre-registration’ program.”
The Secretary of State’s office didn’t respond to a question about what kind of data it provided to EAC.
‘Dirty Voting Rolls’
Impossibly high registration rates aren’t necessarily evidence of voter fraud.Sometimes, people remain on voter rolls after they’ve left the state or died and, over time, faulty records can accumulate. Also, removing records of those who’ve left the state takes time, because federal law requires the state to send people a notice to confirm their address. Only if people fail to respond and don’t vote in two federal election cycles can the state remove them.
Even voter registration rates lower than 100 percent of the eligible population may indicate messy rolls since it’s unlikely every single eligible person has registered.
Hall took issue with JW’s inclusion of inactive voters—those who’ve failed to respond to the state’s notice—into its analysis.
“Inactive voters are in the pipeline to be canceled. If a voter is inactive for two successive general election cycles, they are sent a final mailing and canceled,” he said.
Fitton argued that counting inactive registrations is appropriate since a question remains of whether they are cut from the rolls in a timely manner, as required under NVRA. JW has successfully forced several jurisdictions to remove from their rolls voters who have been inactive for too long.
Excluding inactive voters, Iowa’s registration rate would drop to around 85 percent.
Roll Cleanup Push
JW has used EAC data to determine there are at least 2.5 million extra voter registrations on the rolls of 378 counties nationwide. It’s been using the data in aid of lawsuits filed to force states into compliance with NVRA.JW has so far reached three statewide settlements with California, Ohio, and Kentucky to remove millions of ineligible voters from their rolls.
