DES MOINES—Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate announced today (Thursday) that his office has completed additional audits of Iowa’s voter registration lists and identified 277 confirmed non-citizens who have voted or are registered to vote. After gaining access to the federal SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) program, the agency compared its data with the self-reported non-citizen data received from the Iowa Department of Transportation last fall. Access to the SAVE program has allowed the Iowa Secretary of State’s office to significantly reduce the former estimate of 2,186 potential non-citizens to 277 confirmed non-citizens. That is approximately 12% of the 2,186 individuals.
Further review found that 35 non-citizens cast ballots that were ultimately counted in the 2024 General Election and 5 non-citizens attempted to cast ballots that were rejected.
- 18 non-citizens cast normal ballots at the polls on Election Day; these votes were counted.
- 15 non-citizens returned absentee ballots; these votes were counted.
- 2 non-citizens cast provisional ballots at the polls on Election Day; these votes were counted.
- 2 non-citizens returned absentee ballots that were rejected by the Absentee and Special Voters Precinct (ASVP) boards.
- 3 non-citizens voted provisional ballots on Election Day that were rejected by the ASVP boards.
- 22 non-citizens registered to vote in 2024 but did not vote.
All of these non-citizens will be turned over to the Iowa Attorney General’s Office and Iowa Department of Public Safety for investigation and next steps. The Iowa Legislature is currently considering proposals from the Secretary of State’s office on voter list maintenance. This legislation allows the office to verify citizenship at the point of registration. Pate says “The federal government reviewed our data and verified the citizenship status but refused to share who the non-citizens were. Only eligible Iowa voters should participate in Iowa elections. We are working with the Iowa legislature on solutions to verify citizenship at registration rather than as ballots are cast, and we’re confident both chambers will recognize the importance of this legislation. Our proposed solutions will be crucial next steps in confidently balancing voter participation with election integrity.”
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) field office in Des Moines reviewed the set of 2,186 self-reported non-citizens last fall and confirmed with the Iowa Secretary of State’s office that approximately 12% of those individuals were non-citizens. The Washington, D.C. office later denied the Iowa Secretary of State’s office access to that clarifying data. Secretary Pate issued directives to affected counties to require potential non-citizens to cast provisional ballots and later provide documentary proof of citizenship for the ballots to be accepted.
In addition to legislative proposals, Secretary Pate is pursuing legal action against USCIS. The lawsuit asks the federal government to provide valuable information that would streamline citizenship verification and allow election officials to compare voter registration lists with the SAVE program data using social security numbers.
“Maintaining election integrity is a team sport, and we need cooperation from multiple agencies, including the federal government,” said Secretary Pate. “We are hopeful that between our legislative proposals and this lawsuit, we will have the tools we need to verify voter eligibility during the voter registration processes, allowing us to ensure in the future, only eligible Iowa voters are participating in Iowa elections.”
