Image CreditCourtesy Iowa Secretary of State
The media continually say that noncitizens won’t vote in U.S. elections because the penalty is so severe — fines, prison, and potential deportation are enough of a deterrent. But hundreds of noncitizens have not been deterred from registering in Iowa, where Secretary of State Paul Pate this week said audits of Iowa’s voter registration rolls found 277 noncitizens registered to vote or actually voted.
Using data from the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, the audit found 35 noncitizens cast ballots that were counted in the 2024 general election and five noncitizens tried to vote but their ballots were rejected, a statement from Pate’s office said. It also offered the following fine detail of what the audit found:
18 noncitizens cast normal ballots at the polls on Election Day; these votes were counted.
15 noncitizens returned absentee ballots; these votes were counted.
2 noncitizens cast provisional ballots at the polls on Election Day; these votes were counted.
2 noncitizens returned absentee ballots that were rejected by the Absentee and Special Voters Precinct (ASVP) boards.
3 noncitizens voted provisional ballots on Election Day that were rejected by the ASVP boards.
22 noncitizens registered to vote in 2024 but did not vote.
Other noncitizens who are registered to vote registered in previous years.
The investigation, which ran into a federal roadblock, got started before the 2024 general election when the Iowa Department of State compared self-reported noncitizens who applied for driver’s licenses with Iowa’s voter registration rolls and made a list of potential noncitizens registered to vote, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of State told The Federalist.
The Department of State gave its potentials list to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) field office in Des Moines, and they were able to trim the list of potential noncitizens down to 2,176. Later, they verbally told the Department of State that around 12 percent of the list was noncitizens, the spokeswoman said.
Next, USCIS in Washington, D.C., confirmed that 12 percent (277) were noncitizens, but would not allow its local office to tell the state which of the 2,176 registered voters on the potential noncitizen list were not eligible to vote.
“The federal government reviewed our data and verified the citizenship status but refused to share who the noncitizens were,” Pate said in the statement. “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.”
Pate has proposed legislation for Iowa lawmakers to consider to catch noncitizens earlier in the process. The measure would call for citizenship verification at the time of registration.
Beyond legislative changes, Pate will bring a legal action against USCIS asking the federal government to provide data to help in the future, so officials in the state can look at Social Security numbers in the SAVE program next to voter registration data to verify voter identification.
While Democrats often insist noncitizens simply are not voting, or are not voting in large numbers (a troubling view inconsistent with election integrity), many are registering or voting, as Federalist Senior Contributor Ben Weingarten demonstrated in an August report. He cited examples in Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey, Ohio, North Carolina, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois.
Until state and federal governments cooperatively close all the avenues for illegal voting, they will continue to be exploited.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
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