Schultz misses mark in accusations of voter fraud

Michael Mauro

Democratic Secretary of State Michael Mauro‘s office Friday dismissed his Republican challenger Matt Schultz‘s recent accusations that he is overlooking possible violations of voter registration law.

Schultz published a press release Thursday stating Iowa has more registered voters than citizens of voting age, while further claiming that Mauro is to blame for the supposed violations of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The campaign based its allegations off of a letter sent by the Election Law Center (ELC) to the Secretary of State’s office on Sept. 1., which said in part, “Federal law requires Iowa to conduct a reasonable effort to maintain voter registration lists free from dead voters, ineligible felon voters and voters who have moved away.”

The ELC said that it based its accusations off of a report from the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) that apparently outlined voter registration disparities in seven Iowa counties: Fremont, Adams, Lyon, Jefferson, Audubon, Chickasaw, and Kossuth.

“As chief elections officer in Iowa, the Secretary of State should be showing leadership and helping the County Auditors in resolving these kinds of issues,” Schultz said in the press release. “It should not take an outsider threatening litigation to correct this problem.”

In response to the claims made by the Schultz campaign and the ELC, the Secretary of State’s office told The Iowa Independent that the EAC assured their office that no such accusations have ever been made.

“The author of this letter is comparing Iowa’s voter registration numbers to estimates compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau. Comparing actual numbers to estimates is a distortion.”

The author of the ELC letter used Census data to compare active and inactive voters. The Secretary of State’s office further explained that, per the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, all states are required to keep inactive voters on registration lists for four years. An inactive voter is one that has no voter activity in the last four years.

“According to the U.S. Census, five of the seven counties cited lost population between 2007 and 2010,” the office stated. “Not surprisingly, that produces inactive voters in those counties, and again we are required by federal law to keep those names on the voter rolls.”

According to the Secretary of State’s office, the author of the letter failed to release the method used to make these conclusions. Moreover, they said their office and all 99 county auditors “conduct a rigorous and ongoing process to update voter registration lists.”

Speaking outside of his official duties as deputy secretary of state, Jesse Harris said the author’s conclusions are ill-formed and that Mauro has continued to fight to keep Iowa a national leader in elections.

“Secretary Mauro has broad and bipartisan respect and support from county auditors from across the state,” Harris said. “He has a 25-year background in elections as election director, the county auditor and now the secretary of state. He has moved this office forward tremendously and done more to enhance the integrity of Iowa’s elections than anyone else in the state of Iowa in the past 25 years. And we put that record against anyone else’s.”