Iowa: Court case: 20,000 felons’ voting rights at stake | Des Moines Register

More than 20,000 Iowa felons could be poised to regain their voting rights as part of a landmark case that will be heard Wednesday by the state Supreme Court. Iowa justices will hear arguments in the case of a southeast Iowa woman who is challenging the Iowa law that permanently strips felons of their voting rights. Kelli Jo Griffin, 42, was convicted in 2008 of a felony cocaine delivery charge and had completed her sentence when she took her children in November 2013 to watch her vote in a municipal election, only to be charged with perjury for voting as a felon. A ruling in favor of Griffin and her lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa could radically alter what critics have long argued is one of the nation’s harshest felon disenfranchisement laws. But county prosecutors and auditors fear that such a ruling will make a mess of election procedures statewide.

Iowa: Voting rights case has high stakes for Iowa felons who voted | Associated Press

One is a sex offender who failed to register. Another stabbed a fellow teen to death in the 1970s. A third illegally possessed a firearm, and the other two have drug convictions. All five northeastern Iowa residents are charged with illegally voting in the 2012 presidential election as ineligible felons. But the Iowa Supreme Court will consider which offenders lose their voting rights in the first place: all felons or only a tiny fraction who commit specific “infamous crimes”? While the five defendants are not directly involved in the case, they would benefit from a ruling that narrowly limits the crimes that trigger lifetime voting bans. Oral arguments are Wednesday in Des Moines. The Supreme Court case has gained widespread attention because Iowa has one of the nation’s harshest bans against voting by felons. Critics say it’s a stain on the state’s progressive civil rights record and disproportionately limits blacks from voting and holding public office.

Iowa: Bill makes it easier for overseas military members to vote | Daily Iowegian

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate applauds the Iowa Legislature and Gov. Terry Branstad for making it easier for Iowa’s overseas military members and citizens to vote, and ensuring their votes are counted. The legislation, House File 2147, passed both chambers of the legislature unanimously and was signed into law by Gov. Branstad Thursday morning. The bill gives Iowans serving or visiting overseas an extra 30 days to request, receive and return special absentee ballots, extending the time from 90 days to 120 days prior to an election.

Iowa: Uproar could lead to revamping Democratic caucuses | Des Moines Register

After a whisper-thin count left doubts about which Democratic candidate actually won the Iowa caucuses, there are fresh calls for the party to mirror the simple, secret-ballot method that Iowa Republicans use. “It’s worth discussing again, but it’s not as simple as it sounds,” said Norm Sterzenbach, a former Iowa Democratic Party executive director who, after five election cycles, is an expert on the nuts and bolts of the caucuses. Why are Democratic insiders so reluctant to update a voting system panned this week by national political observers as archaic and nonsensical? They blame New Hampshire, the state Iowa party leaders have worked with for decades to make sure Iowa retains the first-in-the-nation caucuses and New Hampshire the first primary.

Iowa: High court to consider state’s ban on voting by felons | Associated Press

In a major voting rights case, the Iowa Supreme Court will consider whether to relax the state’s lifetime ban on voting by convicted felons. The court said last week it would hear the case, which could clear up longstanding confusion over which of the state’s tens of thousands of former offenders are eligible to vote. American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP and other civil rights groups want the court to restore many of their voting rights before the November presidential election, in which Iowa could be a pivotal state. The decision could come this summer. Iowa is one of three states — with Kentucky and Florida — with lifetime voting bans for felons unless their rights are restored by the governor.

Iowa: Democratic party altered precinct's caucus results during chaotic night | The Guardian

In the Iowa Democratic party’s chaotic attempt to report caucus results on Monday night, the results in at least one precinct were unilaterally changed by the party as it attempted to deal with the culmination of a rushed and imperfect process overseeing the first-in-the-nation nominating contest. In Grinnell Ward 1, the precinct where elite liberal arts college Grinnell College is located, 19 delegates were awarded to Bernie Sanders and seven were awarded to Hillary Clinton on caucus night. However, the Iowa Democratic party decided to shift one delegate from Sanders to Clinton on the night and did not notify precinct secretary J Pablo Silva that they had done so. Silva only discovered that this happened the next day, when checking the precinct results in other parts of the county. The shift of one delegate at a county convention level would not have significantly affected the ultimate outcome of the caucus, but rather, it raises questions aboutthe Iowa Democratic party’s management of caucus night.

Iowa: Democratic Party Officials Say Recount Impossible in Clinton-Sanders Virtual Tie | Bloomberg Politics

Democratic Party officials in Iowa say they can’t do a recount of Monday’s razor-thin presidential caucus results between Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, even if they thought it was appropriate. And both candidates, in their debate later Thursday night, said it was no big deal. Just two-tenths of 1 percent separated Sanders and Clinton in the first nomination contest of the 2016 presidential campaign. The statewide caucus meetings included reports of chaos in precincts and coin flips to decide county delegates, raising questions about the final count’s accuracy . “People physically aligned in groups,” Sam Lau, the communications director for the Iowa Democratic Party, said in a statement. “There are no paper ballots to recount. Monday’s caucuses were a unique event that involved more than 171,000 Iowans and their neighbors at a specific time and place, and thus they cannot be re-created or recounted.”
In other words, there are no hanging chads to recount.

Iowa: Sometimes, Iowa Democrats award caucus delegates with a coin flip | Des Moines Register

In a handful of Democratic caucus precincts Monday, a delegate was awarded with a coin toss. It happened in precinct 2-4 in Ames, where supporters of candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton disputed the results after 60 caucus participants apparently disappeared from the proceedings. As a result of the coin toss, Clinton was awarded an additional delegate, meaning she took five of the precinct’s eight, while Sanders received three. Similar situations played out at various precincts across the state, but had an extremely small effect on the overall outcome, in which Clinton won 49.9 percent of statewide delegate equivalents, while Sanders won 49.5 percent. The delegates that were decided by coin flips were delegates to the party’s county conventions, of which there are thousands selected across the state from 1,681 separate precincts. They were not the statewide delegate equivalents that are reported in the final results.

Iowa: Microsoft’s vote tallying app worked, web sites didn’t | USA Today

Despite rumors on Twitter to the contrary, by almost all accounts the Microsoft app used to tally unverified caucus votes in Iowa worked exactly as it was supposed to. What broke were the web sites where Republicans and Democrats posted close to real-time information about those votes, which at times crashed under the crush of people eager for news of their candidates. That didn’t surprise Douglas W. Jones, the recording secretary for the Democratic caucus, precinct 4 in Iowa City, Iowa. “In the modern, media-driven world, we’re desperate for results,” he said. His son Nathaniel Douglas, 32, send their caucus results in to the county Democratic party using the app built by Microsoft for the purpose, which he said “worked as advertised.” In precincts where workers didn’t have smart phones, the older updating system of calling in and pressing buttons on a touch-tone phone after inputting a PIN for security was used. “Both systems worked fine,” Douglas said. … At their heart, they are a way for Iowa voters to chose delegates to county, district and state political conventions who will then go on to chose their candidate. That process is heavily scrutinized and has very reliable and very old security baked into it — “it all happens on paper, which we’ve been using for elections going back to Roman times,” said Jones, who is also a professor of computer science at the University of Iowa and an expert on online voting systems.

Iowa: Microsoft on the hot seat in Iowa | The Hill

Microsoft volunteered to provide the technology to help tally up the results of Iowa’s caucus, free of charge. Now it will be put to the test Monday night. The contests in both parties are expected to go down to the wire. And the spotlight will be on precinct officials who have been trained on a new Microsoft app, which is meant to cut down on human error and speed up the reporting process. Both the Republican and Democratic parties in Iowa have expressed strong confidence in Microsoft, dismissing late suspicion of corporate influence from the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) early last week. Party officials have said no errors have been spotted in caucus dry runs. But the Sanders campaign has created its own backup reporting system, as has the Hillary Clinton campaign. “It will be interesting to see what happens if and when there are discrepancies between the Microsoft system and either Democratic or Republican campaign tabulations,” Iowa State University professor Mack Shelley said.

Iowa: Election Official Criticizes Cruz Campaign Over Mailer | The New York Times

Iowa’s secretary of state chastised the presidential campaign of Senator Ted Cruz on Saturday for sending a mailer that he said violated “the spirit of the Iowa caucuses” and misrepresented state election law. The mailer, flagged by a handful of Twitter users and confirmed as authentic by the Cruz campaign, included a warning of a “voting violation” in capital letters at the top of the page. It informed voters they were receiving a notice “because of low expected voter turnout in your area. Your individual voting history as well as your neighbors’ are public record,” the flier read. “Their scores are published below, and many of them will see your score as well. CAUCUS ON MONDAY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE and please encourage your neighbors to caucus as well. A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.” Below the text was a list of names, letter grades and percentage scores. The secretary of state, Paul D. Pate, called the effort “misleading.”

Iowa: Sanders camp suspicious of Microsoft’s influence in Iowa Caucus | MSNBC

The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is raising questions about the involvement of Microsoft in the Iowa Caucuses, now just days away, and has built an independent system to check the official results. For the first time this year, Microsoft partnered with the Iowa Democratic and Republican Parties to provide a technology platform with which the parties will run their caucuses. The software giant created separate mobile apps for each party, which officials at hundreds of caucuses across the state will use to report out results from individual precincts to party headquarters for tabulation. The arrangement has aroused the suspicions of aides to Sanders, who regularly warn that corporate power and the billionaire class are trying to hijack democracy. Pete D’Alessandro, who is running the Iowa portion of Sanders’ campaign, questioned the motives of the major multinational corporation in an interview with MSNBC: “You’d have to ask yourself why they’d want to give something like that away for free.” The Sanders campaign has built their own reporting system to check the results from the official Microsoft-backed app. It has trained its precinct captain on using the app, which is designed to be as user friendly as possible, and the campaign will also staff a hotline system as further redundancy.

Iowa: How Jimmy Carter Revolutionized the Iowa Caucuses | The Atlantic

There is a long history of surprise candidates doing well in the Iowa caucuses and defeating the “inevitable” nominees. And this year is no exception. Whether it’s Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, or if it’s Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, next week, Iowans will get to have the first say. How did this all start? How did the Iowa caucus—a strange election-year event where a small number of Iowans gather in homes, schools, and other civic buildings to announce their support for their candidates—become such a major political touchstone? With a mere 52 delegates, Iowa has nevertheless become a force in presidential campaigns over the last four decades. The caucus, which started in the 1840s, had traditionally fallen in the middle of campaign season. But in 1972, state reforms modernized the process and moved the date from May 20 to January 24, making it the first contest in the election. That’s when a campaign worker named Gary Hart convinced Democrat George McGovern to take the state seriously. But where McGovern took Iowa seriously, it was Jimmy Carter who revolutionized the role that the Hawkeye State would play in presidential politics. Carter turned the Iowa caucus into a major event in 1976 and thereby demonstrated how an upstart campaign could turn a victory in this small state into a stepping-stone for gaining national prominence. When people talk about Carter’s legacy by focusing on his failed presidency or his transformative post-presidency, they forget one of his most lasting actions—his 1976 campaign, which all started in small, rural Iowa.

Iowa: Presidential election ad wars: candidates flood $6.5m into Iowa TV market | The Guardian

Presidential candidates have spent $6.5m flooding just one small television market alone with more than 10,000 political commercials in the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses, the first votes of the 2016 election, according to a Guardian study. The exclusive analysis of regulatory filings by the four main commercial TV stations in Des Moines, Iowa, also reveals a sharp increase in the influence of rich donors on the race, with spending by Super Pacs – organizations independent of the candidates’ campaigns which, unlike the campaigns, may raise unlimited amounts of money from individual donors – now outstripping candidate expenditure by at least a third.

Iowa: Online Voter Registration System Launching Amid Concerns | WHO-TV

Signing up to vote in Iowa will now be just be a few clicks away, as the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office prepares launches a new online voter registration system. The system is a first for Iowa, and a project Secretary of State Paul Pate’s office has been working on for most of 2015. The system utilizes the Department of Transportation’s database to register any Iowan with a state driver’s license or DOT-issued I.D. card as a voter, completely replacing the paper form. Since its activation no January 1, the office reports 28 people have already registered to vote online. But some advocacy groups in the state are crying foul.

Iowa: A Tech Boost for the Aging Iowa Caucus | The Atlantic

Caucus Night 2012 was not exactly a banner evening for the Republican Party of Iowa. Reporting problems plagued the vote-counting during the crucial first-in-the-nation presidential contest. The initial headlines credited frontrunner Mitt Romney with the narrowest of victories over Rick Santorum, by a mere eight votes out of more than 100,000 cast. When the state party certified the results of the election more than two weeks later, however, it declared Santorum the official winner by 34 votes. Yet Republican officials had already acknowledged the embarrassing truth: Because of inaccuracies in dozens of precincts and missing results from eight of them, the real victor of the Iowa caucus would never be known for certain. Needless to say, the Iowa GOP would like to have a smoother—and more accurate—election on February 1. So would Iowa Democrats, who are running their first competitive caucus in the state since 2008 and whose process for nominating a presidential candidate is even more complicated than the one Republicans use.

Iowa: Advocates: Iowa’s online voter registration could violate Americans with Disabilities Act | Des Moines Register

Iowa will launch a statewide online voter registration system on Jan. 1, but advocates for the disabled, minorities and others are worried the plans will ignore the civil rights of thousands of Iowans, making it more difficult for them to vote. The America Civil Liberties Union of Iowa says it is commending Secretary of State Paul Pate for modernizing Iowa’s voter registration system. But the organization says administrative rules aimed at implementing the system will exclude 7 percent of Iowans who lack Iowa driver’s licenses or state-issued ID cards. “We believe there is a strong likelihood that the rules as proposed would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act,” which prohibits discrimination against disabled people in governmental activities, said Pete McRoberts, legislative counsel for ACLU-Iowa “To mitigate this danger, we need online voter registration, open to all people, on an ADA-compliant web site.”

Iowa: Democrats abroad can phone-in caucus votes | Des Moines Register

Caucusing as an absent Iowan will be easier than ever for Democrats this election cycle. The Iowa Democratic Party on Tuesday announced the first ever Tele-Caucus initiative. It will allow deployed service members and other Iowans living abroad to participate in the first-in-the-nation event. The effort piggybacks on a satellite caucus initiative the party announced this fall. Both programs aim to expand participation in the Feb. 1 Iowa caucus to those who are normally unable to attend.

Iowa: Growing anxiety in Iowa as Democrats worry state is not ready for caucuses | The Guardian

Iowa Democrats are increasingly worried the state party may not be prepared for the caucuses on 1 February, putting Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status at risk. With a little more than 80 days left, a number of top Democrats in the state expressed their concerns to the Guardian that the party has not done the work necessary to ensure that the caucuses, run solely by the Iowa Democratic party, will go smoothly. Iowa Democrats described growing anxiety over a state party they said was drifting and unprepared to organize in 1,681 precincts to ensure the result of the contest to pick Iowa’s choice for the Democratic presidential nomination is promptly reported.

Iowa: Judge upholds law disqualifying Iowa felons from voting | Globe Gazette

An Iowa judge upheld a state law that disqualifies felons from voting but said the state Supreme Court needs to sort out the confusion it caused last year when it ruled not all felons are automatically disenfranchised. Judge Arthur Gamble ruled Monday in the case of a woman who voted in a 2013 city election thinking her voting rights had been restored after she completed probation on a 2008 felony cocaine delivery charge. The case was one of the first brought against a felon who had voted that went to a jury. Kelli Jo Griffin of Montrose, 42, who said she’s turned her life around from drug addiction, was charged with perjury for registering to vote as a felon but a jury last year found her not guilty. Jurors concluded she’d made an honest mistake.

Iowa: Online voter registration to be ready in January | Associated Press

Eligible voters in Iowa who have a state driver’s license or photo ID will be able to register online to vote by Jan. 1, ahead of the original November goal, Secretary of State Paul Pate said Thursday. The Iowa Voter Registration Commission in January approved a rule allowing qualified voters to visit an Iowa Department of Transportation website where they can type in the numbers from their state-issued driver’s licenses or photo IDs to register to vote. Information from the DOT, including voters’ signatures, will be electronically added to voter registration forms and automatically forwarded to the state’s voter database. Once an online application is completed, the voter is registered. The Iowa system will allow voters to register anytime on their own computers or at an Iowa DOT kiosk or licensing station terminal.

Iowa: Iowa will follow Nebraska in offering online voter registration | The Daily Nonpareil

Nebraskans already use the Internet to pay bills, find driving directions and order replacement parts for their balky gas grills. In a few weeks, they will be able to register to vote online as well. Iowans won’t have too long to wait, either. Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale plans to kick off the new online voter registration system in time for National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 22. He expects it will increase voter registrations, cut costs, improve the accuracy of voter records and make government more convenient for citizens. “We’re very, very excited to be part of a very significant nationwide change to improve voter registration and voter turnout,” he said.

Iowa: 2½ years later, Iowa prosecutor drops election fraud case | Associated Press

After 2½ years of delays, a prosecutor has dropped an election misconduct charge against an ex-felon accused of illegally voting in the 2012 presidential election. Jefferson County Attorney Timothy Dille said Wednesday that he concluded the case against Cheri Rupe, 43, “wasn’t something that needed to be pursued” any longer. He said he made his decision in the interest of justice, citing the amount of time that had lapsed and noting that a similar case last year ended in an acquittal. The dismissal is another setback for a state effort to criminally punish ineligible voters who participated — or tried to participate — in elections. Under a two-year investigation involving former Secretary of State Matt Schultz and the Division of Criminal Investigation, about two dozen people, including ex-felons and non-U.S. citizens, were charged with registering and/or voting illegally.

Iowa: Republicans scrap the Iowa Straw Poll ending election-season tradition | Associated Press

The Iowa Republican straw poll, once a staple campaign event for GOP presidential candidates, is vanishing because of waning interest from 2016 hopefuls. The governing board for the Republican Party of Iowa voted unanimously during a private conference call Friday to drop the event, said state GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann. It was scheduled to be held in the central Iowa city of Boone on Aug. 8. Republican officials wanted to make sure negativity surrounding the straw poll didn’t hurt Iowa’s traditional place in holding the first votes of the presidential nomination contest, with its leadoff caucuses.

Iowa: Forget the caucuses, Iowa is terrible at picking the eventual GOP presidential nominee | The Washington Post

Some states know how to pick them. Some don’t. When it comes to choosing the eventual Republican presidential nominee, Iowa, famous for its early caucus, and Louisiana have the worst track-record in every election since 1976. Both have picked losers four times over that period, according to a new analysis by Eric Ostermeier, author of the Smart Politics blog and a research associate at the University of Minnesota. Of course, being first (or among the first) means no candidate has momentum yet, while later primaries and caucuses can be swayed by building support for one over the rest.

Iowa: Absentee ballot change would affect Democrats’ practices | Chronicle Bulletin

Democrats and older Iowans would have to adjust their early voting habits the most if a bill that needs absentee ballots to be in county auditors’ hands by the time polls close on Election Day becomes law. Republicans would see an effect too, legislators say, but they vote in particular person on Election Day with much more frequency than Democrats or those registered for no celebration, and also Iowans 65 and older, an IowaWatch analysis of voting data in common elections more than the final 20 years shows. Regardless of who feels the impact, Republican and Democratic state legislators trying to amend Iowa’s absentee voter registration law agree that modifications are crucial since ballots are not being counted when they possibly really should be. The explanation: U.S. post offices are not putting time-stamped postmarks on lots of of the absentee ballots. “So we are throwing ballots out, and we don’t want to do that,” state Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Cedar Falls, stated.

Iowa: Senate OKs bill on online voter registration system | Associated Press

Legislation that would create an online voter registration system for Iowa residents passed the Senate Thursday, but it’s unclear whether it will advance in the House. The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 26-20 Thursday along party lines for the bill. That tends to show what kind of support it might get in the Republican-led House. The legislation would allow people to register to vote online through the secretary of state’s website if they have an Iowa driver’s license number, a state-issued identification card number or a Social Security number. When a registration is completed online, officials at a county auditor’s office are expected to verify the information before mailing a voter card.

Iowa: Controversial Iowa voter rules will not take effect | Des Moines Register

Voter registration rules enacted by former Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz that critics said threatened to disenfranchise eligible voters will not take effect, after a long-running lawsuit was resolved on Friday. The Secretary of State’s Office — now held by Paul Pate — voluntarily dismissed an appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court that was initiated by Schultz last year following a loss at the district-court level. “This is an important victory for the protection of voters’ rights in Iowa,” American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa Legal Director Rita Bettis said in a statement. “It means that Iowans will not have to worry about the voter purges we’ve seen take effect in other states with a disastrous impact, especially for new U.S. citizens and Latinos.” By declining to continue the appeal, the state has effectively concluded the lawsuit and allowed the lower-court ruling to stand. That means the rules will never take effect.

Iowa: Senate likely to take up absentee voting change | Quad City Times

Although it was approved on a largely party-line vote in the GOP-controlled House, a bill changing the deadline for Iowa voters to return their absentee ballots likely will be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate. House Democrats were unanimous in opposing House File 506, arguing it that will disenfranchise voters who wait until the end of the 40-day voting period to mail in their ballots. “It’s a sad day in Iowa,” said Rep. Bruce Hunter, D-Des Moines, who said if the law had been in effect in 2014, more than 3,000 votes would not have been counted. “Voters who did what was right. They voted. They did their patriotic duty … and we’re going to tell them their vote doesn’t count.” The final vote was 56-41, with one Republican voting “no.”

Iowa: Bill would end straight-party voting in Iowa | The Gazette

Iowa voters would no longer have the option of voting a straight-party ticket under a bill that cleared a House subcommittee on Tuesday. Rep. Robert Bacon, R-Slater, said he supported the change because he is concerned voters who mark a ballot to support all the members of one political party may forget to turn the ballot over and mark nonpartisan candidates seeking local offices or board positions and judges up for retention. Bacon and Rep. Jack Drake, R-Griswold, said they believed removing the straight-ticket option would clean up election provisions in the Iowa code. Bacon said Iowa is one of a dozen states that still offers the voting option, and it appeared the numbers “flip-flop” from election to election, so the change would not benefit one political party of another.