By Robin Opsahl, Iowa Capital Dispatch
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed two bills related to Iowa’s election laws Monday, making changes to the state’s citizenship verification for voting and election recount processes.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, alongside several county auditors and some of the lawmakers who worked on the bills during the 2025 legislative session, joined Reynolds at the signing. Pate thanked Reynolds and lawmakers for moving the two measures forward in a news release Monday, saying the bills are important steps in “strengthening and maintaining Iowa’s election integrity.”
“These new laws add additional layers of integrity to our robust election procedures, supporting our efforts to balance election integrity and voter participation,” Pate said.
House File 954, signed Monday, was the bill Pate proposed to better allow his office to check the citizenship status and other eligibility requirements of those on Iowa’s voter rolls. The bill gives the Secretary of State’s office the ability to contract with federal and state agencies, and with private entities, for voter roll verification and maintenance, in addition to setting up a process for setting a voter’s registration status as “unconfirmed” when the state or county officials have received information from a “reliable source” that the person is not qualified to vote.
The measure came up in the wake of Pate’s guidance to county auditors shortly before the 2024 general election in November that directed the local elections officials to challenge the ballots of 2,176 voters at the polls. Pate had flagged these individuals as “potential noncitizens” because they had, within the past 12 years, reported to the Iowa Department of Transportation or another state entity that they were noncitizens, and later registered to vote.
A majority of these individuals were naturalized citizens who had the ability to vote, but Pate said the instruction was necessary because his office had been denied access by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database to verify these people’s citizenship status.
USCIS later granted the Iowa office access to the database — when Pate said his office confirmed 277 of the 2,176 “potential noncitizen” voters did not have U.S. citizenship. The secretary of state said the new law will prevent similar situations from arising in the future where individuals have their votes contested at the ballot box.
The bill gives tools to election officials for voter eligibility verification before Election Day, but also allows registered voters to be challenged over their citizenship status at the polls. A challenged voter would have to present precinct election officials with evidence they are qualified to vote to cast a regular ballot. If the challenge is not withdrawn, they would cast a provisional ballot.
Law sets new limits on election recounts
The second measure, House File 928, makes changes to Iowa’s system for election recounts, including setting new limits on who can request recounts. For statewide and federal races, the election results would have to have a 0.15% difference in votes between candidates for a candidate to request a recount. For state legislative and local races, a difference of 1% or 50 votes would be required. This would stop recounts in future elections similar to those requested in recent elections, like the 2024 election recount for the race between U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Christina Bohannan, that was within 0.2%.
The measure would also make changes to election recount boards. Under the previous system, each candidate in a recount designates one person to serve on the board, alongside a third person agreed upon by both candidates. The new law has county auditors lead election recount boards with their staff and hired election workers, adding the requirement that boards must have an equal numbers of workers from each political party. Candidates can choose up to five people to observe the recount process in each county.
While some Democrats said this new system could lead to Iowans questioning election integrity because of conflicts of interest with county auditors, Republican supporters argued the change will lead to more uniform and fair election recounts.
Rep. Austin Harris, R-Moulton, who led the bill in the House, said in a news release the recount bill was “one of the most important pieces of legislation we’ve passed this year.”
“We have seen in years past where the old system was used, abused, and manipulated by campaigns to try to ‘fix the outcome’ for their preferred candidate,” Harris said in a statement. “Now we have a system that brings uniformity, consistency, and most importantly, trust to that system.”
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