DES MOINES, Iowa — Secretary of State Paul Pate released a statement Tuesday regarding an audit of non-citizen voting in Iowa showing over 2,000 people self-reported they were not citizens and voted or registered to vote.
There are some details Pate's office has yet to clarify, but there were 2.3 million voter records inspected in his audit.
According to the audit:
- 87 people self-reported they were not citizens after they voted
- 67 people self-reported they were not citizens after they had registered to vote
- 2,022 people self-reported they were not citizens and voted or registered to vote after self-reporting
Spokesperson for Secretary of State Paul Pate, Ashley Hunt Esquivel, said to the Associate Press that, "For those groups, we have pretty clear evidence … that they voted or registered to vote when they are not citizens, which is, of course, a class D felony."
Pate says he has informed county auditors of the non-citizen voters and directed them to have their poll workers challenge the ballots of all people on the audit's list and provide them with a provisional ballot.
Local 5 reached out to Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald on this issue, and he referred back to Paul Pate's office.
"We are not commenting on this story until we get a better understanding of the process. Please talk with the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office if you have immediate questions," Fitzgerald said.
Local 5 is working to receive some clarification on the process and numbers from the audit.
Pate's release does not define what self-reporting is, and there is also no clear indication of a specific date of when the start of the review was conducted or how often the Secretary of State's Office receives the list given by the Iowa Department of Transportation before cross-checking it with the voter registration list.
It is also unknown if these individuals became citizens after self-reporting their statuses.
Esquivel also told the AP that it's possible that they became naturalized citizens in the lapsed time.
"We need clarification on what their citizenship status was when they registered or voted," Esquivel said.
Local 5 is also working to confirm if the numbers are from just this election cycle or cycles that took place in past years, if all of these instances get referred to the Iowa Attorney General and if the names they have identified will be released.