(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate is recommending changes in state law that he says will help identify non-citizens who attempt to register to vote. Pate proposes that his office get authority to ask other government agencies or pay private contractors to review voter registration records. “We want to deal with the qualifications or eligibility of voters when they register rather than waiting until Election Day,” Pate said during a Radio Iowa interview. “Basically we’re talking citizenship here.” Pate said the proposal is related to the situation before November’s election, when his office tried to get access to a federal database. He wanted to check whether hundreds of people who got an Iowa driver’s license when they were legal residents had become citizens at some point in the past 20 years.

“We’re still going to be pursuing our lawsuit with them to get the lists that they should already be giving us,” Pate said, “and we’ll be working with the Trump Administration to inspire these departments to do what they are already supposed to be doing.” Pate is asking the legislature to pass a law to make the process of recounting ballots uniform in every county. Pate offered similar recommendations after the recount in a congressional race in 2020, but he said major issues like tax cuts took center stage in the legislature. “To be very candid, we had some distractions,” Pate says. “The governor had her whole plan for reorganizing plan for state government, which kind of sucked the air out of the room a little bit. For some, they didn’t want to do it just before an election cycle, so I’m hoping the timing is right.”

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate (RI file photo)

Pate wants to allow more populous counties to have more people on recount boards. Under current law, each county’s recount board has three members — no matter how many ballots have to be counted. Pate also wants to require county auditors to start counting absentee ballots by 9 a.m. on Election Day. “Seems like we’ve been seeing this every cycle where they’ve waited ’til later and then when they ran into a problem — it was a problem because now the clock was ticking against them and after hours trying to get, maybe, someone in to service what their equipment needs may have been or whatever the thing might have been that happened to them and when they easily could have done it at 9 a.m. and had it wrapped up before noon,” Pate says. “…Basically it’s just legislating some common sense.”

Pate also wants wording in state law that makes it clear county auditors are legally required to notify his election office of any cybersecurity threats.