Judicial Watch: Eight Iowa Counties Have Total Registration Rates Larger than Eligible Voter Population – at Least 18,658 Extra Names on Iowa Voting Rolls

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced that eight Iowa counties have more voter registrations than their eligible voting-age population. According to Judicial Watch’s analysis of data released by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in 2019 and the most recent U.S. Census Bureau’s five-year American Community Survey, eight Iowa counties are on the list of 378 counties nationwide that have more voter registrations than citizens living there who are old enough to vote, i.e., counties where registration rates exceed 100%. These 378 counties combined had about 2.5 million registrations over the 100%-registered mark. In Iowa, there are at least 18,658 “extra names” on the voting rolls in the eight counties at issue.

Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), Judicial Watch sent notice-of-violation letters to 19 large counties in five states (California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado) that it intends to sue unless the jurisdictions take steps to comply with the law and remove ineligible voter registrations. Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act requires jurisdictions to take reasonable efforts to remove ineligible registrations from its rolls.

The chart below details the eight Iowa counties’ registration rate percentages:

In addition to the eight listed above, Polk County, Iowa’s largest, has an unusually high registration rate of 95.9% of total eligible citizen voting-age population.“Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections and Iowa need to undertake a serious effort to address its voting rolls,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Judicial Watch is the national leader in enforcing the National Voters Registration Act, which requires states to take reasonable steps to clean their voting rolls.In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld a massive voter roll clean up that resulted from a Judicial Watch settlement of a federal lawsuit with Ohio. California also settled a similar lawsuit with Judicial Watch that last year began the process of removing up to 1.5 million “inactive” names from Los Angeles County voting rolls. Kentucky also began a cleanup of up to 250,00 names last year after it entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.

Judicial Watch Attorney Robert Popper is the director of Judicial Watch’s Election Integrity initiative.

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