Iowa governor clears voting rights restoration backlog in final hours before the caucuses

Iowa’s backlog of hundreds of felon voter restoration applications has been processed ahead of Monday’s presidential caucuses, a spokesman for Gov. Kim Reynolds said Friday.

Voter advocates last month had voiced concern about the backlog of more than 300 applications, some saying that denying the vote to the applicants could damage the reputation of the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses. Reynolds, in turn, vowed to process the applications ahead of Monday, Caucus Day.

League of Women Voters of Iowa President Terese Grant said Friday she is happy with Reynolds’ progress.

“We’ve got a black eye already just by the fact that we’re the only state left that permanently bans felons from voting” unless they receive gubernatorial approval, Grant said. “This would have been an additional black eye.”

The ban affects more than 60,000 people, a number that is greater than the populations of 89 of Iowa’s 99 counties.

Iowa became the last state with a permanent felon voting ban after Kentucky’s governor in December signed an executive order suspending the practice.

Multiple civil rights groups have for years pushed Iowa to end the ban, some contending it is a remnant of Jim Crow-era laws from the 19th and 20th centuries aimed at suppressing black voters. Iowa has among the nation's highest rates of incarceration for black people, according to the Sentencing Project.

Also an issue has been widespread inaccuracies associated with the state's database for tracking ineligible voters.

In 2016, 2,591 people had their voter registrations restored after staff for Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate determined they were incorrectly listed. And a Register investigation published last year found that the ballots of more than two dozen voters had been wrongly rejected since 2017 — including 20 in the November 2018 midterm elections — because their names erroneously appeared on the felon list the state circulates to county officials.

Pate, a Republican, in November announced his staff will manually review each file in the felon database in a six-step verification process it hopes to complete before this year’s general election. And his office in January said it would no longer use the flawed list, clearing its entries so that only verified records will be shown going forward.

Reynolds sought a constitutional amendment to end the automatic voter ban in the 2019 legislative session. But the effort was derailed by Republican lawmakers who raised questions about what constituted actual completion of a sentence, such as whether it should hinge on full repayment of any restitution.

An amendment would be more resistant to political whims than an executive order, but would require approval from the Legislature in two successive two-year sessions before it can be placed on the ballot for a statewide vote.

Reynolds has resisted signing an executive order, saying she wants to avoid adding to confusion created by conflicting executive orders on felon voters signed by previous Iowa governors. In the meantime, her administration has simplified the voter restoration application and waived a $15 processing fee.

Adam Fisher, a Des Moines resident who was convicted of a 2006 felony drug offense, says he is an example of how Iowa’s law is unfair and confusing.

Fisher voted for President Trump in 2016. But his ballot in the 2018 election was rejected when election officials informed him he was not eligible because of the conviction.

Fisher said he long believed his rights had been restored automatically through an executive order signed by Gov. Tom Vilsack in 2005. But Gov. Terry Branstad in 2011 signed an order reinstating the ban, and Fisher said there apparently was confusion about the date on which his case was officially discharged.

Fisher, 41, said it's still unclear how or why the ban was inconsistently applied in his case.

“It was like: ‘Oh, hey, here’s your rights back and now they’re gone again,’” Fisher said Friday. “I had paid all my restitution. I did every day of time in jail or prison they asked me to. I’d done everything, and I thought, ‘The least you can do is let me vote.’”

Reynolds restored Fisher’s voter rights on Jan. 16. It was the same day she restored rights for Des Moines resident Moriando Moore, who had been ineligible to vote due to a 2014 drug conviction.

“I believe that if a person has paid their debt to society, they should have their rights restored,” Moore said. “This means a lot to me. It means I have a choice and input in who represents me.”

Reynolds will continue to receive and review applications, but it’s unlikely that any received this week can be processed prior to Monday’s caucuses, Pat Garret, a spokesman for the governor, said Friday.

Jason Clayworth is an investigative reporter at the Des Moines Register. He can be reached at 515-699-7058 or jclayworth@dmreg.com.