Of the 54 groups that registered a lobbyist's opinion on a bill tightening voting requirements in Iowa, only one expressed support: the Iowa Minutemen Civil Defense Corps.

The national Minutemen corps has a storied history for its anti-immigrant, and in the view of civil right groups, white-supremacist positions. In earlier times, it took a vigilante approach to patrolling the border and nabbing undocumented immigrants. Lately it has focused on rhetoric and advocacy, and tipping off law enforcement on where to look for the undocumented.

Though individual chapters remain, the national corps seems to have disbanded after its president in 2010 called on members to "return to the border locked, loaded and ready to stop each and every individual we encounter along the frontier," and then she thought better of it.

A neo-Nazi named J.T. Ready co-founded the group in the mid-2000s, inspired by the motto, "The purity of the Aryan race is the most precious resource nature has to offer all of humankind." He died in 2012 of suicide, after also allegedly killing his girlfriend and three of her family members while being investigated for domestic terrorism in the shooting deaths of several immigrants found in the desert. Another co-founder, Chris Simcox, was sentenced last July to nearly 20 years for child molestation.

The misconduct of corps members isn’t the main issue here, although it offers some insight into the kinds of people the group attracts. The issue is the nativist and anti-immigrant sentiment that drives it, and which the corps must believe will be advanced by Iowa’s Voter ID bill.

Democrats, civil libertarians and civil rights groups call the proposed law a thinly veiled attempt to suppress minority votes. But Secretary of State Paul Pate, who proposed it, says the goal is to modernize elections technology, streamline the system and protect against “the potential for human error and fraud.” As far as I know, modernizing election technologies has not been a huge priority of the Minutemen.

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There is no evidence of unqualified voters being a problem in Iowa, or at least one big enough to warrant spending at minimum $340,000 for the secretary of state's office to produce new voter ID cards and $525,000 to $1.1 million for precincts to buy new e-poll books.

An Associated Press review found that of nearly 1.6 million votes cast in Iowa last November, only one represented election misconduct. That was a woman who voted twice for Donald Trump, persuaded by his claims about a rigged election that her first vote wouldn’t be counted. She was not an undocumented immigrant.

Thirty-six groups registered in opposition to the Iowa bill, with the rest undecided and two withdrawn. Among the opponents were nonpolitical groups like the state association of counties, the community college trustees association, the Episcopal Diocese, the National Education Association, the AARP and the League of Women Voters. Yet 28 Republican senators aligned with the minority position of the Minutemen.

The bill requires voters to show government-issued ID when they go to vote, either on Election Day, beforehand at satellite polling stations or when applying for an absentee ballot. It shortens from 40 to 29 days the time for voting early. It requires all voters have a verification number, which could come from a driver’s license or a “non-operator’s" ID card from the state Department of Transportation.

A precinct official would need to verify that the people coming to vote hadn't had their voting rights rescinded and not reinstated for former felony convictions. Polling staff could also raise barriers if they felt a voter's signature didn’t match the one on an ID card. And just in case anyone planned to vote in the name of a dead person, the state’s registrar of vital statistics would be required every three months to send the voter registrar a list of people of age who died in that quarter.

The rules get ridiculously nitpicky. There are even stipulations about what condition the envelope carrying affidavits of eligibility to vote must be in when they arrive.

At the very least, these rules, if signed into law, would discourage voters, many of whom don’t drive or travel abroad, making them unlikely to have driver licenses or passports. The secretary of state's office says 85,000 Iowa citizens of voting age don’t have government IDs. The bill would disproportionately hinder the elderly, poor, minority and disabled, as well as transgender people who can have a hard time getting IDs that reflect their gender identification and chosen name. It’s no wonder some other states' Voter ID laws have been struck down as discriminatory.

And here’s the real tragedy. Iowa should be the envy of other states for having some of the highest voting rates in the nation. That's a mark of civic engagement, and the boast of Iowa's political parties when other states challenge our first-in-the-nation caucuses. Why mess with a good thing?

The cynic would say it's a Republican-initiated effort to suppress minority and Democratic votes. Whatever the case, it's harder for the GOP to defend itself when the only lobby group in its corner on this is one the Southern Poverty Law Center calls "one of the most prominent nativist extremist groups in the nation." Sorry, Iowa.

Rekha Basu is an opinion columnist for The Des Moines Register. Contact: rbasu@dmreg.com Follow her on Twitter @RekhaBasu and at Facebook.com/ColumnistRekha