Selcuk v. Pate

On October 22, 2024—with early voting already underway and just two weeks from Election Day—Secretary Pate sent a secret list of more than 2,000 Iowa voters to county election officials, accusing those voters of being ineligible to vote for lack of citizenship. Secretary Pate included a directive requiring that county election officials challenge those voters and require them to vote a provisional ballot that would not count if the voter cannot prove their citizenship.

The sole basis for Secretary Pate’s claim that these voters are non-citizens is Department of Transportation data showing that, purportedly and at some point in the past, these individuals self-reported as non-citizens. But thousands of Iowans naturalize as citizens every year, and only a small fraction of the voters on the list identified as a non-citizen after registering to vote. In fact, most of the voters on the list that the ACLU has been able to investigate are naturalized citizens, and thus eligible voters. As such, the Secretary seeks to disenfranchise many Iowa citizens days before a presidential election, even as his office has admitted that they “need clarification on what [the voters’] citizenship status was when they registered vote.”

Shortly after the Secretary announced his directive, the ACLU Voting Rights Project, ACLU of Iowa, and Faegre Drinker LLP filed a complaint and emergency motion for a temporary restraining order to enjoin the Secretary’s scheme to undermine these voters’ fundamental right to vote. The suit is on behalf of four naturalized citizens in Iowa on the Secretary’s list, as well as the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa. Plaintiffs bring claims based on violation of the constitutional right to equal protection, the fundamental right to vote, and due process.