What You Need To Know about Voting in November

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The 2024 General Election is high stakes and will be highly scrutinized. So, what do you need to know to prepare? We'll discuss voting and election administration on this edition of Iowa Press.

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For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating more than 50 years on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, September 20th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

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Henderson: The 2024 General Election is on November 5th. If you're looking at your calendar, next Tuesday marks six weeks until it's happening. Is that correct?

Pate: Quickly.

Henderson: Our guests today are individuals who administer elections in Iowa at the state and local level. Iowans currently are able to ask for an absentee ballot, fill out a form and do that with their local county auditor. Early voting in Iowa does not start until October 16th. We'll discuss all the deadlines and some of the issues surrounding election 2024 with our guests Paul Pate, who has been at this desk before. He is Iowa' Secretary of State, currently in his fourth term as Secretary of State. Welcome back.

Pate: Thank you.

Henderson: And our other guest is Becky Bissell. She is the Adams County Auditor and she is also the current President of the Iowa State Association of County Auditors. Welcome to both of you.

Bissell: Thank you.

Pate: Thank you.

Henderson: Joining our conversation is Katarina Sostaric of Iowa Public Radio and Erin Murphy of the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

Murphy: So, we have so many of these election procedure topics we want to get into. But first real quick, Secretary Pate, we wanted to ask you about something that happened this week. Iowa was among a number of states that received what is being described as suspicious packages delivered to elections offices. What can you tell us about what arrived? And at your office you closed down the office out of security reasons that day. And do you have any sense of why Iowa among all these states?

Pate: Well, it was very disappointing that someone is acting out like this and trying to disrupt our elections process. We have procedures in place. So, when this happened, we were prepared for it. We quickly reached out to the public safety folks, the Highway Patrol in our case, and brought in the hazmat teams to deal with the mailing that was sent in. The sad part is it sends a message sometimes, an unfortunate one, to our own employees, the people who run the elections that they have to, in addition to doing their professional job they have to do these safety measures. But we're stepping into it. I think it was someone trying to get attention, quite frankly. And 17, 18 states or whatever the number has gotten to now, they want some attention. And I'm not going to give it to them. We're going to keep business as usual and keep the elections on track.

Murphy: You took those preemptive security measures. Was there ever a concern about anyone's safety at any point?

Pate: No, no, thank goodness. But again, it's a very unfortunate situation and we don't, we're not going to tolerate it, we're going to keep moving forward.

Sostaric: Paul Pate, there have been some concerns raised at the national level about non-citizens voting in U.S elections. How do you assure Iowans that non-citizens aren't voting in our elections in large numbers?

Pate: Right. Well, the law says pretty clearly you have to be a U.S. citizen to vote. Let's start with that. We have voter ID. So, we are establishing a baseline of you have to prove who you are. We also are working with our partners, we work with the court system, there are various partners who help us identify those folks who are here legally but not U.S. citizens. And I don't want to say that there isn't someone doing this because our role is to make sure only eligible voters vote. Even one, two, five, a hundred, whatever the number might be is not acceptable. So, we'll keep trying to make sure we're protecting and keeping that away. I don't believe in Iowa we have any of those types of massive voter fraud. I think the bad boys and girls, those really serious illegals are not looking to be recognized for anything. They're here just kind of to stay under the radar. So, I don't think we see a lot of it at this time in Iowa.

Sostaric: And Becky Bissell, in your county have you ever had any issues with non-citizens trying to register to vote?

Bissell: No. We have all of the same procedures in place that Secretary Pate was talking about. And we cross check with the DOT and other state agencies to make sure that all of the voters that are registered are able and eligible voters.

Henderson: Becky Bissell, there was a delay in printing ballots this year because of a legal challenge. Have you or any of your county auditor colleagues expressed concerns or had any problems with that delay?

Bissell: Any time that we have a shortened time window of getting our ballots to us and in our hand is always a concern. The biggest concern that I had was making sure that all the county auditors and their staff proofread the ballots to make sure that all of the races were going to be on there and they're in the right order. Everything is laid out in the code of Iowa how we have to do it. So, it's just making sure that you're taking that time and not rushing that process. But I know that all of my counterparts are doing the best that they can. And we're still waiting for our ballots to be printed and I know that a lot of the counties are as well. UOCAVA votes have to, or ballots have to go out today --

Murphy: And those are ballots to --

Bissell: To overseas and military voters. Sorry. And so, those have to go out today. So, a lot of the auditors and their staff are having to use the proofs and once they have approved those then we cut off the markers on the side and then we get those sent out so that when they come back, we have the bipartisan absentee board fill out an actual ballot and then that is the one that will be counted. So, they make sure that they fill out that ballot exactly how that voter had indicated on the proofed ballot that was sent to them.

Henderson: Common practice, Paul Pate, to do that kind of --

Pate: Yes, most certainly. And we agree that it's not the ideal way to be putting us under the clock like that. We'll probably be looking at some of these dates for next cycle because we need to give the auditors as much of a window as possible to get the ballots prepared because that's a mistake that is pretty hard to fix later.

Henderson: And you're talking about the date for certifying the ballot --

Pate: That's correct.

Henderson: -- which in this instance, was in late August.

Pate: Yes.

Henderson: You'd like it to be earlier?

Pate: Well, we're going to explore those options just because, again, if we're going to be going into court on matters we need to allow the courts time to act on it and give our auditors time.

Henderson: Paul Pate, let's briefly talk about why you were in court. There were three Libertarians who were nominated to be on the ballot and you as a member of the State Objection Panel voted to not allow them to be on the ballot. Libertarians say they're not being treated fairly. What is your response?

Pate: Well, they are now recognized as a major party. They truly are. They're not a third party, they are a major party. And republican, democrats and libertarians have a set of rules the state of Iowa puts out there for them to operate under. I'm a referee. Becky is a referee. We don't get to make the rules up, we just enforce them and call them as they are. And in this particular case, they didn't take the time to know the rules. If you're going to run for Congress, a very significant federal office, you should know the rules. And unfortunately, they didn't. I feel it because there's a lot of passion going in when you want to run for office. But it's a serious office and you really need to do the right procedures to make sure you're successful and they didn't in this case. And the district court and the -- excuse me -- the district court and the Iowa Supreme Court agreed.

Murphy: Paul Pate, looking ahead to the election, Iowa unlike a lot of other states is not faced with some of the heightened scrutiny over its election results in recent presidential elections in part because former President Trump has won comfortably here and hasn't felt the need to call in to question. We got a new poll this week in Iowa that suggested that, at this point anyways, the campaign between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is very close. If that comes to be on November 5th, or if Kamala Harris pulls off an upset here and wins Iowa, are you confident that all Iowans will trust in Iowa's election results?

Pate: Well, we do our best to give them that assurance. Again, as I said, I have to recognize a passion. It's like a sports team. You root for your team. You believe they're the best when they go out on the field to compete. And should they not win, you might be disappointed, but you have to get over it because there's another game later. But there are those who are going to go, no, I'm going to call the officiating, I'm going to claim something else might have happened. But we're spending a lot of time right now just educating the public as to what we do in Iowa so we have that transparency so they know. We've got the voter ID, we have post-election audits, we have paper ballots, we have poll workers who are your friends and neighbors. That is a pretty serious arsenal to give you the kind of voter integrity to say you should know the results on the procedure side is on the up and up.

Murphy: And Becky, from the folks that you work with and in your county, I know this kind of pressure on elections processes and election day workers is part of one of many reasons that, from what I've been told, is hard to find those kinds of people. How is that going? And how much of a challenge is it to find people to work on Election day regardless, but in our current political climate?

Bissell: I mean, I can't believe them for not wanting to step up and into the spotlight like they have been thrusted into here recently. But luckily in my area we have really good citizens that believe in the process. They believe in what they're doing. They have been doing it for me for -- I've been in office for 12 years, but they have been with the county for 20 years or 30 years being poll workers. So, they take great pride in what they're doing and that goes for every poll worker in the state of Iowa. And we're trying to give them a little bit more confidence, we're trying to give them more training, de-escalation training, things like that, that we feel will help them. But in the end, they want to do a good job and they want to do it for the right reasons.

Sostaric: Paul Pate, last year you pulled Iowa out of ERIC, which is a multistate partnership for information sharing to help keep the voter rolls clean. Do you have a replacement in place for that system?

Pate: We have put together some partnerships and trying to pull the information together. And again, the reason we withdrew from that organization was we were not getting the cooperation from the states we needed the data from. We weren't getting Illinois, we weren't getting Texas and Florida's. So, we were paying for something that wasn't giving us the information. We have snow birds. If they're going to go to Florida and Texas, I need to know about them. And so, we decided we're better off if we work with the DOT and the DOT has all 50 states. So that is our future, that is the approach we're taking now. We're going to be partnering more with them to be able to bring that information into us. ERIC was a great thing in the beginning. It allowed us an encourages other states to clean their lists up and we did a good job of that. Our list is very clean here in Iowa. And we've just got to keep it that way.

Sostaric: And just to be clear, is the new strategy that you're talking about, is that in place already for the 2024 election?

Pate: Parts of it are. So, it's not completed yet. It's something in the works.

Sostaric: And Becky Bissell, how has that affected your ability to keep the voter rolls clean if at all, the lack of ERIC?

Bissell: We just follow the procedures that are already in place and so we have national change of address postcards that go out each year, maybe twice a year --

Pate: Twice a year.

Bissell: -- twice a year. So yeah, when they move within the state, we can catch those as well. But we just have to go by the code of Iowa and that allows us to cancel a voter, to make them inactive.

Henderson: Becky Bissell, there are a number of county election officials, county auditors who are new this year and maybe this may be their first presidential election. How are you bringing them up to speed with all of the things that you've already talked about on this program and some of the other things that they have to deal with on Election Day?

Bissell: Yeah, so we have had three conferences this year already and we partnered with Secretary Pate and his office where they gave four plus hours of training to the auditors and our staff at each one of those conferences. And they have brought de-escalation, they have brought how to safely open up mail, a wide variety of trainings is what they have brought to us. So, we are so fortunate that they have been partnering with us on that side of things. We've also done tabletop exercises with the Secretary of State. They have brought in other sources like CISA or federal resources that can come in and help us just make sure that we have all of our policies and procedures in place. And then the major thing that we rely on is each other. We've got great communications amongst the auditors and all of our staff and we really bounce ideas off of each other and then in the end go back to the Secretary of State and say hey, does this work? And hopefully we get confirmation that that is right and then we go on from there. But we do also have a training program that is called SEAT, it stands for State Election Administration Training. And so, the majority of the auditors and their staffs are certified in that. There's three different levels to that. And so, we take great pride in that program and actually won a Cleary Award with the EAC this last year for that program.

Henderson: What is EAC?

Bissell: The Election Administration Commission. It's a federal commission that brings election officials from all over the country together and, again, brainstorm ideas. And so, we are very fortunate for the certification process that we have in the state of Iowa with our auditing affiliate.

Murphy: Paul, in the last presidential election in 2020 we had record turnout in Iowa. Part of that was enabled by the pandemic and kind of relaxing some of the rules regarding voting by mail for folks who didn't want to come out to the polls during the COVID-19 pandemic. Will we ever see -- those rules are back to normal now -- will we ever see turnout numbers like we saw in 2020?

Pate: I'm not sure. What we saw was we were about 75% voter turnout during that period. Otherwise, it's more like 72%. So, we'll watch. But, in all fairness, voter turnout is really all about the candidates. We do our job to try to make sure we make sure there are no barriers, that people understand the process and all of the other things. But at the end of the day, it's usually the candidates and their message and that is really the turnout factor. And so, we have cycles where it's really high and you can look back and see that. Ronald Reagan's first term, Barack Obama's first term, Donald Trump's first term, all of these candidates really brought out a lot of voters. So, we'll watch with interest how this one goes.

Murphy: I hear that all the time from political science folks too that it's the candidates that drive turnout numbers. Becky Bissell, what are you kind of bracing for? What do you hear from your colleagues? What are you expecting for turnout?

Bissell: I think we'll see another high election year as well. We are seeing a lot of people questioning the mail process. So, I could see our absentee vote by mail be a little bit lower this year, mostly because of the shortened time window that we can mail out the ballots and then get them back, but also the mailing service has elongated their days. And so, it takes five to seven days in the rural areas in order to get a ballot from when I drop it off to the voter.

Murphy: I think Katarina has a question on that topic for you.

Sostaric: I was going to say, you recently signed onto a letter to the U.S. Postal Service expressing concerns about the mail service. What is it that you think they need to do before the election to ensure people's ballots got there on time?

Bissell: A lot of training is my biggest concern and then making sure that they aren't losing the ballots and that they're getting to the voters and then they're getting back. We have a 20-day window from when we can mail out the ballots. Three of those days the postal service doesn't deliver mail, so we're down to 17 days. If it takes seven days for the ballot to get to them, then they essentially have three days to get that ballot voted and back to us and that's a pretty small window. So, we just are really trying to educate anybody that is wanting their ballot by mail to make sure they get their absentee request form into the auditor's office now and then we can get that mailed out on October 16th. And then as soon as you get it, get it voted and get it back to us. So, they can either hand deliver it back to the offices, they can put it into an election drop box if a county has one. In my county we don't have an election drop box. So, if they can't get out of the car, pull into the spot outside of the courthouse, call my office and we'd be more than happy to come down and get that from the voter.

Henderson: Paul Pate, let's help voters who may be navigating the election system for the very first time and people who need a little bit of a refresher. As I mentioned at the onset you, today, are able to request an absentee ballot. Go online? Or do I walk into the county auditor's office?

Pate: Well, you have a lot of options. In fact, I encourage people to have a plan for voting to be successful. Let's start out with voter registration. If you're registered, great, go online to voterready.iowa.gov and you look up your name to make sure it's current and accurate. If you haven't, you can register to vote right there. That is the starting point. Now you decide how you want to vote. If you want to vote by mail, as Becky has said, there's some timetables here you really need to know. So yes, you can get your request form online or you can get it from the county auditor and get that into those folks and do it quickly. The candidates will bless you for that too, to be very honest. They want you to process it as quickly as possible. You also then can start coming into the courthouses and do your early voting in person after the 16th. So, you've got a lot of options on that front. Also, there's a little insurance policy here. You can track your ballot. If you go online to the voterready.iowa.gov site you can see, did the county courthouse get my request for an absentee ballot? It shows you the date. It will show you the date that the courthouse mailed it out to you. It will show you the date they received it back. And if at any point here you're seeing your ballot is not getting there, go to plan B and plan B would be either to go down to the courthouse and vote or come on Election Day to a traditional polling location so you are successful. So, we've got some safety measures in there and we want to make sure people avail themselves to it.

Henderson: Becky Bissell, the last option that people have if they're not registered is to show up at a precinct on Election Day. What does a person need to bring with them in order to cast a ballot?

Bissell: Yeah, they need to be able to prove their identity and their residency. There is a great list on the Secretary of State's website and also on many county auditors' websites that gives a list of all of the options that they can provide to suffice those requirements. But it's really planning ahead. I love the message that Secretary Pate is putting out there to really plan. What we see a lot in our rural county is people don't update their drivers’ licenses when they move, so they might move across the city or maybe move up the road to the farmstead, but they think oh I'll just renew my ID when the renewal period comes up. So then when they go to vote then it doesn't match what their registered as and it creates just extra steps and extra headaches. So, not only register to vote, but also make sure that your ID matches where you are registered to vote because it's really not anything malice that they're trying to do, it's just you don't think about it. So, that's what we see a lot of with issues and that's what we're trying to educate our voters as well.

Henderson: Did you have something you wanted to add?

Pate: I just wanted to point out one other, again, safety measure. We have testers too. So, the scenario Becky suggested, they don't have their driver’s license up to date, if they have someone else who has a current driver’s license to attest yes, Paul Pate does live at this address, that can suffice to get them registered and get them to vote.

Henderson: A voucher.

Pate: A voucher.

Murphy: Paul Pate, a new state law since the last presidential election changed the, sort of sped up the process of how voters' registration status is considered from active to inactive if they don't vote. So, folks, for example, voted in 2020 but not in 2022, they are now considered inactive registered voters. Are those Iowa voters aware of that? And what specifically does that mean for them? What do they need to know?

Pate: It doesn't change their position at all. They're still voters. It's an internal thing. And if they come and vote they'll move off that inactive right back up to the active.

Murphy: And they don't have to do anything right now.

Pate: They don't have to do anything whatsoever. So, it doesn't really change it. It goes back to your question earlier about ERIC program trying to keep the list clear. We do several mailings to these people trying to find out if they don't have a record of showing they're voting, we want to make sure they're still here. And after a certain point if they're not responding in a certain period of different elections, we will move them off. But at this point inactive, they're still like anybody else, they get to come in and vote.

Murphy: How many cycles is it where if they haven't voted that they would get moved -- they could lose their registration?

Pate: If you're on inactive, this presidential election will push some people into the next category.

Sostaric: There have been some other voting law changes since the last presidential election. We've mentioned the shorter mail voting timeframe, moving up deadlines for that. How are you monitoring, Paul Pate, how are you monitoring the impact of those election laws on voters? Are you seeing any uptick in rejection of ballots for being late?

Pate: Well, this will be the test really watching how this election goes. My office and so have the county auditors have had some serious discussions with the legislature about looking at the timetable on the early voting, on the absentee balloting scenario and I'm sure we'll be having some more of those this session because there's just some administrative things, we may need a little more room to adjust for. I have not seen anything impacting voter turnout. We're talking here, we have over 130 hours of voting time people get in Iowa. So, they have a lot of time. But they have to have a plan so they don't let it all fly by and their options start going off the table as they get closer to an Election Day. We're one of the more generous states. But we have one of the highest voter registrations and turnouts in the country here in Iowa and I applaud the voters for that because they take it seriously.

Henderson: Becky Bissell, I have some older friends one of whom recently discovered that they're able to drive to their precinct and cast a ballot while they're still in their vehicle. Explain that process.

Bissell: Yeah, that is considered curbside voting. And at each one of the polling places there would be a sign that has a phone number on it. So, you would pull up at that sign and you call that number. Some of them goes directly into the polling site. For my county, it goes to my office and then I contact the chair of the precinct. And then they go out with all of the necessary documents and forms so that that person can vote. It just helps them not have to get out of the car if they are unable to or maybe they just don't feel safe going inside of a polling place. Whatever option they choose, we will accommodate that.

Henderson: Paul Pate, you have the option if you want to make some changes between now and Election Day to make an appeal to the legislative council and get that approved. Do you have anything in the works?

Pate: Not at this time. I've had conversations with the Governor and with the legislature wanting to know if we've got everything we need to put this election in play and I'm pretty confident in what we have. We've worked hard over the cycles to give us all the tools we need. And I'm real sensitive. I don't want to put a lot of new things out in front of our county auditors because we've got to make sure we're doing what we do well. One of the biggest changes we made is we are standardizing the poll worker training program because you've got 10,000 citizens who are our poll workers, your friends and neighbors, and we have worked hard in our office and working with the county auditors so we equip them with a, call it a script if you want, but it's basically an outline to start from so every county is getting that same core training. And then the auditors, of course, personalize it to fit their county. To me that is a big step because it's the human factor here. Each county has to be ready to do the election to the best of their ability.

Henderson: My job right now is to say we're out of time for this discussion. Thanks to both of you for being here today.

Pate: Thank you.

Bissell: Thank you.

Henderson: Best of luck on the election. You may watch every episode of Iowa Press at iowapbs.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today.

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Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation.

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The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility infrastructure.

Elite Casino Resorts a family run business rooted in Iowa. We believe our employees are part of our family and we strive to improve their quality of life and the quality of lives within the communities we serve.

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Across Iowa, hundreds of neighborhood banks strive to serve their communities, provide jobs and help local businesses. Iowa banks are proud to back the life you build. Learn more at iowabankers.com.

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