(Des Moines) Supporters said a bill requiring Iowa driver’s licenses to list a person’s citizenship status would help prevent noncitizens from participating in elections — but other advocates said it could lead to discrimination against immigrants and confusion at the ballot box.
The legislation, House Study Bill 37, would require a person’s citizenship status to be listed on the back of their driver’s license or non-operator identification card. People applying for renewal or the issuing of new IDs would be required to provide the Iowa Department of Transportation with their status as a U.S. citizen or noncitizen.
Lori Stiles, who has served as a poll worker in elections since 2008, said it is always a “concern” trying to verify a person’s citizenship status when they register to vote on Election Day. To register to vote at the polls in Iowa, people must show a photo ID — like a driver’s license — as well as proof of their current residence, but do not have to provide proof of U.S. citizenship.
“We cannot challenge a voter either at that point to even ask that,” Stiles said. “So this designation or some such on a driver’s license would definitely help to identify people who are U.S. citizens, because only U.S. citizens should be voting in U.S. elections, and in Iowa city and state elections.”
However, some speakers like Connie Ryan with the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa said including citizenship information on driver’s licenses could create problems for immigrants who become naturalized citizens seeking to legally vote. If a person gets their driver’s license before they become a U.S. citizen and that information is put on a driver’s license, there’s no requirement for the Iowa Secretary of State’s office to update voter rolls when that immigrant is naturalized.
“There’s nothing that indicates when those voting (lists) are updated and whether or not they’re accurate,” Ryan said. “We saw that already in the last election.”
In the 2024 general election, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate issued guidance to county auditors to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters, identified as potential noncitizens by the office as they had identified themselves to the Iowa DOT or another government entity as noncitizens within the past 12 years. While some current noncitizens were found on Iowa’s voter roles, many of these individuals listed were U.S. citizens who had obtained citizenship and the legal right to vote in the years after identifying themselves to the state as a noncitizen.
Pate has said the directive was necessary because the federal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office withheld citizenship information on the individuals identified as potential noncitizens. He released his own legislative proposal earlier in January to address citizenship verification, a bill that allow the Secretary of State’s office to contract with state and federal agencies, in collaboration with private vendors, to verify registered voters’ citizenship.
Rep. Lindsay James, D-Dubuque, said she did not believe the driver’s license proposal was the best way to address concerns about noncitizens participating in Iowa elections because of the potential for discrimination when putting citizenship status on an ID like a driver’s license.
“We’ve already heard that folks are using their driver’s license when they are renting cars, when they are purchasing things in the store, and the potential for discrimination when you have a unique identifier is significant,” James said. “And so these are folks who are here who are on a path to citizenship, who are here legally, who are good citizens in the process — or soon to be, hopefully citizens … What would this information be used for outside of the voting realm?”
Rep. Skyler Wheeler, R-Hull, said the bill’s focus was on ensuring that only U.S. citizens are participating in elections.
“We have every right as a state to ensure that only citizens are voting in our elections,” he said. “And we think at this time this might be the right path, we’ll have discussions and see if there’s a different path.”
Wheeler told reporters that there areas to “flesh out” in the bill, such as what information would be listed on IDs, if citizenship status would have to be listed on other photo IDs accepted for voter registration and whether driver’s licenses would be required to be updated after a change in citizenship status.
The subcommittee advanced the legislation 2-1, with James voting against.
