Call to Action: SF341, 342, 351 Election Transparency Bills

By: Iowa Liberty Network

Three election transparency and integrity bills need your help to get across the full committee line before Friday. There is a chance they will go to committee Monday or Wednesday this week, but to ensure they do get through, please email the committee below!

SF 342 Requires election-day registrants would be required to vote provisional ballots, and make tabulating machines optional

https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=90&ba=Sf342

SF 341 Requires a snapshot of all voters in a given election and creates ballot logs or “cast vote records” be created for all ballots cast

https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=90&ba=SF%20341

SF 351 Allows voter registration challenges in other counties, no attorney is required, and the citizen is not required to attend the hearing; it defines bona fide research to include citizens helping to maintain clean voter rolls.   

https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=90&ba=SF%20351

ACTION NEEDED: Email the members of the Senate State Government committee to let them know in the BODY of the email that you SUPPORT these bills. Individual emails are preferred; however, bcc email is better than no email. Personal stories on the impact this bill would have or have had are helpful.  Keep your email short and to the point.

Subject line: Salmon’s Election bills, SF341-342, 351, election transparency 

(Use one of these or something similar)

Here are the emails of the republican members on the Senate State Government Committee; Jason Schultz is the Chair:

jason.schultz@legis.iowa.gov
chris.cournoyer@legis.iowa.gov
mike.bousselot@legis.iowa.gov
waylon.brown@legis.iowa.gov
dan.dawson@legis.iowa.gov
dawn.driscoll@legis.iowa.gov
carrie.koelker@legis.iowa.gov,
tim.kraayenbrink@legis.iowa.gov
charlie.mcclintock@legis.iowa.gov
sandy.salmon@legis.iowa.gov
scott.webster@legis.iowa.gov
cherielynn.westrich@legis.iowa.gov

Bill Talking Points:

Talking points are below, for your reference, personal stories about how the bill impacts you are best. Keep it to as few sentences as possible. Anything longer will not be read. 

• The first issue on the bill is-provisional ballots for same-day registrations.
• This would allow the voter rolls to be frozen in time on election day and have a specific list of new registrations in order to keep things honest.
• As it stands now, the auditors have up to 60 days after an election to update the Voter’s record as having voted in that election.  Meaning these same-day registration people can register and vote and then be removed from the rolls for some reason IE deceased, moved, by request. Without any saved record of them having voted, the vote would have been counted.
• Allowing out of county voters to challenge registrations.
• Dirty rolls in neighboring counties affect all counties around it for most elections and the entire state for some. Currently, policies restrict the sharing of the rolls one group has obtained when in reality they should be allowed to tackle this state-wide. 
• The house is moving legislation (HF356 by Kaufmann) to force citizen activists to get a bond to challenge registrations. Individuals would be very discouraged from getting involved, but if one party got a bond, we could challenge statewide.
•  This bill includes language allowing citizens to purchase the voter rolls for political research, including “researching the voter rolls for eligible voters and purposes of cleaning the rolls.  This past year Secretary of State Paul Pate changed the rules making it more difficult or impossible to purchase rolls for the above reason by adding the ability for the Secretary of State to decline requests. 
• Finally, preserving the records and making them public is also about accountability and allows citizen activists to view the records for auditing without a lawsuit.