Secretary of State Paul Pate expressed confidence in absentee voting and shed light on his decision to turn over Iowa voters’ information to the federal government.
Pate, a Republican running for a fifth term, touted his record and Iowa’s election security, emphasized the need for voter engagement and acknowledged the U.S.’s 250th birthday during the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on Monday, Aug. 17.
“This is a special state fair, the 250th anniversary of this great country, to be able to reflect on what it means to be a citizen of this country,” Pate said. “One of those main issues is our right to vote, to have our voice heard in our government, and I think we’ve done an amazing job of doing that in this state.”
He is facing a challenge from Democrat and former Navy pilot Ryan Peterman of Davenport.
Here’s what Pate said at the Soapbox:
Pate defends turning over Iowans’ voter information to DOJ
After turning over more than 2 million Iowa voters’ information, including sensitive data such as partial Social Security numbers, to the U.S. Department of Justice at the department’s request in May, Pate has faced criticism from Peterman and other Democrats over the information’s security.
Twenty states that faced lawsuits from the Trump administration for refusing to turn over similar data all have won their their cases, but Pate insists he made his decision based on legal advice from his own attorneys and the Iowa Attorney General’s office.
“I respect and understand how people are sensitive to it, because I was,” Pate told reporters after his speech. “We did not just turn it over. We spent a long time looking at it. It was not a request from the White House, so let’s distinguish the difference here.”
His office has argued the Department of Justice invoked authority under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and that federal law superseded state restrictions on releasing the information. Pate told reporters he refused to sign a memorandum of understanding from the DOJ and instead asked the department not to use the voter roll information for specific purposes.
Pate declined to specify the protections over Iowa voter information he asked the DOJ to consider.
“This is not a fishing trip to look for all kinds of things,” Pate said. “We wanna make sure they’re focused on what they said the list was going to be for and not beyond that, because there was discussion about a lot of different things.”
Pate touts Iowa’s voter ID laws, expresses confidence in voting by mail
Pate said the state’s voter ID laws, alongside the use of paper ballots and online voter registration, have increased voter participation and made elections more secure.
In 2017, Pate pushed for a law first implemented in 2019 requiring Iowa voters to present a valid form of ID at the ballot box.
“I worked very, very hard to get us voter ID in this state,” Pate said. “I hope someday the Democrats will join us in Congress in getting us voter ID on the national level. But we have that here in our state.”
Asked by reporters about the use of absentee ballots in Iowa amid President Donald Trump’s attacks on voting by mail, Pate expressed confidence in that voting method, saying he hopes the president will trust Iowans to “run our elections.”
“The president and the federal government is not going to prevent the post office from delivering their ballots,” Pate said. “Iowans really lean into being able to vote through the mail; we have a very high percentage of that. We’ve done it right in this state, and I caution the White House and anybody who wants to listen to us in D.C. that, come on, look at us in Iowa.”
Pate vows to ‘keep politics’ out of election integrity
Pate said while voter participation is up, election misinformation and distrust in the election system pose a threat to the integrity of Iowa’s elections.
“We have foreign actors who do this, trying to cause us to lose confidence in our elections, and we can’t let them do that,” he said. “If they feel that they make progress on that, we could quickly see people lose confidence in the election results.”
He said if reelected as secretary of state, he will continue to conduct elections as a nonpartisan official.
“Let’s keep the politics out of this as much as we can. I am not just a Republican running for office,” Pate said. “When I look at my job as secretary of state, I’m the referee. I don’t wear a team jersey when I’m running these elections. I’m out there to make sure the rules are followed, the laws are followed.”
Rapid Response Politics Reporter Maya Marchel Hoff can be reached at mmarchelHoff@registermedia.com. You can find her on X (formerly Twitter) at @mmarchelhoff.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Pate backs absentee voting during Register’s Political Soapbox
Reporting by Maya Marchel Hoff, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Maya Marchel Hoff, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
