After nearly two years of litigation, the ACLU and LULAC have prevailed and stopped Matt Schultz's attempt to purge Iowa's voter registration list.
Yesterday a Polk County judge struck down a voter rule issued almost two years ago by Schultz. The rule set out a process for identifying and removing suspected non-citizens from Iowa's voter registration list, using a highly controversial, unreliable federal database never intended for that purpose.
The ruling was the culmination of almost two years of litigation by the ACLU of Iowa and the League of the United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) of Iowa concerning both temporary and permanent voting regulations by Schultz without any legislative authority.
The rule would have allowed the Secretary to send intimidating letters to those he thought might be non-citizens, warning them about being charged with a felony and requiring them to prove their citizenship to the satisfaction of the Secretary or else face challenge and removal from the rolls. The process would have relied on the incomplete and unreliable SAVE database, which was never designed to cross-check voters.
ACLU of Iowa Executive Director Ben Stone said, "We are celebrating this victory today along with our tremendous client in the case, the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa. LULAC demonstrated early on in the case the negative effect that the rules in question were having on Latinos and new U.S. citizen voters in Iowa.
"In addition to recognizing the dedicated work of our legal staff, we want to extend our enormous admiration and thanks on behalf of all Iowa voters to Joseph Glazebrook, who volunteered his time for nearly two years, providing stellar legal representation in this case. We also were joined in bringing the case by the legendary Laughlin McDonald of the national ACLU Voting Rights Project," Stone said.
