Final report: 117 fraudulent votes found in investgation
Final report: 117 fraudulent votes found in investgation
http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/ee9d...are-hi-res.jpg Jason Noble, jnoble2@dmreg.com 3:03 p.m. CDT May 8, 2014
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(Photo: Charlie Neibergall, AP)
Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz's two-year investigation into voter fraud found evidence of 117 illegally cast votes, led to charges against 27 suspected fraudulent voters and has resulted in six criminal convictions, according to a report released Thursday.
Those results justified the unprecedented partnership between the state's top election official and the state's Division of Criminal Investigation, as well as the nearly $250,000 cost of the effort, Schultz, a Republican, said.
"The takeaway is that there are people who voted who weren't supposed to," he said. "This is a situation where we tried to do something about it. I think it was the right thing to do and I stand by that."
Critics have called the investigation a misuse of federal funds intended to expand access to voting and charged that the six convictions prove that voter fraud is a miniscule problem in a state where statewide voter turnout frequently exceeds 1 million.
The report was issued Thursday by the Secretary of State's Office as a kind of final word on the investigation which ran from mid-2012 through February of this year.
Schultz's office partnered with the DCI to scrutinize possible instances of election misconduct after being failing to gain access to a federal database it believed would help identify non-citizens who had registered to vote.
A DCI investigator was assigned full-time to the effort, and received referrals from the secretary of state as well as county law enforcement agencies. The investigator ultimately looked into 238 cases, and found evidence of misconduct 117 of them.
Seventeen cases are still being investigated, Schultz said.
The investigations fell into three broad categories: those involving potential non-citizens; cases involving felons whose voting rights had not been restored; and miscellaneous offenses.
Investigators looked into 147 non-citizen cases, determining that 70 suspected noncitizens were actually citizens at the time they registered and cast votes. Seventy-seven cases were identified as "actionable" and turned over to county attorneys. So far, prosecutors have filed charges in 10 of those cases.
Investigators scrutinized 68 felons who were suspected of registering and voting when their rights hadn't been restored. Those investigations yielded 16 charges brought by local prosecutors. The effort also identified 20 former felons whose rights should have been restored but had been denied at the ballot box. All 20 have since had their rights restored.
In 23 other election misconduct investigations, county attorneys have pressed charges in just a single case.
Schultz, in an interview Thursday, explained the relatively few charges filed and convictions secured by emphasizing that county attorneys – not his office or any other election official – decide whether to pursue criminal charges.
"At the end of the day those are decisions that are made by the county attorney," Schultz said. "That's where prosecutorial discretion comes into play."
And no matter how many fraudsters were actually convicted, Schultz added, the investigation still demonstrated that fraud has occurred in the state.
"We found that Iowans were getting votes their canceled out," he said.
The report also included data from beyond the scope of the DCI investigation, highlighting 682 instances in which the addresses of voters who registered on Election Day couldn't be confirmed and 100 instances in which voters who cast ballots in Iowa also showed up as having cast ballots in the same election in another state.
Both situations, Schultz said, raised additional questions of possible fraud.
Schultz was elected in 2010 and has made voter fraud his signature issue as secretary of state he is now seeking reelection, however, and instead is running for Congress in Iowa's 3rd District.
When asked what additional steps should be taken to address the fraud identified by the investigation, Schultz said he believed existing law is adequate to address cases that arise – if prosecutors are willing to file charges or at least move to drop fraudsters from the rolls.
"The law is already clear," he said. "It's important for those cases that we still have a mechanism to hold people accountable."
One of the biggest revelations of the investigation was the poor recordkeeping on the eligibility for felons. Schultz said his office was working to address that by appointing a taskforce that will meet beginning this summer.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/sto...hultz/8858595/
