In State Known for Nail-Biter Elections, a New Voter Roll Complaint Raises Questions

FIRST ON DAILY SIGNAL – An elections watchdog group filed a complaint with Iowa election officials asserting that at least 162 voters in the state were registered twice.

“Iowa is not complying with the requirement to eliminate duplicate names from the official list of eligible voters,” states the complaint by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, first shared with the Daily Signal.

“Absent relief, the November 3, 2026 General Election in Iowa will be conducted using an inaccurate voter registration list,” the complaint, filed with Secretary of State Paul Pate and other election officials, states.

The state has a history of close elections. In the last eight years, 13 elections in the Hawkeye State ended in a tie, while three were decided by one vote. More than 20 elections were decided by fewer than 10 votes.

Iowa is also among a handful of states where a closely contested race could determine which party controls the Senate. Republican Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek are facing off for the open seat, as Republican Sen. Joni Ernst isn’t seeking reelection.

Some of the duplicate registrations on the state’s voter rolls share the same name and date of birth; have names with two or fewer differing characters but with a matching year of birth and address; or contain records with a variation of a person’s name, such as “William” and “Bill,” but with the same registered address and birth year.

Duplicate registrations don’t mean people will vote twice, but they could create an opportunity for fraud, particularly as mail-in voting becomes more prevalent.

“Duplicates are easy to fix so we hope this is resolved quickly. Federal law mandates that the state of Iowa maintains clean voter rolls,” J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told The Daily Signal in a statement.

A U.S. House race in Iowa was famously decided by six votes in 2020, when Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks defeated Democratic opponent Rita Hart in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District.

Meanwhile, a 2022 Iowa Republican state Senate primary was decided by two votes, a 2022 Iowa state House general election was decided by six votes, a 2018 state House general election was decided by nine votes, and another 2018 state House race was decided by 10 votes, according to Ballotpedia.

The complaint alleges the state is violating the Help America Vote Act, a 2002 law that includes a provision requiring states receiving federal election funds to maintain accurate voter rolls. Iowa has faced two other complaints in recent years for alleged noncompliance with the law.

In October 2024, the Iowa Supreme Court gave standing to Linn County Auditor Joel Miller’s complaint against the Iowa Voter Registration Commission over the security of Iowa’s statewide voter-registration database.

Miller, a Democrat, alleged the state’s computerized voter database was vulnerable to cyberthreats. The court ordered further proceedings, stating that the state commission had dismissed the complaint without allowing evidence to be presented, but it did not conclude Iowa violated federal election law.

In a 2020 case, the Iowa Voters Alliance sued two Iowa counties—Black Hawk and Scott—for accepting grants from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which took $350 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation ahead of the 2020 election. The plaintiffs argued that federal law prevents private funding of election administration.

However, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa dismissed the case.

This was part of a larger national 2020 controversy, in which Zuckerberg argued that the grants were meant to help jurisdictions deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, while several conservative groups argued the grants disproportionately helped Democrats across the country.

A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, which oversees the Iowa Voter Registration Commission, did not respond to inquiries for this story by publication time.

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