Polly Antonelli walked and drove around the north side of Des Moines in early September, hanging plastic bags on voters’ front doors. They contained information about local Democratic candidates, voting tips and applications for absentee ballots.
“I think it’s important that everybody have the information they need to vote, including an absentee ballot request form in case they need to vote early or just want to because you can,” she said.
Antonelli was volunteering to distribute those resources to a few dozen homes as part of the Polk County Democrats’ plan to get them to 95,000 households.
“It reduces my anxiety — to be doing something,” she said.
But Antonelli said she worries about how the state’s election law changes could hurt Iowans’ ability to vote.
Iowa is one of many Republican-led states that enacted stricter voting laws after former President Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election by baselessly attacking mail voting. This is the first presidential election since the Iowa Legislature cut the time allowed for all forms of voting and put new restrictions on voting by mail.
In recent years, Republican lawmakers have cut the timeframe for voting by mail by more than half. They moved up the deadlines for requesting and returning absentee ballots, among many other changes. In spite of all that, Democrats and Republicans are encouraging Iowans to vote absentee — which includes voting by mail and in-person early voting — this fall.
Antonelli said she will contact voters and try to help them through the process of returning their ballot on time so it gets counted.
“Sometimes I do give people a ride downtown to turn in their ballots because they wait too long,” she said. “And I love them, and I want their vote to count.”
Bill Brauch, chair of the Polk County Democrats, said the changes to Iowa’s voting laws have made absentee voting harder. He said they’ll just have to work harder to help voters overcome potential barriers.
“There are a number of things that make it more challenging, but we’re going to do it anyway,” Brauch said. “They keep changing the law, and we keep changing our plan to do what we need to do to get our voters the tools they need to actually participate in this democracy.”
Polk County Democrats Executive Director Kira Barker, who planned the effort to reach 95,000 homes, said it’s still worth it to put money and time into distributing absentee ballot applications.
“We see it as a way to expand an opportunity for voters to vote,” Barker said. “Things come up on Election Day. With Iowa weather, it can be very unpredictable. And we feel very confident that even with the shrinking timeline, that we can still adequately deliver resources to folks.”
The Polk County Democrats used to collect voters’ completed ballots to return them to the local election office, but that was outlawed in 2021 with new restrictions on who can help a voter return their ballot. Barker said she doesn’t want any voters to fall through the cracks.
“What we can do is we can call folks, we can knock on their doors and we can just let them know, here’s what you need to do in order to get that delivered,” she said.
In 2020, the state mailed ballot request forms to all active registered voters in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Iowa broke its records for overall voter turnout and absentee voting. After that, GOP lawmakers barred election officials — but not outside groups — from doing mass mailings of ballot applications.
The Iowa Democratic Party mails absentee ballot request forms to certain voters. It recently sent out a second round of about 36,000 mail ballot applications after a change in postal regulations caught the party’s mail vendor off guard and kept some of the original applications from getting processed by the postal service.
Republicans urge their supporters to vote early
Registered Democrats in Iowa have cast more absentee votes than Republicans for the past two decades. Top Republican officials in the state are now urging their supporters to vote early like Democrats do, whether it’s by mail or in person.
“We need to bank the vote, bank the vote, bank the vote,” Gov. Kim Reynolds, who signed voting restrictions into law, said in an interview with Radio Iowa. “We need to learn to play their game. We have very safe elections in the state of Iowa.”
Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, has said this year that “absentee voting, early voting and Election Day voting are all good options,” as Republicans at the national level try to boost voter turnout with early and mail voting. But Trump has also continued to claim, without evidence, that voting by mail leads to widespread voter fraud.
Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann recently said the state party will be putting “a lot of resources into absentee voting and chasing” ballots. The party declined to tell IPR if that would include mass distribution of mail ballot applications.
Just west of Polk County, the Dallas County Republicans have been focused on knocking doors and giving out flyers showing the GOP candidates that will be on the ballot. Chair Kelley Koch said rather than giving ballot applications to everyone, volunteers offer them to people who express interest in voting by mail.
She has been asking Republicans to vote early — especially in person.
“The weather and a little bit of fear is a good motivator,” Koch said.
She said she reminds people of the weather for this year’s caucuses — subzero temperatures with about two feet of snow on the ground — as an example of what can keep people from getting to the polls on Election Day.
The time allowed for in-person early voting has also been cut by Republican lawmakers. In 2017, they changed the start date for early voting from 40 days before Election Day to 29 days before Election Day. In 2021, the Legislature made the absentee voting period start 20 days before Election Day.
And voters now have to petition for additional early voting sites. Before, the county auditor could just set them up.
But Koch said she doesn’t think the changes to Iowa’s election rules are hurting voters.
“I think tightening it up makes it more serious, makes people pay attention, makes people pull out a red Sharpie and put it on the calendar,” she said. “And we’re using that to basically say, 'Get it together. You can find time to go to the gym, to go to Hy-Vee, to go to a movie or whatever. Find time to vote.'”
Koch said she thinks absentee voting turnout will be high this fall.
“But to be fair and honest, there are these hardcore Republicans, I think more than Democrats, that say ‘No, this is a tradition. It’s Election Day for a reason,’” she said.
Election officials say Iowans should make a plan to vote
As political organizers promote absentee voting, election officials say voters should be very careful to meet the mail deadlines to ensure their vote gets counted.
Iowa State Association of County Auditors President Becky Bissell, who is also the Republican auditor of Adams County, said it can take up to seven days for a ballot to arrive in the mail.
“We just are really trying to educate anybody that is wanting their ballot by mail to make sure they get their absentee request form into the auditor’s office now,” she said on Iowa PBS.
Bissell said when a voter receives their ballot in the mail, they should complete it and return it right away — either through the mail, or by bringing it to their county elections office. Ballots will start getting mailed to voters on Oct. 16, which is also the first day for in-person early voting.
Absentee ballots must be received by the voter’s county auditor by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 5 to be counted. Under the old law, ballots just had to be in the mail by the day before Election Day and could arrive a few days later and still be counted.
Overall, Democratic lawmakers have said these law changes will disenfranchise some voters, and Republican lawmakers have said that Iowans can figure out how to vote within the new timeframes and rules.
“This will be the test, really, watching how this election goes,” said Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican.
He said he and county election officials have been asking lawmakers to expand the mail voting timeframe. But he said Iowa still has “over 130 hours of voting time,” and making a plan now will help Iowans ensure they can use one of the multiple options to cast their vote.
Pate said the state is not tracking how many absentee ballots and ballot requests are being rejected compared to past years. He said a new voter list system being launched next year could help answer those questions. But there have been situations in 2022 and the 2024 primary where the voting changes have prevented some Iowans’ votes from being counted.
Clinton County Auditor Eric Van Lancker said a mail mishap kept 50 ballots in the 2022 primary election from getting to his office on time. He would have been able to count them under the old law. Van Lancker, a Democrat, also said he has seen a noticeable increase in ballots and ballot requests being rejected for arriving too late. But he said he has not kept the numbers.
USA Today reported the tighter deadline for requesting an absentee ballot led some Iowa voters to not vote at all in the 2024 primary after their ballot requests were rejected.
But not all counties have reported problems. Buena Vista County Auditor Sue Lloyd, a Republican, said she has not seen an increase in ballots or ballot requests being rejected for arriving late.
Becky Bissell, the president of the auditor’s association, said she doesn’t know of a good way to quantify the impact of Iowa’s voting law changes.
“I just know that all 99 county auditors want every legal voter to get out there and vote, and we want to make it as smooth and seamless as possible,” she said. “We want them to be legal and we want that vetting process, but we don’t want to make it too hard that it is going to deter anybody from wanting to vote.”
More information about how to vote in Iowa is available at VoterReady.Iowa.Gov.
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