New Report: Iowa Republicans Are Trying to Decide Who Gets to Vote in 2026

Today, Try And Stop Us released a new report laying out Iowa Republicans’ decade-long campaign to shrink the electorate and decide who gets to vote. This November is the first general election under a 2026 GOP law that runs every registered Iowan through a federal immigration database every year and cancels the registration of anyone who doesn’t clear it within 90 days of a notice.

Iowa Republicans have been at this since they took full control of state government in 2017, when they cut early voting from 40 days to 29. After record turnout in 2020, Governor Reynolds signed a bill cutting it to 20, closing the polls an hour earlier and tossing any mailed ballot that reaches the auditor after 8 p.m. on Election Day. In 2023, Secretary of State Paul Pate called a bipartisan voter roll cooperative “a godsend,” then pulled Iowa out weeks later after Trump attacked it.

Two weeks before the 2024 election, Pate ordered auditors to challenge the ballots of 2,176 Iowans and refused to release the names, even to the people on the list. His office later confirmed just 277 were noncitizens. The other 1,899 were citizens forced to prove it in front of their neighbors, and in February Pate settled with the voters he targeted.

Republicans wrote citizenship challenges into permanent law anyway. A 2025 law lets any poll worker challenge any voter’s citizenship. In May, Pate and Attorney General Bird handed Trump’s Justice Department Iowans’ driver’s license and Social Security numbers while dozens of states fought the same demand. All of it over a “problem” that doesn’t exist.

Iowa Republicans know they can’t win a fair fight, so they’re trying to thin the voter rolls before any ballots are counted.

A full copy of the report can be found here.