Statewide Iowa — Iowa voters are being presented with a three-part proposal about who is eligible to vote in Iowa.
The amendment proposed for Iowa’s constitution says 17-year-olds may vote in a Primary if they’ll be 18 by the General Election. That’s already state law. Another part of the proposed amendment says “only” U.S. citizens may vote in Iowa elections, a change from the current language in the document that says “every” U.S. citizen may vote. Some Democrats say the proposal would prevent legal U.S. residents from being allowed to vote in local city or school board elections at some point in the future.
“These may be people who own their own homes, they are paying real estate taxes, they are paying sales taxes, they’re paying income taxes in the United States and they cannot cast a vote,” Polk County Democratic Party chairman Bill Brauch said during an interview with Radio Iowa. “What this amendment does is it prevents the legislature from ever changing that.”
Iowa Republican Party chairman Jeff Kaufmann predicts the proposed amendment will pass easily. “Voting is for citizens and I would be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of Iowans agree with that,” Kaufmann said during an appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa PBS this past weekend. “I’m going to guess that a majority of Democrats are in favor of that.”
The third part of this proposed amendment aligns Iowa’s Constitution with the 26th amendment to the U.S. Constitution that lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 nationally — back in 1971. The other proposed state constitutional amendment on Iowa ballots this year deals with the line of succession in state government.
