By Madeleine Neal
For two area county auditors, a state request about verifying felons in the voter database has become a point of contention.Linn and Johnson County Auditors Joel Miller and Travis Weipert have announced their opposition to a request by the Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate to confirm the status of felons in the I-Voters Voter Registration database at the beginning of April.
On the Johnson County website, the auditors noted that Pate’s office has historically been responsible for the maintenance of the statewide felon database.
At times, the website statement said, the felon database has been inaccurate; eligible voters have wound up on the felon list, and they should not have been. In the release, Weipert and Miller contended that Pate’s request is another unfunded mandate with legal liability being shifted to Iowa’s 99 county auditors.
“So instead of a single office in the state, i.e., the [Secretary of State’s Office] being responsible for working with Iowa’s court system, the [office] is pushing the work and the liability for errors onto me and Iowa’s other county auditors,” Miller said in the release.
If Linn County’s Miller honors Pate’s request, his office will have to contact 14 county clerks of court to confirm information in the felon database, and if Johnson County’s Weipert honors the request, his office must contact nine county clerks of court to confirm information in the felon database, the release said.
“The [Secretary of State Office’s] request is not authorized in the Iowa Administrative Code and is non-enforceable,” Weipert said in the release.
When contacted by *The Daily Iowan*, Weipert stood by his statement, deferring questions to Miller.
“Even though there’s been a great effort to clean up the list, there are still errors,” Miller said.
He said, as far as he can remember, the list of felons has been a concern throughout his entire stint in office.
“[The] list has already been problematic,” he said. “Now, instead of the secretary of State [being[ accountable, 99 county auditors [will be].”
Despite its being the auditors’ duties, Miller said, they have always been able to rely on the Secretary of State Office’s list.
Miller and Weipert, however, agree that based on pending legislation proposed by Pate, he wants to micromanage the elections processes occurring at the county level while at the same time pushing more work onto the counties with its most recent request to manage the felon database.
“We respectfully request that the [Secretary of State’s Office] rescind its recent request to counties to administer the felon database,” they said in the joint statement.
Though the auditors’ release is on the Johnson County Board of Supervisors’ website, the statement comes from the two county auditors.
“I am not up-to-date enough to thoughtfully reply,” Supervisor Mike Carberry said about the supervisors’ opinion on the statement.
