Stephen Gruber-Miller at the Des Moines Register:

Thirty-five noncitizens voted in Iowa in the 2024 election and another five noncitizens tried to vote but had their ballots rejected, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate announced Thursday.

Pate, a Republican, said an audit of the state’s voter registration list confirmed 277 noncitizens on Iowa’s voter rolls. While 22 of those confirmed noncitizens registered to vote in 2024, the vast majority of the 277 identified did not vote, try to vote or register to vote in 2024.

Last year, two weeks before Election Day, Pate’s office instructed county auditors to challenge the ballots of 2,176 people who had at some point in the past told the Iowa Department of Transportation that they were noncitizens. Many had become U.S. citizens since getting their driver’s licenses.

The 277 people Pate confirmed as noncitizens on Thursday amounts to 13% of the voters he instructed election workers to challenge last fall. In all, 1.67 million Iowans voted in the Nov. 5 election, for a voter turnout rate of 74.2%.

Opponents said Pate’s directive just days before the election had a chilling effect on legal voters, making them fearful to cast their ballot, and forced naturalized citizens to jump through extra hoops to prove their citizenship when they voted.