How to get your right to vote back after a felony conviction in Iowa
Content adapted from ACLU-IA (Original Resource)
You can register to vote if all the following are true
- You are an Iowa resident
- You are at least 17 years old (and will be 18 by Election Day)
- You have given up your right to vote in any other place (you'll swear to that on your registration form)
- You have not been declared by the court to be incompetent to vote (unless the court certifies you are no longer incompetent)
- You are a U.S. citizen
- You haven't been convicted of a felony or you were convicted of a felony, and your right to vote was restored (see the chart below)
I was convicted of a crime. Can I vote?
Before your voting rights will be restored, you must have completed your crimininal sentence. That means you’ve discharged any probation or parole. You need to have entered into a payment plan but you need not have paid in full your court costs, restitution, and fines.
| If you were convicted of this crime... | And completed your sentence within this time... | ...Here's what you need to do to vote after you have completed your sentence: |
|---|---|---|
| Any misdemeanor in Iowa or any other state | Any time | You can vote.* You never lost your voting rights. Only felonies can disqualify you from voting. However, if you are still in jail you may have to vote by absentee ballot. |
| Any felony in Iowa | Before July 4, 2005 | You can vote* Your rights were automatically restored. |
| After July 4, 2005 but before January 14, 2011 | You probably can vote.* Your right to vote was probably automatically restored - but if you never received notice in the mail after you completed your sentence, you should check with the Office of the Governor at 515-281-5211. The Governor's office maintains a list of people whose right to vote was restored. If you are on the list maintained by the Governor's office, you can vote; if you are not on the list, you must go through the five steps detailed on the next page to get back your right to vote. |
|
| After January 14, 2011 | You cannot vote until the Governor's office restores your right to vote. Go through the five steps detailed on the next page to get back your right to vote. | |
| Any out-of-state felony | The Governor's office has said that if you have received a restoration of rights from another state after being convicted of a felony by that state, it does not require you to apply for a second restoration to vote in Iowa. However, if that state that disenfranchised you did not restore your voting rights, you will have to apply to have a restoration of your voting rights from the Iowa Governor before registering to vote in Iowa.* | |
| Any felon in Iowa resulting in a deferred judgment | Anytime | You can vote as long as you have successfully discharged probation.* |
*You still need to register to vote. See below.
How can I register to vote?
You can register to vote at the polls on Election Day. You can also pre-register by getting a mail-in voter registration form at https://sos.iowa.gov or calling 515-281-0145 (business hours Monday to Friday); or from your county auditor’s offce; or when you get a driver’s license or apply for services at government agencies; or from most libraries, colleges, and high schools.
If you have an Iowa driver’s license or non-operator ID, you can also register to vote online. Go to https://sos.iowa.gov/elections/pdf/voteapp.pdf
What happens if I am not qualified to vote and I vote anyway?
Current Iowa law makes it mandatory to go through the formal process of getting your right to vote back from the Governor if you have a felony conviction.*
- It is critically important that you not skip this process. That’s because there are very severe, felony-level penalties for registering to vote or voting if you know you aren’t qualified.
- It is registration fraud to willfully swear falsely to the oath that you take when you register to vote, saying you have not been convicted of a felony (or that if you have been, your right to vote was restored).
- It is vote fraud to willfully submit a ballot or an absentee ballot that you know is materially false, fictitious, forged, or fraudulent, as well as to willfully make a false or untrue statement in an application for an absentee ballot or to make or sign a false certification or affidavit in connection with an absentee ballot.
- It is perjury to sign a voter registration form with false information of material facts that the person knows to be untrue.
* Unless your right to vote was restored automatically, prior to January 14, 2011. (See chart above for details.)
Have you been told that you are not allowed to vote in Iowa, potentially due to a felony charge on your record, but you think this isn't right?
Please contact IHRC so that we may speak with you about your experience – 319-214-0540 or hello@iowaharmreductioncoalition.org.
Sometimes people are initially charged with a felony. But over the course of legal proceedings, they may plead the charge down to a misdemeanor. When Iowans visit a polling place on the day of an election, election workers are provided with a list of people with past felony charges who are not eligible to vote. Sometimes that list contains individuals who have experienced the aforementioned series of events, in which they were initially charged with a felony but not convicted of one by a judge. This means that individuals who have never been convicted of a felony could be wrongly turned away at the polls and could be (inaccurately) informed that they are not eligible to vote in Iowa. For individuals who have been convicted of a felony charge, they are not eligible to vote unless they discharge their sentence and apply to have their voting rights restored via the Governor’s office.
If you have had an experience that sounds somewhat like the one described, please call, text, or email IHRC at the number above so that we may speak with you and learn more.
