DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa’s top election official and a group of voters the state had flagged as potential noncitizens just ahead of the 2024 presidential election settled a federal lawsuit Wednesday that will prevent the state from relying exclusively on driver’s license records for citizenship data in the three months before an election.
Several naturalized U.S. citizens initially sued Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate in late October 2024, alleging he infringed on their rights to vote when he directed election workers to challenge ballots from about 2,000 registered voters in an attempt to prevent people officials identified as possible noncitizens from voting. All five individuals were eligible to vote but had been included on the list.
A review of Iowa’s voter rolls last year found a fraction of that number — 35 people who are not U.S. citizens — were among more than 1.6 million Iowa voters who cast ballot in the 2024 election, and there were 277 noncitizens registered to vote out of nearly 2.3 million. Voting by people who are not U.S. citizens is illegal in federal elections, and there is no evidence it occurs in large numbers.
Pate’s office had compared the state’s voter rolls to a list of people who at some point self-reported as noncitizens to the Iowa Department of Transportation, acknowledging that some may have since become naturalized citizens who would be eligible to vote. It then sent the list to county election officials two weeks before the election but did not attempt to contact the voters directly.
Pate, a Republican, said at the time that the transportation data was the best citizenship data source available because the office did not have access to federal immigration records under the Biden administration.
Under an agreement with President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, Iowa now can run searches for thousands of voters using names, birthdays and Social Security numbers through the federal government’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program.
That was one of the reasons Pate had argued to a federal judge that the lawsuit should be dismissed, saying the 2024 list of voters has been rescinded and that the lawsuit's claims are moot. That list also cannot be used for any future ballot-related challenges or efforts to maintain voter lists, according to the settlement.
In exchange, the naturalized citizens agreed to dismiss their claims. The settlement, signed by both parties, was filed in court Wednesday but had not yet been accepted by a federal judge.
Rita Bettis Austen, ACLU of Iowa’s legal director, saw the settlement as a win in ensuring state officials would not be making last-minute eligibility challenges based on unreliable data.
“The overwhelming majority of voters wrongly put on this list, including all our clients, are naturalized United States citizens who have the right to vote,” she said in a statement. “We are hopeful today’s settlement will safeguard Iowans from this happening again in future elections.”
But Pate and Iowa’s Republican Attorney General Brenna Bird also called the outcome a victory, pointing out that they are now using federal databases to verify Iowa’s voter rolls.
The secretary of state's office used the SAVE program in its review last year, according to court filings. The program has been around for decades and is operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a branch of DHS.
It has been significantly upgraded under the Trump administration, leading voting rights groups to sue the administration over concerns that eligible voters could be unlawfully purged from voter lists.
FILE - A "Vote Here" sign is seen on Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024, at Perfect Games in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Bryon Houlgrave, File)
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Fresh surveillance images from Nancy Guthrie’s porch the night she went missing, coupled with intense police activity across Arizona and the detention of a man had raised hopes that authorities were nearing a major break.
But then the man was released after questioning, leaving it unclear Wednesday where the investigation stood into last week’s disappearance of Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie.
FBI agents carrying water bottles to beat the 80-degree F (26.7-degree C) heat walked among rocks and desert vegetation at Guthrie's Tucson-area home. They also fanned out across a neighborhood about a mile (1.6 kilometers) away, knocking on doors and searching through cactuses, bushes and boulders.
Several hundred detectives and agents are now assigned to the investigation, which is expanding in the area, the Pima County Sheriff's Department said.
In a nearby neighborhood, two investigators emerged from daughter Annie Guthrie’s home with a paper grocery sack and a white trash bag. One, still wearing blue protective gloves, also took a stack of mail from the roadside mailbox. They drove away without speaking to reporters.
Barb Dutrow, who was jogging through a neighborhood where teams were searching, said an FBI agent told her they were looking for anything that might have been tossed from a car. Dutrow, who was visiting from Louisiana for a convention, said she "can't imagine the feeling of the family of having their mother taken.”
A day earlier, authorities said they had stopped a man near the U.S.-Mexico border, just hours after the FBI released videos of a person wearing a gun holster, ski mask and backpack and approaching Nancy Guthrie's home in Tucson. The man told media outlets early Wednesday that he was released after several hours and had nothing to do with Guthrie's disappearance last week.
Authorities have not said what led them to stop the man Tuesday but confirmed he was released. The sheriff's department said its deputies and FBI agents also searched a location in Rio Rico, a city south of Tucson where the man lives.
It was the latest twist in an investigation that has gripped the nation since Nancy Guthrie disappeared on Feb. 1. Until Tuesday, it seemed authorities were making little headway in determining what happened to her or finding who was responsible.
The black and white images released by the FBI showing a masked person trying to cover a doorbell camera on Guthrie’s porch marked the first significant break in the case. But the images did not show what happened to her or help determine whether she is still alive.
FBI Director Kash Patel said investigators spent days trying to find lost, corrupted or inaccessible images.
Even though the images do not show the person's face, investigators are hopeful someone will know who was on the porch. More than 4,000 calls came into the Pima County sheriff's tip line within the past 24 hours, the department said Wednesday afternoon.
Authorities have said for more than a week that they believe Nancy Guthrie was taken against her will. She was last seen at home Jan. 31 and reported missing the next day. DNA tests showed blood on her porch was hers, authorities said.
Savannah Guthrie posted the new surveillance images on social media and said the family believes their mother is still alive.
The longtime NBC host and her two siblings have indicated a willingness to pay a ransom.
It is not known whether ransom notes demanding money with deadlines that have already passed were authentic, and whether the family has had any contact with whoever took Guthrie.
TMZ reported it received a message Wednesday from someone claiming to know the kidnapper’s identity and that they unsuccessfully tried to reach Savannah Guthrie’s brother and sister. The person asked for bitcoin in exchange for the information, TMZ said. The FBI did not immediately respond to a message.
Authorities have said Nancy Guthrie takes several medications and there was concern from the start that she could die without them.
Associated Press reporters Hallie Golden in Seattle, John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, and Ed White in Detroit contributed to this report.
Law enforcement agents check vegetation areas around Nancy Guthrie’s home in Tucson, Ariz., Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)
Law enforcement agents check vegetation areas around Nancy Guthrie’s home in Tucson, Ariz., Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)
Law enforcement agents check vegetation areas around Nancy Guthrie’s home in Tucson, Ariz., Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)
Law enforcement agents check vegetation areas around Nancy Guthrie’s home in Tucson, Ariz., Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)
An investigator looks inside a culvert in the neighborhood where Annie Guthrie, whose mother Nancy Guthrie has been missing for more than a week, lives just outside Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)
Sheriff's officials block the entrance to a road where a home was being searched in Rio Rico, Arizona, on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, in connection to the investigation of Nancy Guthrie's disappearance. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)
