Schultz: Nine Additional Voters Disenfranchised

Nine additional voters were disenfranchised because of Matt Schultz's inaccurate list of felons, the Secretary of State admitted in a Friday memo to county auditors.

The additional errors brings the total to 12 Iowa voters wrongly denied the right to vote in the 2012 presidential election. Cerro Gordo County auditor Ken Kline had previously announced that three voters in his county were wrongly excluded.

"Following a review of additional voters who also had rejected provisional ballots for reason of felony conviction in the 2012 general election," Schultz says in the memo, "the (Department of Criminal Investigation) determined an additional 9 voters were affected by similar issues that ultimately resulted in the wrongful rejection of their ballots." The memo also pledges steps to prevent the problem in the future.

Schultz, who's leaving the Secretary of State office for a 3rd CD congressional bid, has used federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) money to dedicate a criminal investigator to research voter fraud. The investigation has let to a handful of plea agreements and just one trial, in which a Lee County jury took just minutes to determine that a woman whose rights had not been restored made an honest mistake and did not willfully break the law.

State auditor Mary Mosiman,a fellow Republican and former Schultz employee, questioned the use of up to $280,000 of HAVA money and recommended that Schultz “develop a plan to repay HAVA funds should the US Election Commission not allow the activity and request payment.”

Yesterday Schultz issued a press release that he had repaid the state $200,000, but it turns out that was money returned to the state general fund for staff cuts, and not the HAVA money.