In an interview for the Iowa PBS show Friday, Pate told reporters that he would “not want to see” the cybersecurity systems go away.
“If those (systems) were to go away, it would be pretty serious, and we've had conversations with them on that regard,” Pate said. “Feedback I'm getting is that we will see continuing some type of security support. They're reformatting it, and of course, I'm waiting anxiously to find out what that looks like. But we do count on a lot of those cyber protections.”
Last month, the Associated Press reported the Trump administration had cut about $10 million in funding that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency provides to the nonprofit Center for Internet Security, which helps businesses and governments protect themselves against cyber threats.
Trump also called for the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an investigation into CISA director Chris Krebs on Wednesday, according to NBC. Krebs, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, countered Trump in 2020 after the president falsely claimed that he had won the election.
During his time in office, Pate has advocated for strengthening cybersecurity in elections by creating partnerships with tech companies, including Cisco, FireEye and Microsoft.
Asked about his thoughts on election-related legislation passed by the U.S. House this week that would require proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote for federal elections, Pate said he is supportive of the bill, adding that he has some concerns about how it will work with current state laws around acceptable identification.
“Much of it is parallel to what we're trying to do here right now,” Pate said. “I personally prefer my approach, and that is one where we deal with all this at the voter registration level, rather than the day they're voting, because then we can do it in a much more user-friendly approach.”
INVESTIGATING ILLEGALLY CAST BALLOTS
In March, Pate's office announced there were 40 votes cast out of 277 Iowans on the voter registration list who Pate identified as not being full U.S. citizens and therefore being ineligible to vote in the 2024 general election. Five of the ballots were rejected and not counted.
Pate referred the names of 62 Iowans without U.S. citizenship who either cast ballots on Election Day, cast provisional ballots on Election Day that were counted, returned absentee ballots or registered to vote in 2024 but did not vote to the Iowa Attorney General’s Office and Iowa Department of Public Safety for investigation.
Pate said compiling the list was necessary after his office was not granted access to a federal program that stores information about noncitizens on public assistance programs called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program or SAVE.
“That was our attempt, if you will, because we were limited by the fact the federal government wasn't giving us the list we needed at the time, so I’m pretty confident we did the best method we could at the time,” Pate said.
This investigation came after Pate’s office provided a list of over 2,000 names to local elections officials during the 2024 election whose citizenship his office was unable to confirm. Pate's office instructed county auditors to have poll workers challenge the ballots of anyone on the list attempting to vote. Instead, the people on the list were to cast provisional ballots and would have a week to provide documentation of their citizenship.
Pate’s list of voters concerned some, including Iowa House and Senate Democrats who questioned whether ballots of eligible voters were thrown out in the process.
Pate said he didn’t know of any eligible ballots that had been turned away, but didn’t rule it out entirely.
“There has been discussion about the early voting people who may have and then the fact that they didn't respond back to the auditor when they were reached because they may have been traveling or something else, and that was unfortunate,” Pate said. “But that happens in other ways. We have people who vote absentee, who failed to sign a ballot, or some other errors on the ballot, and they don't get counted.”
ELECTION LEGISLATION IN THE IOWA LEGISLATURE
Pate also doubled down on his support for a slate of election-related bills making their way through both chambers of the Iowa legislature, including House File 954, which addresses elections laws regarding voter registration, citizenship and major party status.
One section of the bill would add citizenship status to the list of questions an election precinct official may ask a challenged voter under oath, and create new language on declaration forms confirming the voter is a U.S. citizen, which critics have said would place more burdens on poll workers and dissuade people from voting.
But Pate said confirming citizenship status is something poll workers are already able to do.
The bill, which was sent to the governor’s desk Monday after passing the Republican-controlled House and Senate along party lines, would also prohibit the use of ranked choice voting in any Iowa elections.
Ranked-choice, or instant runoff voting, is a system where voters rank candidates in order of preference instead of voting for one candidate. If there is no clear winner and someone’s first choice is not likely to win, the second choice candidate is counted for the ballot. No local government in Iowa currently uses ranked choice voting, though it is in use for certain elections in some states and cities in the U.S., including Alaska and New York City.
Pate argued that ranked-choice voting is confusing for voters, takes election results longer to be confirmed and is difficult for election officials to administer.
“Some of the cities want to do things differently, and as a former mayor, I respect that, but when it comes to elections, I'm concerned that we need to have continuity,” Pate said. “It's hard enough to get people to vote and to confuse them with a ranked choice voting process versus our normal election process, I think, is a recipe for disaster.”
Pate also expressed support for House File 928, which would address Iowa’s recount laws.
“Recounts should look the same no matter what county you're in,” Pate said. “We're a bit polarized in elections. We've got some that are really, really close, and this keeps happening over and over and over, so I don't think it's going away.”
©2025 Quad City Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
