Hunter
05/28/24
State officials are taking steps to increase voter registration access for Iowa Medicaid applicants, roughly four months after a report said the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services was not in compliance with federal voting law.
Iowa Capital Dispatch reported in January that application and renewal mailers sent out by the Iowa HHS for Medicaid and state-funded health insurance plans violated federal law by failing to provide a prominent and convenient opportunity to register to vote. The forms had a simple sentence with an online address to print out a voter registration form, but no mailing address was provided for sending the form.
The law requires states offer voter registration opportunities at certain state and local offices, including public assistance and disability offices.
Iowa City Democratic state representative Adam Zabner told the House that it’s crucial for all Iowans, no matter their economic status, to be included in the voting process, and pressed for a timeline to fix the issue.
More than 400,000 Iowa adults are on Medicaid or state-funded health insurance plans. Only a small fraction of them used state public assistance agencies to register to vote, well below the national average.
Iowa Health and Human Services Director Kelly Garcia told Zabner in an email last week that the department is on track to ensure renewal forms mailed in August contain a voter registration form in the packet. She previously told the lawmaker that before the issue was reported by Iowa Capital Dispatch, her department was unaware of the compliance issue.