Iowa GOP push bill to restrict public student voting rights

Iowa is regularly at the center of our national political conversation, thanks to the biennial Iowa caucuses, which mark the beginning of both the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries. Now, with Senate File 575, Iowa is once again making headlines, this time for its attempts at voter suppression.

Under SF 575, which passed out of a committee earlier this month, students at Iowa's public universities - University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and the University of Northern Iowa - would be unable to vote early on campus. This is because of a provision introduced in the bill that would prevent satellite voting locations from being set up in a "state-owned building." This would not impact students attending private universities in Iowa.

Additionally, this bill would require the approximately 70,000 students at Iowa's public universities to fill out a form when they graduate indicating if they plan to stay in Iowa, or move out of state. If they indicate that they plan on moving, the state will automatically purge them from the voting rolls. If their plans change, and they remain in Iowa, they would have to start the voter registration process from scratch.

"As we're encouraging kids to stay in Iowa, we should be making it [as] easy as possible to be Iowans, to participate in our elections, not making any barriers for them," Jamie Fitzgerald, a Polk County Auditor, told KCCI Des Moines "It's perplexing."