Two Dem Iowa state House lawmakers walked out of a markup meeting on Tuesday after the panel’s Republicans voted to advance an “election integrity” bill that would allow convicted felons on the ballot, ban ballot drop boxes, ban ranked-choice voting (which isn’t even a thing in Iowa), and arbitrarily shorten the deadline for absentee ballots to be received, USA Today reports.
Iowa Representatives Amy Nielsen and Adam Zabner walked out after HSB 697 sponsor Bobby Kaufmann interrupted Nielsen while she was speaking, insisting it was cool for him to do so since he was chairing the meeting. Zabner told reporters “It takes quite a lot of nerve to call a bill an election-integrity bill when the point of the bill is to let felons run for office. And particularly someone like Donald Trump, who has so little integrity.” Kaufmann of course served as a “senior adviser” to the fat fuck’s Iowa campaign. “I just think Iowans need to let that set in,” Zabner said. “Someone who worked for the Trump campaign is here passing a law specifically to help Donald Trump.”
Kaufmann falsely denied it, telling reporters that the bill is only about “maintaining the highest level of election integrity” and “It is not our job to decide who’s on the ballot. It is the voters’ job and it’s arrogant, frankly, for us to think that we should overrule what they choose to do, whether that’s a D, an R, an independent, a Libertarian or Green Party or anyone else for that matter. We’re not going to become a country of 50 different laboratories for right-wing and left-wing activism. The voters who choose a president need to be the ones who decide it, not the Legislature.”
Iowa law currently requires presidential and congressional candidates to sign an affidavit attesting that they know they are disqualified from holding office if they have been convicted of a felony in any jurisdiction. Kaufmann is working to fix that – while killing a few other birds with the same stone by banning ballot drop boxes and making it harder to ensure an absentee ballot arrives on time by changing the deadline for its receipt by county clerks from EOB on election day to the day before.