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Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald on Gov. Reynolds' felon voting rights executive order

The auditor spoke with Local 5 Wednesday.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Editor's note: The following has been edited for clarity.

Local 5: Thousands of Iowans will now be eligible to vote in the November election. So how is this going to work logistically? Joining us now is Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald and Jamie, thanks for being here. 

So you are in charge of the election process in the largest county in the state? Are you expecting a crush of business to come from this? Or what do you think is going to happen within your office?

Auditor Fitzgerald: There's thousands of people now that are eligible for the first time in quite a while. These are folks that have paid their debt to society that may have been waiting for the individual restoration that now can breathe a little easier and come into our office and register to vote. 

As you know, we're down to under three months for the election. So we are looking forward to a lot of early voting, but we're also looking forward to the voters coming out participating for the first time.

Local 5: Okay, so they're gonna be good to go forward. Certainly for the general election you hope and in do expect to see a lot have people coming in? Because there's kind of this backlog of folks who've been who've been waiting to get back on the on the voter rolls?

Fitzgerald: But we're extremely confident that the Secretary of State and Department of Corrections, who are charged through the executive order are working through this as we speak. So we think there'll be no hiccups. 

The one thing we ask if you have any questions, call your local county auditor. We're extremely happy to help. But you know, right now, a lot of county offices are closed. We have a dropbox, a contact-free dropbox at our office. 

So for those voters that want to go out, physically registered to vote, make sure you contact your local county auditor before you get in the car and get there.

Local 5: Obviously you want to make the process as easy as you can do you think it's gonna be pretty easy for those who have not been able able to vote for many years to get the paperwork done and get it going?

Fitzgerald: I think it will. The voter that to do anything extra unless you're you've been convicted of murder or manslaughter or a few other smaller sexual abuse type charges where you'll have to individually petition the governor. And that will all be on our system. 

Like I said, we have a lot of confidence in the Department of Corrections. And the Secretary of State to clean up the lists as fast they can and to get these voters on the rolls. 

Local 5: Is there any sort of outreach from your office to make the the people who are now going to be eligible to vote aware of this? Or do you think that they already know they've been waiting and they're just going to come to you? 

Fitzgerald: Well, we don't think people are waiting to register to vote. When you've been turned away from something for so long. Usually, you kind of give up trying. So what we're doing is we're spending a lot of time with media. We're gonna do a lot of social social media outreach. But the hard part is finding these individuals because a lot of them haven't updated since they were registered prior in Polk County. They might not have registered, they might have moved and not updated because they're not registered vote. So we're asking them if you have any questions, contact us. We're here. Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Local 5: Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald, thanks so much for taking some time.

More information about the Polk County Auditor's office is here.

    

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