The House Republicans combined the two issues (VPT and voter IDs)

[CornField]

Not only did they combine them, but the basis of the bill was voter IDs (not VPT, which was added later as an amendment).

Link: http://coolice.legis.state.ia.us/Cool-ICE/default.asp?Category=billinfo&Service=Billbook&frame=1&GA=81&hbill=H8338

My understanding is that this new legislation (which passed 51 to 48) will be messaged to the Senate. The Senate will have the opportunity to vote it as written or to re-split the voter ID issue from VPT issue.

Leave it to the Republicans to take something as basic as being able to verify elections and turning it into some political posturing.

[rurallib]

1. What utter bullshit! Party line vote, I assume?

Where can you find iowa house votes?

[CornField]

2. Well... shit...

They're all dead -- my statehouse contact confirms that SF351, HF2597, and the earlier HF644 are all dead and gone.

Unless there is an active bill on which VPT voting can be tacked on (not likely), the issue is dead until the next legislative session. As it stands, those Iowa counties with DREs will not have an auditable paper trail for the November elections... further, there will not be any random audits on the voting machines. Those counties (so far) are: Plymouth, Clay, Winnebago, Worth, Mitchell, Fayette, Clayton, Jackson, Poweshiek, Warren, Marion, Mahaska, Keokuk, Union, Lucas, Monroe, Wayne and Appannoose.

Other counties are utilizing DREs as voting systems, but only the counties listed above have them as both their primary system and their accessibility component. (47 additional counties use DREs without paper trails as their accessibility component)

But to answer your question about Wednesday night -- it was a party-line vote.

[Debi]

3. Obviously this is important everywhere, but three of those counties

are in the First District (Fayette, Clayton & Jackson) where there is a four-way primary on the Dem side and a three-way primary on the republican side.

And for you conspiracy buffs - Rick Dickinson resides in Jackson county.

How hard would it been to have passed these damn bills? :shrug:

[rurallib]

4. I have emailed my repuke rep on this many times

The answer I always got was that the county auditors wanted it this way. I replied to the effect that you have the power to tell them what to do. God what a cop out. "Gee we'd like to have a law against drunk driving but drivers don't want that". Whata load of that stuff ya' put on fields.