Trump Wins IA Court Battle Over 70K Absentee Ballots

The New York Times reports:

While President Trump hit the trail on Wednesday night in Des Moines, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in his favor, determining that the state’s top election official had the authority to invalidate about 70,000 absentee ballot applications because they had been filled out in advance with voters’ personal information.

The ruling upheld a contentious directive of Secretary of State Paul D. Pate, a Republican, that required the applications to be blank when they were sent to voters. Democrats and immigrant groups had challenged the constitutionality of the directive, which Mr. Pate used to nullify ballot requests from three counties.

Election officials in Linn, Johnson and Woodbury counties ignored the directive and sent out tens of thousands of applications to voters with their names, addresses, birth dates and voter personal identification numbers already filled out.