HAND COUNT PAPER BALLOTS.WIN

Here you will find a table of our running FOIAs and Iowa Open Records requests and their status.  At the federal level they are referred to as Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests (5 U.S. Code § 552).  In Iowa, at the state level, where we are focusing our primary efforts, it is referred to as an an Iowa Open Records Request (Iowa Open Records Law § 22.1 et seq.).  There is a DOJ guide you can follow here for the federal ones, and we found this website to be helpful to better understand the state code.

These laws require the government to release, or partially release records, upon a citizen’s request.  And are a mechanism for private citizen’ to hold elected officials accountable.  With that said it is important to be succinct, objective, and polite in your request, and following the exact code for federal or state laws.   Many times these are handled by clerks who have nothing to do with whatever passionate issue one may be investigating.

The requests may require some redactions which create a time limit for when a reply should be given.  In Iowa, the law allows at maximum 20 calendar days for the government office to make evaluations on confidentiality and provide a response to the request (Iowa Code § 22.8(4)(d)).  Federal FOIAs also follow this same 20 calendar day limit.  In some cases there may be process fees required to pay clerks to search and consolidate documents related to the request.  Typically replies will include estimate of fees, and sometimes a deposit to begin the work.

We have waited over 6 months for a request regarding the election process, with our $250 check still waiting to be cashed, and so have created the below table to track our efforts as we will continue to make requests to find out the truth about our election process.