Bleeding Heartland Saturday, Jul 10 2021 The Iowa Secretary of State’s office altered how it publicizes monthly voter registration numbers after moving 294,000 Iowa voters to “inactive” status this spring. For years, shareable graphics posted every month featured the number and partisan breakdown of active registrants in each Iowa Congressional district. Since May, Secretary of State Paul Pate has posted images with totals that include inactive voters. The new approach obscures the fact that active registrants dropped by about 13 percent during the latest round of voter roll maintenance in April. WHY ACTIVE VOTER ROLLS SHRANK Under previous Iowa law, the Secretary of State’s office sent “No Activity” notices in April of odd-numbered years to “voters who have not voted in any election and have not updated their voter registration information in the past four years.” People who didn’t respond were designated inactive, which is the first step toward being removed from the voter rolls.