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After 21 Years in SD, Lederman Cancels Iowa Voter Registration

Dan Lederman gives Todd Epp at KELO Radio answers about his curious dual voter registration in South Dakota and Iowa.

First, that dual registration is about to end: 21 years after moving to South Dakota, Lederman has finally asked the Iowa Secretary of State to cancel his voter registration:

Dan Lederman, request to cancel Iowa voter registration, 2017.10.12; obtained by Todd Epp, KELO Radio, 2017.10.13.
Dan Lederman, request to cancel Iowa voter registration, 2017.10.12; obtained by Todd Epp, KELO Radio, 2017.10.13.

Lederman also provides his South Dakota voter registration form from 2002 to explain why Iowa might not have gotten word of his departure from Iowa’s electorate:

Dan Lederman, voter registration card, Pennington Count, SD, 2002.05.29; obtained by Todd Epp/KELO Radio 2017.10.13.
Dan Lederman, voter registration card, Pennington Count, SD, 2002.05.29; obtained by Todd Epp/KELO Radio 2017.10.13.

South Dakota Republican Party head Dan Lederman did fill out a voter registration form when he moved to South Dakota from Iowa–and the form he provided KELO.com News does not include a space to indicate his prior address.

In a text, Lederman took strong exception to an Iowa Secretary of State spokesman yesterday saying Lederaman failed to correctly fill out his South Dakota registration form. (See top right.) He says the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office should have known better to make “such a strong statement” [Todd Epp, “Lederman Answers Questions About Iowa Voter Registration,” KELO Radio, 2017.10.13].

Keep in mind timeline here: Lederman moved to South Dakota in the 1990s. He still voted in Iowa in 1998 and 2000. Citing the above card, dated May 29, 2002, as the voter registration Lederman “did fill out… when he moved to South Dakota from Iowa” doesn’t fit the timeline given by other sources for Lederman’s move.

The address given to Pennington County also does not match any of the past-address data available for Lederman on various online directories:

The only connection between Lederman and that downtown Rapid address is reference to 612 1/2 St. Joseph as at least a former address of Lederman’s Speedy Bail Bonds. As with his long-standing Iowa vote registration, Lederman used his business address to register to vote.

Iowa statute prohibits registering a commercial address for voting purposes. Lederman tells KELO he didn’t break the law; he lived in the apartment above his Newton, Iowa, bail bonds office for about a year.

Lederman also explains away the hypothesis a sharp reader here helped bring to light, that Lederman kept his voter registration to stay on the books as an Iowa resident and thus to remain a bail bonds agent in Iowa. Our read of the law was correct, but Epp says “Lederman said he hasn’t written any Iowa bail bonds in years and has a number of agents in Iowa who can do that.

Lederman touches on most of the legalities involved here, but the timeline still has some irregularities. Given the documents above and previously published, plus biographical information online, Dan Lederman moves to South Dakota around 1996, but votes in Iowa in 1998 and 2000, and doesn’t get around to registering in South Dakota in 2002. So even though Lederman had changed his residence to South Dakota, he kept voting in Iowa and didn’t declare himself one of us for a few years.

5 Comments

  1. mike from iowa 2017-10-14 09:03

    If only iowa AG Tom Miller could get involved. He gets results, mostly.

  2. grudznick 2017-10-14 10:11

    It is good you made Mr. Lederman’s drivers license number unreadable in this blogging, unlike how Ms. Soholt’s drivers license number was totally readable in a previous blogging. Is it because he’s a man there are different standards? I’m just sayin…

  3. Rorschach 2017-10-14 12:09

    I can accept that he continued voting in Iowa while living in South Dakota. By all accounts, Lederman has never voted twice or in two places in any election. I can also accept that he didn’t take active steps to cancel an old Iowa voter registration when he registered in South Dakota. One would expect that the system would pick that up, or that he would eventually just be dropped by Iowa.

    However, some questions remain unanswered.

    Why was he still classified as “active” in Iowa rather than “inactive?” It’s possible that Lederman did nothing, and someone in the county office failed to make the change after all of those years. It’s also possible that Lederman made some contact with the county office to maintain “active” status. Some intrepid reporter should contact the county to get clarification of that point.

    Also, I’m not sure that Lederman’s statement that he hasn’t written bail bonds in Iowa in years fully clarifies the issue of whether he may have intentionally retained Iowa residency for business purposes. I believe that bail bondsmen need not be Iowa residents, and they are the ones who write the bonds. However, the person underwriting the bonds needs to be an Iowa resident. Seems to me that Lederman’s role is the underwriter, not the actual bondsman making trips to the county jail. However, there is always a possibility I may be mistaken about this. Once again, it seems like the intrepid reporter who contacts the county about voter registration could also look into this issue of whether Lederman asserted residency with Iowa state agencies for the purpose of underwriting bail bonds.

    Of course, there are no intrepid reporters anymore.

  4. jerry 2017-10-14 14:33

    Whatever happened with the investigation of Danny boy’s employee’s murder in his office?

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