How Can I Vote?
- Vote "absentee" in person or by mail
- Vote in person on election day
- What assistance is available for voters with disabilities?
- Do I need an ID to vote?
- What if I have to work on election day?
Registered voters can request an absentee ballot from their County Auditor. Detailed information about requesting and returning an absentee ballot is available on Voter Ready Iowa’s Vote Absentee page and on the Secretary of State’s Absentee Voting page.
The Secretary of State has a tool to track your Absentee Ballot here.
Sometimes people refer to in-person absentee voting as early voting. Iowa.gov's "How Do I Vote Early in Person?" provides more information on the in-person absentee voting process.
If you are a military voter or an overseas civilian voter who needs to vote from outside the country, a different process applies. The Secretary of State has separate information pages for these situations:
Military and overseas citizens can also find more information about voting on the Federal Voting Assistance Program website.
To vote in person on Election Day, you need to find out your voting location. Your election day voting location is called your polling place.
Find your polling place using this tool on the Secretary of State’s website.
The polling place data on this page is for regularly scheduled Primary, General, and City/School Elections only. The polls for most elections are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
If you didn’t register before election day, you can register at the polls. Visit our Registering to Vote page for more information.
What assistance is available for voters with disabilities?
Voter Ready Iowa’s Voters with Disabilities page provides more information on options for voters in Iowa with disabilities.
Do I need an ID to vote?
Iowa law provides many ways for voters to prove their identity. Iowa’s voter identification law is located at Iowa Code section 49.78. Iowa Administrative Code 721.21.3 provides additional details on acceptable identification.
The Iowa government website Voter Ready Iowa lays out the types of identification that are acceptable on their Voter ID Information page. For voters who are not able to show an acceptable form of ID (or prove residence when required), there are two additional options:
- Another registered voter in your precinct can attest to your identity. Iowa Code section 49.78(4).
- If you don’t have appropriate identification with you (for example, you forgot your ID at home), you can fill out a provisional ballot. For your provisional ballot to count, you will need to provide appropriate identification within the required timeframe. Iowa Code section 49.81 provides details on provisional ballots.
What if I have to work on election day?
The polls for most elections are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., so most people will have plenty of time to vote outside of their working hours. For those who don’t, however, Iowa Code section 49.109 helps.
Under this law, any person entitled to vote at an election in Iowa who does not have two hours in a row off work between the opening and closing of the polls can get additional time off work to bring their total time off during voting hours to two consecutive hours.
To take advantage of this option, you need to request the time off in writing before the election day. Your employer gets to decide what time they give you off to get you to two hours in a row. Read the code section for more details.