A Montgomery County jury prevented a miscarriage of justice on October 8, when jurors acquitted Joey Norris of first-degree election misconduct after deliberating for only a few hours.

Norris never should have faced a felony charge for his actions as a member of the board processing absentee ballots. Montgomery County Auditor Jill Ozuna set the wheels in motion after she and Norris clashed on election day in November 2024. But Attorney General Brenna Bird is responsible for this unjustified prosecution.

State law gives Bird’s office exclusive jurisdiction over election-related offenses. Neither her staff nor local law enforcement conducted a competent investigation before charging a prominent Democrat in a deep-red county.

This episode could deter other Iowans from volunteering as election workers. Although Norris was found not guilty, the felony charge and trial left him with crushing legal bills. Who would want to risk becoming the next poster child for Bird’s “election integrity” crusade?

A relatively new provision of law

What happened to Joey Norris isn’t Bird’s first unsuccessful prosecution of an election crime. But it is the first time her office has prosecuted an election official, as opposed to someone alleged to have registered to vote or voted illegally.

Norris was charged under Iowa Code Chapter 39A.2(1)(g): “First-Degree Election Misconduct—Failure to Perform Duties.” The paragraph applies to election officials who do not follow certain official guidance, or who perform their “duties and responsibilities in such a way as to hinder or disregard the object of the law.”

Republican lawmakers added that language to Iowa’s longstanding election misconduct statute as part of Senate File 413, a wide-ranging bill enacted in 2021. It’s not clear who drafted the provision, which was in companion bills State Representative Bobby Kaufmann and State Senator Roby Smith introduced on the same day. At the time, they chaired the Iowa House and Senate State Government Committees. Kaufmann is now the second-ranking Iowa House Republican, and Smith serves as state treasurer.

Even though I closely followed legislative debates over Senate File 413, my coverage (and the ensuing litigation) focused on the many new early voting restrictions and potential for sanctions against elected county auditors. I didn’t realize the hammer could come down on an ordinary Iowan trying to help in their community.

By defining “Failure to perform duties” as first-degree election misconduct, Iowa Code makes such behavior a class D felony, on par with crimes like voter fraud, bribery to influence someone’s vote, and tampering with voting equipment or tabulation systems.

The statute says, “A person commits the crime of election misconduct in the first degree if the person willfully commits any of the following acts” (emphasis added). So you might think the state would only file that charge against a person who deliberately sought to undermine a fair election. You would be wrong.

What Joey Norris did

After Norris was arrested on July 1 of this year, my contacts in southwest Iowa were uniformly bewildered about why he was being charged. They knew it had something to do with what happened when Norris served on Montgomery County’s Absentee and Special Voters Precinct Board.

The criminal complaint dated July 1 sheds little light on the matter. Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff Drew Askey listed the “incident date” as November 5, 2024 and wrote that the defendant “PERFORMED HIS DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES AS AN ELECTION OFFICIAL IN SUCH A WAY AS TO HINDER OR DISREGARD THE OBJECT OF THE LAW, BY HINDERING THE FAIR, ORDERLY, AND EFFICIENT ADMINISTRATION OF THE ELECTION AND COUNTING OF THE ABSENTEE BALLOTS.” Assistant Attorney General Joshua Duden provided no further details in a July 24 court filing.

How did Joey Norris supposedly “hinder or disregard the object of the law”?

A picture emerges from the documents that his attorney, Gina Messamer, filed with the court along with her motion to dismiss the case. Ozuna (a Republican) had invited Norris to participate on the board that processes absentee ballots throughout election day. She wanted “extra hands on deck” because she knew they had more ballots to go through than usual, Ozuna said during her deposition.

Norris had previously served on the county’s post-election audit committee, and that “went really well,” according to Ozuna. The auditor was also trying to maintain partisan balance on the board. Norris comes from a well-known Democratic family. He ran for the state Senate in 2020, and his mother, Jan Norris, is a Democratic candidate for Montgomery County supervisor this year. His aunt and uncle are Jackie Norris, who ran for U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 2025, and John Norris, a Democratic candidate for governor in 2018.

Before the election, Ozuna emailed materials to the board members, including a copy of the Absentee and Special Voters Precinct Board Guide from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. (It’s in this appendix, starting on page 5.)

Norris read the guide ahead of time and highlighted some portions. He was the only board member to bring it with him on election day. He quickly noticed someone opening absentee ballots in a way that compromised the secrecy of the vote. He suggested a change to preserve voters’ privacy, and the board agreed to his idea.

He spoke up about other flaws in the process, pointing to the guide. But fellow board members didn’t accept those critiques. Ozuna said during her deposition that she “repeatedly” had to go to her office and contact the Secretary of State’s staff to check on the points Norris raised. She described him as “argumentative.”

A Republican board member wrote, “Almost immediately, Joey began criticizing the process,” while the auditor “was under a lot of pressure” to get the count completed in time. A Republican poll watcher later speculated that Norris was “trying to perfect perceived flaws in the system with little to no regard for timing or time constraints.” A Democratic board member said during her deposition that Norris “was like a little gnat that just wasn’t going to let us get our job done.”

A Republican board member “accidentally hit the wrong button on the scanning machine, which caused the vote count to become inaccurate.” That forced the board to start over, re-scanning ballots after their lunch break. The person who hit the wrong button recalled that “the constant questioning made it difficult to focus.” Her husband, who also served on the board, admitted in his deposition that he hadn’t read the rules and didn’t know whether Norris was correct about any of the issues he raised.

Ozuna described “constant interruption, constant arguing” over other issues. Joey Norris thought the board should allow the observers from both parties (including his mother, Jan Norris) to see the voter names on rejected ballots, so they could try to contact those people in time for them to vote before polls closed at 8:00 pm. The auditor didn’t want to give poll watchers any names until all the ballots had been processed—by which time it might be too late to reach voters whose ballots had been rejected.

Norris and Ozuna also disagreed on whether board members could alter the mark on certain ballots—for instance, filling in an oval where a voter had placed an “X,” if the scanner couldn’t read the X and poll watchers agreed the voter’s intent was clear. Norris told KCSI Radio last week that he was “single-handedly responsible” for counting five or more ballots marked for Donald Trump, “a man I think is despicable,” because he believed in counting every vote.

By mid-afternoon, Ozuna had had enough. She told Norris to leave. When he refused, she called the sheriff’s office to have a deputy escort him out.

No witness claimed Joey Norris was trying to undermine the vote counting. At worst, he asked annoying or obnoxious questions with the goal of improving the process—which is not a crime.

As Messamer wrote in a brief accompanying the defendant’s motion to dismiss, “The charge against Mr. Norris is based on nothing more than his verbal conduct as a member of the Absentee Board. The Government essentially complains that Mr. Norris cared too much about following the rules.” (emphasis in original)

Ozuna escalated a tense situation by calling law enforcement. She reported the incident to staff working for the Attorney General’s office and the Secretary of State’s office. But she didn’t have the power to file criminal charges.

So how did Joey Norris end up in court last week over an incident that happened nearly two years ago?

The attorney general’s office called the shots

County attorneys used to have the authority to bring election misconduct charges in Iowa. That changed with the state government reorganization law Republicans enacted in 2023. Mostly geared toward concentrating the governor’s powers, that bill also gave more authority to Bird, who had just become the first Republican to serve as Iowa attorney general since 1978.

Among other things, the Attorney General’s office gained exclusive jurisdiction over election-related crimes. Documents filed in connection with Joey Norris’ prosecution show that at every step, Bird’s office called the shots.

The Attorney General’s office did not respond to my inquiries about the Norris case. But in a statement provided to some news organizations after the not guilty verdict, Bird’s spokesperson said, “This case was investigated by law enforcement and referred to our office.”

That’s misleading. Sheriff’s deputy Drew Askey described what really happened in his deposition (see pages 103 to 137 of this court filing). He did no investigating other than what the Attorney General’s staff instructed him to do.

The deposition is a remarkable read. On the evening of election day, someone at the Attorney General’s office called to ask Askey to collect witness statements. He gave statement forms to some who had been in the room where the board processed ballots—but only to people on a list he received from Ozuna. The auditor’s list included the Republican poll watcher, but not Jan Norris—Joey’s mother, who had been the Democratic observer that day.

Why didn’t Askey give Jan Norris a witness form? “I provided witness statements to be filled out from the list that was given to me.”

He also never attempted to interview Joey Norris. Excerpt from the deposition (Messamer is questioning Askey):

Q. Is there a reason you did not attempt to get Joey’s side of the story?
A. Because the AG’s Office requested the witness statements and did not request one from Joey at that time.
Q. When you are doing a typical investigation that you’re in charge of, do
you normally like to get both sides of the story?
A. Yes.
Q. Did they specifically direct you not to get Joey Norris’s side of the story?
A. No, no.

Askey forwarded his case file to the Attorney General’s office, with no perspective from Joey Norris or Jan Norris on what had happened.

The sheriff’s deputy acknowledged he didn’t know how the absentee ballot review board was “supposed to operate.” He received no training on the relevant election statute. As for the alleged criminal conduct, Askey cited witness statements about Norris “disrupting the counts” and “causing a scene […] disrupting the flow of how that is supposed to occur.”

How did Askey decide Norris had acted criminally? “The information I was working off of is they have a certain time that they have to have these elect — these ballots counted by, and that time was being prolonged due to his actions.”

Messamer asked whether Askey had a say on whether Norris should be charged. “I had no input. I was working with –alongside the AG’s Office.”

Did the sheriff want to file the charge? “We were just going what was — what was recommended by the AG’s Office.”

Suspicious timing

It’s not clear why the state decided in July 2026 to prosecute Norris for his actions in November 2024. Messamer observed during the depositions that FBI Director Kash Patel came to Des Moines on June 29 to meet with Bird and state and local law enforcement.

Two days later, Deputy Sheriff Askey got the call from the Attorney General’s office to arrest Norris and file the criminal complaint.

The depositions don’t reveal any direct connection between Patel’s visit and the arrest. Ozuna said she didn’t know who Patel was or anything about his meeting with Bird. She added that she “didn’t even know charges were filed” until she saw news reports about it.

Assistant Attorney General Joshua Duden prosecuted the case. He said in one deposition that he “took over the docket in April of this year.” I have no idea whether Duden advocated internally for charging Norris, or whether higher-ups ordered him to proceed. Presumably the decision was made above his pay grade.

I do know that Duden never interviewed Joey Norris or Jan Norris, or directed local law enforcement to speak to them. So he was either unable to recognize that this investigation was inadequate, or unwilling to stand up to superiors pushing the case forward.

Duden also didn’t contact Julie Rubey, a Democratic member of the absentee board who said during her deposition, “I don’t think Joey did anything criminally wrong,” and concluded it was “just crazy” that he was charged. Asked whether anyone from the Attorney General’s office had talked to her, Rubey said no. “That’s the first chance that I’ve had to express that this is ridiculous. […] he’s not a criminal. He didn’t do anything wrong aside from drive us nuts, so that’s it.”

Since Trump returned to the White House, some federal government attorneys have resigned rather than handle blatantly political, unfounded prosecutions. It’s unfortunate we didn’t see that level of professionalism in Iowa.

Duden went to court with a weak case. But he had reason to hope for a favorable outcome. First, Trump received about 68 percent of the vote in Montgomery County in 2024. Prosecutors may have thought jurors in a deep-red county would be sympathetic to unsupported claims of election interference.

Duden also obtained several favorable rulings from the presiding judge.

Jury instructions tilted to prosecution

Messamer had argued the charge against her client “must be dismissed because it violates Mr. Norris’s right to free speech and due process under the state and federal constitutions.” District Court Judge Donna Bothwell, whom Governor Kim Reynolds appointed in 2024, denied the motion to dismiss, saying it was filed too late in the process. Messamer raised the free speech argument again during the trial, after the state finished presenting its case. But the judge rejected the motion for judgment of acquittal.

As the trial date approached, Bothwell refused to allow the defense to call character witnesses. Messamer unsuccessfully argued that testimony about Norris as “honest, conscientious, principled, and a good citizen speaks directly to whether he was likely to willfully act in a way that would hinder or disregard the object of the law.”

The judge refused to allow the defense to enter an unredacted copy of the Absentee and Special Voters Precinct Board Guide, which could have informed jurors about whether Norris’ objections were off-base or on target.

Most ominously, the judge issued jury instructions that seemed to suggest Norris’ intent was irrelevant. The defense wanted jurors to be told that the state had the burden to prove Norris “acted willfully.”

That framing is consistent with the code language, which connects first-degree election misconduct with “willfully” committing any of the prohibited acts. The statute says, “The purpose of this chapter is to identify actions which threaten the integrity of the election process and to impose significant sanctions upon persons who intentionally commit those acts.”

However, the judge’s order tracked with the jury instructions the state proposed. The judge told the jury that to show Norris was guilty of first-degree election misconduct, the state needed to prove that on election day 2024, he “willfully performed his duties and responsibilities as an election official,” and “did so in such a way as to hinder or disregard the object of the law.”

That is, Judge Bothwell decoupled the willfullness from the hindrance.

The day after his trial ended, Norris gave an interview to Aaron West of KCSI Radio, a local talk and country music station. He explained his concern about the jury instructions:

Can you say that if I asked a question, we might have slowed down? You can reasonably say that.

And so it was setting this framework where it was like—I did not willfully hinder anything. I don’t think—no one in that room thought I was doing it to be a nuisance. They all said that I referenced the guide book. My questions were always in reference to the process: how do we do things better, or what are we supposed to be doing?

Norris said the jury deliberated for about two and a half hours before sending questions to the judge, trying to understand whether they needed to determine that Norris “intended” to hinder or obstruct the process.

Once the court made clear that “willfully” applied to whether Norris hindered or obstructed the object of the law, the jury quickly came back with a not guilty verdict.

Norris told KCSI Radio the following day, “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this was a political prosecution.”

He’s not the only one who thinks so.

“A clear case of lawfare”

Friends and family organized a rally in support of Norris in Red Oak on the morning of October 7, the second day of the trial. One speaker raised many eyebrows. Steve King served in Congress for eighteen years, representing Montgomery County during the 2000s.

Not only was this conservative Republican vouching for a well-known Democrat, King called out the Attorney General’s office for “this lawfare that’s being exerted against Joey Norris.” Brenna Bird (known then as Brenna Findley) was King’s Congressional chief of staff until early 2010.

Jan Norris provided this video to Bleeding Heartland.

King defined “lawfare” as “when you bring a charge against somebody, it may or may not stick, but the process is the punishment.” He predicted, “Joey’s going to be found not guilty,” but “that isn’t going to be the end of it.” He argued that the county auditor couldn’t take it when she “got called out for running a sloppy operation,” and Norris was charged “because he spoke up and kept his oath.”

King read from the Iowa Code section on election misconduct: “It is the intent of the general assembly that offenses with the greatest potential to affect the election process be vigorously prosecuted and strong punishment meted out through the imposition of felony sanctions […].” He told the crowd that doesn’t apply to Joey Norris’ case, because what he was doing “had only the potential to add to the integrity of the election process,” not detract from it. He hoped the jury would recognize “this law was never written for this intent,” and would send a “resounding message” to the attorney general.

After the verdict was announced, King provided this statement to Bleeding Heartland.

The prosecution of Joey Norris is a clear case of lawfare. Auditor Ozuna wanted absentee ballots counted quickly. Safeguards for voter confidentiality were habitually bypassed. Joey Norris read the rules, took his oath seriously, and spoke up to correct the flawed practices. If Ozuna had done her job, there would have been no incident. Instead, she lost her temper, called the Sheriff, organized a biased investigation, and pressed the Attorney General to prosecute Joey Norris who may have been the only election official in the room to follow the rules and keep his oath.

I salute the jurors for their astute decision. My prayers are for the Norris family who have been ground through the lawfare gristmill. To paraphrase Ray Donovan [a Reagan administration cabinet secretary who was indicted and eventually acquitted], ”Which office does Joey Norris go to to get his reputation back?”

Lasting fallout

Norris won’t have a felony conviction on his record, but he is facing some $50,000 in legal fees. In addition, he told WOWT-TV, he will have to disclose that he was charged with a felony on background checks and insurance applications. “So for the rest of my life, I will have to answer yes, simply because the state, our government, prosecuted me, for what I’m considering extreme absurdity,” Norris said. “So I’m not sure there will ever be a return to absolute normal.”

Speaking to KCSI Radio, Norris wondered whether the charge against him was partly designed to sow fear and uncertainty about the upcoming elections. When the interviewer asked how the experience would affect his future volunteering and community involvement, he said he would “help anybody, anywhere, anytime,” but would not serve on any board with Ozuna, “because I do not trust her leadership or competence, and I will not be subjected to her authority again.”

Messamer told me after the trial, “I have no idea what the Attorney General wanted to accomplish by prosecuting him. The entire prosecution was essentially complaining the Joey cared too much about following the election rulebook. Shouldn’t they be focusing their energy on people who don’t follow the rulebook? Or better yet, investing in training for our election volunteers so that they know how to do their jobs correctly? Volunteers should be supported, not prosecuted.”

Messamer found it “particularly disturbing” that “there was no investigation done before charging Joey. Nobody from law enforcement or the AG’s office ever talked to the witnesses or to Joey. Almost two years after this happened, out of nowhere, the AG’s office randomly decided to charge Joey. If AG Brenna Bird is trying to prop up a false narrative about election misconduct, she picked a terrible case to do it.”

Noting that juries have acquitted several other Iowans charged with voting-related offenses over the past couple years, Messamer called these trials “a complete waste of taxpayer money.” They use “a tremendous amount of resources from the judicial branch and the AG’s office, not to mention from the person who is falsely accused.”

Bird should explain why her subordinates pursued such a politically charged case, without any serious investigation. The statement from her staff last Thursday avoided the issue:

The Attorney General’s office has been given the responsibility and authority by the legislature to ensure Iowa’s elections are secure throughout the entire process. This case was investigated by law enforcement and referred to our office. It then proceeded to trial for the jury’s consideration. Although we are disappointed with the verdict, we respect the jury’s decision.

Nate Willems, Bird’s Democratic challenger, mentioned the acquittal during the attorney general candidates’ joint taping of “Iowa Press” on October 9. Willems pointed out that former Congressman Steve King, whom Bird used to work for, said “that was a lawfare or a politicized prosecution.”

Regarding Bird’s dismal track record (only one conviction so far in an election fraud case), Willems said, “We really need to dig in and see what has been going wrong. Are they bringing cases without the facts to support them, or is there just been error with the way the attorneys have prepped or prosecuted these cases? It needs to be looked into thoroughly.”

Bird said she’d “like to address that,” then said nothing specific about the Joey Norris case. Instead, she criticized Willems for lacking prosecutorial experience and spoke vaguely: “And here the important thing about election integrity is fairness. It’s about making sure that our laws are upheld.”

Which laws were upheld by trying to turn an election worker’s sincere efforts into a class D felony?

Final note: I sought comment from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office last week: what assurances can they give election workers that good-faith questions and disagreements during this year’s ballot counting process will not later lead to felony prosecution?

Communications director Ashley Hunt Esquivel declined to comment due to the “active court case,” and did not respond to a subsequent email following Norris’ acquittal.