Governor Kim Reynolds signed an executive order to restore the voting rights to some felons Wednesday, which drew criticism from Congressman Steve King of Iowa’s Fourth District.

King tweeted: “Your executive order granting voting rights to felons undercuts the Rule of Law, requires no restitution, and usurps the Iowa General Assembly. Cutting a deal with terrorist affiliated BLM will cost @JoniErnst 15,000 votes.”

King explains his claim to Raccoon Valley Radio that U.S. Senator Joni Ernst will lose these votes as he estimates about 80-percent of the 40,000 convicted felons will vote Democratic. As for the comment about the Black Lives Matter movement being “terrorist affiliated,”King believes BLM has pushed violence to the point that it’s hard to distinguish them from Antifa, an anti-fascist protest movement which is not designated as a terrorist organization by the federal government.

“This is strategized, it’s funded, and it’s equipped with riot weapons, I shall call them. And the affiliation between Antifa, which the President (Donald Trump) has said he’s going to declare (them) a terrorist organization and Black Lives Matter, and they’re pushing violence and they’ve done so. There’s no reason that I can see that a respected chief executive in the state of Iowa should sit down with Black Lives Matter and negotiate anything.”

King believes the decision to restore voting rights to felons should come from the legislature not the governor. Governor Reynolds signed the order after the state senate failed to pass such legislation at the end of this year’s session.