Iowa Democratic House candidate Rita Hart filed a petition to the House Administration Committee Tuesday contesting the 2nd District race her Republican opponent Mariannette Miller-Meeks won by a razor-thin margin.
Miller-Meeks edged out Hart on election night by just 47 votes, but Hart called for a recount of all 24 counties in the 2nd Congressional District. That ended in Miller-Meeks’s favor by six votes — 196,964 to 196,958.
The House, under the Constitution and a 1969 law, has the final say on seating its members. Iowa’s 2nd District race has big implications for how the House conducts business during the first two years of President-elect Joe Biden’s administration. Democrats lost seats in 2020 and emerged with 222 members. Republicans ended with 212 seats. Another nail-biter race in New York’s 22nd Congressional District remains uncalled due to ballot-counting litigation and won’t be settled until after the House convenes in early January.
In Hart’s Notice of Contest, she cites 22 excluded ballots, which, if counted, would give her the lead over Miller-Meeks.
“These 22 ballots include (i) curbside and absentee ballots that election officials accepted for counting but mistakenly omitted from the initial count and (ii) valid absentee and provisional ballots that election officials erroneously rejected,” Hart said in the 176-page document.
Hart decided to forgo a judicial challenge to the election, saying it would take too long for a complete recount to settle a congressional election.
Iowa law mandates that the contest court be established and the ballot recount started and ended by Dec. 8. Five judges, including a state Supreme Court judge, would have dealt with the almost 400,000 votes cast in the election if Hart went that route.
On Nov. 30, the Iowa State Canvassing Board certified the election results. Two days later, Hart announced she planned to file a petition to the House of Representatives to contest the election, giving her 30 days to file her petition to the House Administration Committee.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and the vice chairman of the committee, is expected to review Hart’s petition.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last commented on the close Iowa race earlier in December, saying, “The issue relating to Iowa is an issue for the House Administration Committee. It’s my understanding that Rita Hart, an excellent candidate for Congress, will be asking the House to take this up. For further information about the technicalities of that, that becomes a House, not a political but a House Administration matter. The House decides who it will seat.”
Congress last intervened in a tight election 35 years ago. An Indiana House race in 1984 in the state’s 8th District involved incumbent Democratic Rep. Frank McCloskey and Republican Rick McIntyre.
House Republican leaders, however, do not want to see this happen again.
“We will never allow that to happen here. That was illegal. There was a power grab. And we will never allow that to happen. I don’t care what Jamie Raskin says,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told the Washington Examiner.
“If the certificate goes to the state, that is the individual who’s going to be seated, and they don’t have the right to try to pick and choose just because they lost so badly in the elections, that they’re trying to steal a seat,” McCarthy said. “We will not allow it.”
