Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin is expected to head up the panel that will review a petition filed by an Iowa Democratic House candidate who lost a race to her Republican opponent by six votes.
The state canvass board certified the results for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District on Monday after a districtwide count in all 24 counties declared Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks the winner of the election.
However, Democrat Rita Hart announced Wednesday she will file a petition in weeks to come with the House Committee on Administration under the Federal Contested Elections Act, where Raskin serves as vice chairman of the committee.
Congress rarely intervenes in tight races, but in 1984, an Indiana congressional race in the state’s 8th District had Democrat Rep. Frank McCloskey leading Republican Rick McIntyre by 72 votes on election night. After two state recounts, though, McIntyre led McCloskey by margins of 34 and 418 votes.
Following the Democratic-controlled House-sponsored recount, a committee led by two Democrats and one Republican voted to accept that McCloskey defeated McIntyre by four votes out of the 230,000 ballots cast in the 1984 November election cycle.
Republicans charged that the panel of two Democrats and one Republican, which directed the recount, followed rigged rules during the counting.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, was on the floor during the 1985 dispute and told the Washington Examiner that Democrats do not want a repeat of what was seen at that time.
“I hope it doesn’t devolve into that, and I hope we handle it fairly. Obviously, watching six votes difference and hundreds of thousands of votes cast. You need to be pretty careful as to who really won, but whoever won ought to be seated,” Hoyer said.
He continued, “Now, the House is the final arbiter of who won, and I think House administration will look at it honestly and fairly. I think Jamie Raskin may be involved in that, and Jamie, I think, is a very fair, honest person, and we ought to find out who won.”
He added, “Six votes is so close that we need to make it. And if they, if the Republican wins by one, we ought to seat the Republican … One of the questions is there were a number of votes that weren’t counted. Maybe properly, maybe not. But I think the House, because we’re the final arbiter, ought to look at those and see why they weren’t counted.”
Republicans, however, do not want to see a repeat of the 1985 battle between McIntyre and McCloskey, which ended with McCloskey being seated.
“The Bloody Eighth of Indiana where power corrupts absolutely? Where they took away the voice of the American public who voted for an individual and the Democrats sitting in the House decided who won and lost?” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said. “Let’s hope it does not come to that. That should never return itself ever in this country.”
In a joint statement, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst supported Miller-Meeks’s six-vote certified win, calling Hart’s decision to take her grievance to Congress “an insult to Iowa voters and our nonpartisan election process.”
“Both the original vote count and recount confirmed Mariannette Miller-Meeks won her election. There are legal avenues through which candidates can litigate election disputes if they believe there are specific election irregularities,” the Iowa Republicans said. “Rita Hart declined to take legitimate legal action in Iowa courts and instead chose to appeal to Washington partisans who should have no say in who represents Iowans.”
