The House Administration Committee voted Wednesday against dismissing a congressional challenge to a House seat in Iowa in favor of postponing the process to hear from both sides at a later date.
The Democratic-led committee, composed of nine members, voted along party lines.
Iowa Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks defeated Democrat Rita Hart by just six votes out of over 394,000 ballots that were cast back in November.
The Iowa Canvassing Board certified Miller-Meeks as Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District election winner following a recount and a recanvass of the district’s 24 counties. However, Hart contested the election to the House of Representatives as opposed to going to court to challenge the decision.
HOUSE COMMITTEE STARTS PROCESS FOR DEALING WITH TWO CONTESTED ELECTIONS
Hart filed a petition to the House Administration Committee alleging 22 ballots were excluded from the final tally, claiming that if the ballots were included, she would now be representing the district.
The Iowa Republican, who was seated on Jan. 4, filed a motion to dismiss Hart’s case, saying precedent compels the House to reject the contest because Hart did not initially take her appeal to Iowa’s state court.
“I’ll just say that I believe dismissal today would be a dereliction of our duty under the constitution and under federal law under Article I, Section V of the constitution, ‘Each house shall be the judge of elections returns and qualifications of its own members.’ And accordingly, we have a constitutional duty to ensure that the will of the people is reflected in the final composition of the House,” Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, said during the meeting.
All six Democratic members voted to delay Miller-Meeks’s motion to dismiss Hart’s petition, while the three Republican committee members voted to dismiss. As a result of Wednesday’s vote, the committee will now seek answers from both sides to consider the merits of the case.
The committee’s ranking member, Rodney Davis, an Illinois Republican, along with his fellow Republican committee members objected to moving forward with Hart’s petition, saying her complaint would call into question every member of Congress elected under Iowa law and other members as well.
“Rita Hart had an opportunity to challenge the claims she’s making before the committee. And it was an impartial court process. She chose not to. That leads me to believe her lawyers knew she could not win under Iowa law. Instead, she’s choosing to pursue a partisan process in the House where Democrat members of Congress, not Iowa voters, will determine their representation in Congress. Well, you’ve seen Democrats do this before. Steal a house seat by changing the rules,” he said.
The House has not injected itself into a congressional race since the 1984 election cycle when the outcome of Indiana’s 8th Congressional District election was contested by the Democratic incumbent who was defeated on election night and on two later state recounts.
The seat went unfilled for four months as the Democratic-led House sponsored a recount spearheaded by the House Administration Committee, which ultimately led to the Democratic incumbent winning by four votes.
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The last time Congress seated an elected House member, only to remove that lawmaker later and swear-in his opponent, following a House panel’s investigation into the election’s ballot count, occurred in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District race between Republican Arthur Byron Jenks and Democrat Alphonse Roy after the 1936 election cycle.
