Iowa Democrat asks House to review 6-vote race, cites errors

Democrat Rita Hart is asking the U.S. House to investigate and overturn the race that Iowa says she lost by six votes, arguing that 22 ballots were wrongly excluded and others weren’t examined during the recount

Democrat Rita Hart is asking the U.S. House to investigate and overturn the race that Iowa says she lost by six votes, arguing that 22 ballots were wrongly excluded and others weren't examined during the recount

In an election contest released Tuesday, Hart argues that she would have netted 15 votes and defeated Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks had the 22 ballots been tallied in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District.

Hart is asking the Democratic-led House to count those votes and conduct a uniform recount throughout the district's 24 counties, saying she is confident she will be ahead after that process and declared the winner.

“Although it is admittedly tempting to close the curtain on the 2020 election cycle, prematurely ending this contest would disenfranchise Iowa voters and award the congressional seat to the candidate who received fewer lawful votes," Hart lawyer Marc Elias writes in the 176-page notice, which includes affidavits from several voters who say their ballots were improperly rejected.

The campaign provided the notice to The Associated Press and was set to announce its filing Tuesday morning.

Iowa’s canvassing board certified Miller-Meeks as the winner by a vote margin of 196,964 to 196,958, the closest congressional race since 1984. Her victory would narrow the Democratic House majority, which is currently 222-211 with two races uncalled.

The certification followed a recount in which Hart nearly erased the 47-vote lead that Miller-Meeks held after the initial canvass. The lead had earlier flipped back and forth between the candidates after the discovery and correction of two major tabulation errors

Hart announced earlier this month that she would not challenge the outcome in Iowa’s courts, saying state law would have required a contest to be decided within days and did not allow for adequate time to examine thousands of ballots.

Instead, she is filing her challenge under a 1969 law, the Federal Contested Elections Act, which will trigger an investigation by the House Administration Committee that could last months. To prevail, Hart must show by a preponderance of evidence that she got the most votes.

Republicans have reacted with outrage to Hart's maneuver, saying she is bypassing a review by Iowa judges while attempting to have her fellow Democrats declare her the winner. But Hart and her supporters have argued that every legal vote must be counted in a race so close.

According to a 2010 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the House reviewed 107 contested elections between 1933 and 2009 and seated the candidate the state had certified as the winner in the overwhelming majority of cases.

The report says the House declared the challenger the winner in at least three cases, most recently after a 1984 Indiana race in which majority Democrats overturned the state outcome and ruled that incumbent Democrat Frank McCloskey won by four votes.

During the process, candidates can take sworn depositions and subpoena witnesses. The committee can impound ballots and voting records and does not have to follow state law about which votes are counted, which could be crucial in Hart’s challenge.

In her filing, Hart notes that 11 ballots weren't counted because of mistakes by poll workers, including nine ballots discovered during the recount in Marion County and two curbside votes that weren't put into a tabulation machine in Scott County.

Elections officials agree those were valid votes. But under Iowa law, they could not be considered during the recount since they were not included in the initial canvass. Hart would have picked up seven votes, Miller-Meeks three.

In addition, Hart outlines 11 other ballots that she says were wrongly excluded for a variety of reasons from voters who tried to support her.

Those included absentee ballots that were rejected because secrecy envelopes were not sealed properly or were resealed using tape after they arrived in the mail sealed. One envelope was ripped; another was signed but not in the right spot. Two of those voters say they were wrongly assured their votes would count.

Johnson County apologized to another voter whose provisional ballot was excluded after an election worker's error. Two others ballots were not counted after they were left at a drop box outside the district in Cedar Rapids, where the voters attend school.

Hart also argues that the recount failed to comply with Iowa law and the constitution because each county used a different method — machine, hand or a mix.

Ninety-seven ballots that were marked by machines as overvotes — meaning the voter selected more than one candidate — weren't reviewed by hand for intent during the recount, the filing says. An expert hired by Hart's campaign estimated that, based on a 40% inclusion rate in counties that examined votes by hand, intent can likely be determined for dozens of them.

In addition, more than 5,400 ballots marked by machines as undervotes in which the voter did not pick any candidate were not reviewed during the recount, and neither were hundreds of write-in votes, Hart says.