Iowa Dem Officially Asks Nancy Pelosi To Step In And Overturn Her Election Loss
Losing Democrat candidate Rita Hart is officially asking the U.S. House to investigate and overturn her race in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District she lost by six votes.
She is claiming that 22 ballots were wrongly excluded from the recount and that other legal ballots weren’t examined during the recount.
“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’s lawyer Marc Elias wrote.
The question is can Pelosi and the Dems in the House do this? Yes they can. There is a system for challenging the results in the House.
From The AP:
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.
🚨NEWS: Notice of Contest To Be Filed Today with U.S House Shows Uncounted Votes Will Affirm Rita Hart Winner in #IA02 District Race https://t.co/QBjZdx9n4p https://t.co/WTPv2hIL5D
— Brooke Goren (@BrookeGoren) December 22, 2020