A Democratic candidate who lost a House election by 6 votes has withdrawn her request for a House review, CNN reported on Wednesday, March 31, 2021.
Rita Hart (photo, left), who ran for Iowa’s 2nd congressional district seat in 2020, contended 22 more ballots should have been counted. It isn’t clear from news reports why they weren’t.
The election was certified by a bipartisan state board. Hart appealed its failure to count those votes directly to the House under the Federal Contested Elections Act of 1969, which she was entitled to do. Republicans criticized her for bypassing the state courts, but the federal law doesn’t require her to exhaust state judicial remedies. Under the Constitution, the House is the final arbiter over seating its members.
Hart’s appeal immediately became contentious. House Republicans, most of whom voted against accepting state-certified presidential election results, claimed Democrats — having criticized their actions — were hypocritical by accepting the appeal for review, without waiting to see what they might decide. Several Democrats expressed reluctance to interfere with the state’s certification, so it’s not a given — and perhaps was even unlikely — that the result of the review would have been in Hart’s favor.
The district was held by a Democrat for 14 years prior to being flipped in the 2020 election. Democrats, who control the House, provisionally seated the Republican candidate, who has been casting House votes while the dispute over who won the seat simmered in the background. I previously editorialized that Democrats should accept the certified results and reject Hart’s appeal; read my reasoning here.
In withdrawing her challenge, Hart sourly called the GOP’s squawking a “toxic campaign of political disinformation” and the election results “a stain on our democracy.”
Read story here.