Democrats Address Contested Election Results in Iowa

Misbar’s investigation found this claim to be misleading. In the November 2020 election, an Iowa House of Representatives race was the closest House race in decades. Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks defeated Democrat Rita Hart by just 6 votes with a total of nearly 400,000 votes cast. Hart announced on December 2 that she would contest the election results with the House Administration Committee. Miller-Meeks was provisionally seated on January 3, 2021, as the House Administration Committee continued to review Hart's challenge.

Hart’s campaign claims that at least 22 legally cast ballots in the race were not counted. According to Hart, 18 of them were cast for her, 3 were cast for Miller-Meeks, and one did not vote in the race. These 22 votes would have been enough to overturn the results of the election in favor of Rita Hart. Hart’s campaign claims to have sworn affidavits for each of those ballots.

It seems that Hart may have a case, but Iowa has already certified the results. Democrats like Rep. Dean Phillips from Minnesota are worried that overturning the State certified election results will cause a lot of harm.

Republicans are accusing the Democrats of hypocrisy in this situation after they supported the State certifications in the 2020 presidential election after Trump claimed voter fraud. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “It goes against everything they were preaching over the last two months about the sanctity of state certification.” 

It seems that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have a tough decision to make on whether or not to consider Rita Hart’s case and possibly overturn the election result in Iowa. Over the past 90 years, the House has considered 

more than 100 similar contested election cases. In just 

three instances, the results were overturned and a new winner was seated.