While a Republican currently holds the seat, one Iowa race is still technically unresolved. In the race for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, Democrat Rita Hart lagged Republican opponent Mariannette Miller-Meeks by only six votes, a loss that she formally contented. Hart alleges that 22 ballots were improperly rejected. The election represented one of the closest federal elections in recent history.
Iowa certified the results, and Miller-Meeks was provisionally sworn into the 117th Congress, with Nancy Pelosi saying at the time “Pending the outcome of the Committee’s review and consistent with House practice, we intend to provisionally seat the Republican candidate on Sunday.” However this doesn’t prevent the House from deciding that Hart should rightfully hold the seat.
And it looks like that’s what Democrats are scheming.
Just last week the House Administration Committee rejected Miller-Meeks’ motion to dismiss Hart’s election contest in a party line vote. Meanwhile, Pelosi said “of course” there’s a scenario in which case Miller-Meeks’ victory is overturned.
She reiterated that point yesterday on George Stephanopoulos’ This Week. “The votes were counted, re-counted, certified by the state, but the House Administration Committee began a process this week that could lead to unseating the Congresswoman” Stephanopoulos began. “Why investigate an election that was certified by the state?” he asked.
Pelosi responded “Well, it was six votes. It was six votes. And the can– our candidate, Rita Hart, the Democratic candidate, asked for this process to begin. What the committee did, the House Administration Committee, was very narrow, to take the process to the next step and see where it goes from there. An election of six votes, out of 400,000 votes cast. This is not unique; this has happened …. before, when races had been close, one side or the other saying ‘let’s take it to the House’.”
“Even Justice Scalia agreed that the House has the authority to seat and therefore we can count the votes,” she said, before claiming that Republicans were hypocritical on this issue because many casted doubt on Biden’s victory. Of note, there are zero allegations of voter fraud in this particular vote, so that’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison from her.
And of course, the claims of hypocrisy go in both directions. While they may not succeed, it’s worth noting that Democrats are for overturning election results after all.
Matt Palumbo is the author of Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York, Debunk This: Shattering Liberal Lies, and Spygate
