Republicans put House Democrats on their heels when framing a contested Iowa election as an attempt to overturn the results, seeking to accuse Democrats of hypocrisy after the two-party conviction in January of those in Congress who questioned the 2020 presidential election.
It is not clear, however, whether Democrats are doing anything different from the way Congress has conducted contested elections for nearly 100 years.
Since 1933, there have been 110 House elections that have been disputed and judged by the House of Representatives, according to the Congressional Research Service. This year there are two. In Iowa, Democrat Rita Hart is running for an election in which a state recount declared Republican Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks the winner. And in Illinois, Republican Jim Oberweis is running for an election in which Democratic Representative Lauren Underwood was declared the winner.
The House Management Committee is in the process of reviewing complaints in both elections, but the high-ranking Republican on the committee, Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., Said this month that he sets a “dangerous precedent” for considering the Iowa complaint.
The last time the House analyzed contested elections was in 2013, when it rejected objections to three disputes. The last time an election’s results were altered by Congress was in 1985, when a Democratic-controlled House awarded a Democrat a seat in Indiana. Another dozen or more challenges to the election results were reviewed and rejected by the Chamber’s Management Committee between 1985 and 2013.
In 1984, Representative Francis McCloskey, an Indiana Democrat, was declared the winner by a margin of 72 votes on more than 116,000 total ballots. But a state recount won the victory for Republican challenger Richard McIntyre by a margin of 34 votes. The House of Representatives, which was controlled by Democrats at the time as it is now, did its own recount and awarded the victory back to McCloskey by a margin of four votes.
Republicans furiously left the Chamber of Deputies in 1985, when the Chamber voted to elect McCloskey. They joined 10 Democrats in voting against the outcome.
Davis, the top Republican on the House Management Committee chaired by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Compared Iowa’s current dispute with that of 1985 during a virtual committee meeting this month. He and other Republicans argued that Hart did not exhaust his options under Iowa state law, so Congress cannot replace the statewide result, which has been certified.
Like the 1984 Indiana contest, the Iowa election last fall was one of the most contested elections in the history of the United States. Miller-Meeks was declared a winner by a margin of just six votes out of more than 393,000.
Hart’s campaign says it has identified 22 ballots that have been incorrectly disqualified by election officials, and has sworn statements for each ballot. He also says he did not run out of options in the Iowa legal process because state law required a decision by December 8, which the campaign said was not enough time for a thorough examination of the contested polls.
Hart’s campaign submitted a 155-page file to the House’s Management Committee on December 22.
A Democratic aide to the House told Yahoo News that reviewing the facts of the case is “a normal and regular activity for the committee”, which has precedent and is permitted by federal law.
In recent years, a Democratic-controlled House has analyzed tight elections and rejected the contests of Democratic candidates. In 2008, Democrats rejected a challenge by Democrat Christine Jennings to the results of a 2006 Florida election, which she narrowly lost to Republican Vern Buchanan. Lofgren was on the task force that made that decision, an aide said.
Republicans now say Lofgren’s approach to the Iowa dispute is different from the way Democrats handled the 2006 election challenge. A spokesman for Lofgren rejected the charge. The disagreement on this point is related to the scope of a letter sent to both sides by Lofgren on 10 March. A spokeswoman for Davis, the Republican on the committee, said she “placed the burden of proof” on the Republican winner and “limited her options for discovery.”
Only three results, in addition to the 1984 election, have been changed by Congress. In 1934, a Louisiana House election was declared null and void. New Hampshire Republican Arthur Jenks won the 1936 election, but the House investigated and declared Democrat Alphonse Roy the winner. And in 1961, the House rejected a narrow victory for Republican George Chambers of Indiana in an election the year before, giving Democrat J. Edward Roush the seat.
It is rare for Congress to overturn an electoral result that has been certified by a state, as evidenced by the historical record. “Although the House has broad authority over its elections, an election certificate issued by the state generally provides prima facie evidence of the regularity and results of a House election,” wrote the Congressional Research Service in a January report.
An action taken on Monday by lawyers for Miller-Meeks, the Iowa Republican, echoed that point.
A candidate is not legally required to exhaust all options in the state court, but the case gave Republicans the opportunity to beat Democrats for taking their complaints to court and taking them to Congress, a party body.
And that has already bothered several House Democrats. A handful of public statements made in the past few days expressing disapproval of any vote to change the outcome.
“Losing an election in the House by six votes is painful for Democrats. But taking him down in the House would be even more painful for America. Just because the majority can, does not mean that the majority should, ”Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., tweeted on Monday.
This creates an embarrassing situation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Whose majority is small, of just 219 Democrats versus 211 Republicans. The normal procedure would appear to be that the House Committee would proceed with an examination of the facts, both in the Iowa challenge and in the Illinois contest, which was far from being so close. Underwood, the Democrat, was declared the winner by a margin of more than 5,000 votes.
But in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election on the grounds of cheating and then relying on Republican allies in Congress to support opposition to state results certifications, Republicans are now using the Iowa election to try to cloud the waters and argue that both sides do the same thing, in part to undermine pressure from Democrats for a massive voting rights bill.
“This goes against everything they have preached in the past two months about the sanctity of state certification,” said Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., At a hearing on Wednesday about voting legislation that was passed by the House, but faces Republican opposition in the Senate.
The 2020 election lies told by Trump and his allies, and his attempts to overturn the election result, are nothing like the Iowa challenge, but the laws governing how to adjudicate hot disputes give Republicans space to claim they are in the running. same category.
The Republican argument, said the Democratic aide to the House, “is that we shouldn’t even look at it.” It may be more of a political than a legal argument, but it is something that Pelosi cannot ignore.
Illustration of the miniature cover photo: Yahoo News; photos: Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images, AP, Caroline Brehman / CQ Roll Call via Getty Images
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