‘A harsh and arguably arbitrary result’

WASHINGTON — A district judge has ruled in the Highland school district’s favor, upholding the Election Day passage of a $15 million bond issue by 22 votes, despite at least 70 ballots being cast in the race by voters who didn’t live in the school district, due to poll worker errors.

In the ruling filed Tuesday afternoon, District Judge Michael Carpenter said he disagreed with some of the arguments made by school district lawyers, but that petitioners challenging the election had skipped a crucial step in their filings: providing a name for every allegedly invalid voter, as required by state law.

Carpenter said election challengers’ efforts to circumvent that requirement weren’t supported by Iowa Code, adding that their case was “trying to proceed under a scheme of their own devise that eliminates the special pleading requirements” of the law.

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“There is nothing wrong with such a scheme, except for the critical fact that it is not a scheme provided by the legislature,” he wrote. “The scheme provided by the legislature requires the parties to list the names of the voters who have cast illegal votes. Whether, right, wrong or indifferent, this is the scheme the legislature chose.”

The outcome stems from a convoluted set of laws governing election result challenges in Iowa Code. While many of the rules governing Iowa’s elections are laid out in Chapter 57 of the code, the process to challenge them is established in another chapter — number 62 — where the language was written for races with candidates, but later applied to ballot issues like Highland’s bond referendum.

And that chapter requires election challenges over invalid votes include a written list of all “persons who are alleged to have voted illegally,” something county election officials said was impossible, due to voter confidentiality practices that anonymize all ballots once they’re cast and counted.

Carpenter appeared critical of the laws governing the outcome, but said it was evidently the legislature’s intent, citing revisions to the relevant code chapters as recently as 2002.

“The Court acknowledges that this is a harsh and arguably arbitrary result,” Carpenter wrote. “It is undisputed that illegal votes were cast in numbers sufficient to change the result of the election. The evidence from the auditor conclusively settles that question in the petitioners’ favor, and the testimony of the individual voters is simply not necessary to carry that point … but without compliance with (Chapter 62) the petitioners cannot bring a contest under (Chapter 57).”

Petitioners argued they didn’t need names

The taxpayers contesting Highland’s bond issue claimed during the appeal hearing that they didn’t need a list of names, for a number of reasons.

For one, Petitioner Attorney Sasha Finke noted that identities of voters simply could not be acquired by the public or government officials, after their ballots were cast.

For another, she said the requirement was redundant since the potential influence of ineligible voters was undisputed and mathematically certain.

Based on polling station data and the number of undervotes canvassed by county officials, the available evidence proves between 70 and 96 non-residents of the school district voted on its bond issue, more than enough to alter the result given its passage by just 22 votes, though it’s not clear what share of those ineligible ballots were cast for or against the bond.

Finke also referenced language in Chapter 62, which says that challenge petitions “shall not be dismissed for want of form” if they can sufficiently prove that an error occurred.

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“I don’t think the election laws, in particular, are designed to forego or inhibit an otherwise completely rational and justifiable challenge to an election,” Finke said at the appeal hearing.

But in his ruling, Judge Carpenter disagreed with that characterization, saying the statute clearly set a higher bar than the plaintiffs met.

“Petitioners’ omission is a failure of content, not of form,” he said. “The legislature, by use of the word ‘shall’ in section 62.5(2)(e) makes clear that the names are mandatory for this type of challenge.”

It’s unclear whether the legal battle has come to an end. Asked about whether he planned to again seek an appeal for the latest ruling, Petitioner Ron Greiner said he and fellow plaintiffs were “thinking about it.”

“They want to know who was the people that voted, (but) there’s no way in hell, no one knows who voted on it,” he said. “I still think we need a fair election, and if this isn’t playing out right, then we never had a fair election.”

Court blasts schools’ arguments as well

While the judge ultimately ruled in Highland’s favor, he rejected several of the district’s contentions from the proceedings.

At the April 15 hearing, both sides sparred at length about the definition of “misconduct.” The fight appeared central to the case: appellants argued that a lower contest court’s ruling to uphold the referendum was invalid because it was based on a clause of state code reserved for cases of “misconduct, fraud or corruption,” but that mistakes by poll workers on Election Day didn’t amount to any of the three.

School district lawyer Andrew Tice, meanwhile, said mistakes were misconduct, citing a handful of dictionary definitions and asserting the word would otherwise be redundant, given the law’s specific mention of inherently intentional acts like fraud and corruption.

While the question didn’t ultimately decide the outcome, the judge’s ruling shot down Tice’s arguments.

“Misconduct requires more than a mere irregularity or, as we have here, an innocent mistake that was quickly corrected as soon as it was detected,” he wrote. “Fraud is well defined in the law and requires intent or willfulness. Corruption, likewise, involves intent or willfulness on the part of an election official. Contrary to the argument of the (school district), this reading does not render the word ‘misconduct’ superfluous, as misconduct covers a large amount of conduct that is neither fraud nor corruption.”

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Barring another round of appeals that could extend the legal fight, the ruling clears the way for Highland to move forward with a $15 million bond issue, and uphold the property taxes to pay for it over the next 20 years by maintaining the $2.70 debt service levy set by the last bond vote in 2019.

School officials say they plan to use the money for major facility improvements, including a new high school commons area, a multipurpose room, secure entrances and other building upgrades.

Highland Superintendent Ken Crawford was unavailable for further comments, but provided a prepared statement saying he was, “Happy for the ruling and thankful the long hours put in by adults can finally pay off in something that benefits all of our students in our district.” He continued, “I hope we are finished with this chapter and ready to move to the design phase.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com