Hart asks House to investigate contested 2nd District race

The closest congressional race in decades may be headed to a decision by the Democratically-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.

Former state senator and Democrat Rita Hart Wednesday announced plans to file a petition with the House Committee on Administration under the Federal Contested Elections Act challenging the outcome in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District, bypassing a legal challenge and review by a judicial tribunal presided over by the chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court.

Hart's campaign, in a press release Wednesday, said a state election challenge must be completed by Dec. 8, per state law, and that the tight timeline would not allow adequate time in which to examine the ballots and evidence needed 'to ensure all Iowans' votes are accurately counted in this historically close election.”

Iowa's state canvass board on Monday officially certified results for the race, following a districtwide recount in all 24 counties, and officially declared Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks as the winner of the race - by just six votes.

Miller-Meeks, a state senator and ophthalmologist from Ottumwa, narrowly edged out Hart, of Wheatland, with 196,964 votes to Hart's 196,958.

With more than 394,000 votes cast in the race, it was the closest House race in the country and the closest congressional race in Iowa in more than 100 years.

The Associated Press has said it will wait until after all legal appeals are exhausted before declaring a winner in the race.

Hart had until the end of the day Wednesday to contest the state-certified results in state court, per Iowa Code, which would have thrown the race to a five-member judicial tribunal presided over by the chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court and four district court judges to be appointed.

Instead, Hart chose the option of requesting that the Democratically-controlled U.S. House of Representatives investigate the contested election. Congress has intervened in tight races in rare occasion in the past, according to the Associated Press.

Hart's campaign on Wednesday argued time constraints and a lack of standard rules prevented all votes from being counted during the districtwide recount, and that 'limitations in Iowa mean there are more legally cast votes left to be counted.”

'With a margin this small, it is critical that we take this next step to ensure Iowans' ballots that were legally cast are counted,” Rita Hart for Iowa Campaign Manager Zach Meunier said in a statement. 'In the weeks to come, we will file a petition with the House Committee on Administration requesting that these votes be counted, and we hope that Mariannette Miller-Meeks will join us in working to ensure that every Iowans' voice is heard.”

The roller-coaster race seesawed and narrowed considerably since election night, when Miller-Meeks held a 282-vote lead over Hart. Before the recount began, Miller-Meeks' lead had narrowed to 47 votes after late-arriving mail-in absentee and provisional ballots were counted, and precinct reporting errors were corrected in Jasper and Lucas counties.

Later, on Nov. 23, In Jasper County, a ballot tabulating machine broke down during the recount and had to be repaired. Miller-Meeks' campaign alleged that, once repaired, the machine could not reliably read ballots and disputed the count after Hart gained nine votes.

The recount board brought in a new tabulating machine to recount 10,999 absentee ballots that were in question, the recount resulted in Miller-Meeks losing a vote in the county and Hart's total staying the same, the AP reported.

Hart's campaign, too, contends many counties did not fully review ballots to identify valid votes that the machines did not recognize, in part because of the time and burden that would have been required for such a thorough count.

Iowa law prohibits ballots not counted in the initial canvass from being considered in a recount. As a result, Hart's campaign alleges there are legally cast ballots, including ballots cast by military members serving overseas, not counted on election night despite being legally cast, along with thousands of unexamined overvotes and undervotes.

Miller-Meeks' six-vote lead represents the slimmest margin in any congressional race since 1984, when Indiana's 8th Congressional District was decided by four votes. The margin is the smallest of any congressional race in Iowa since 1916.

Miller-Meeks and Hart are vying to replace Democratic U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, who is retiring after holding the seat for seven terms.

At stake is the size of Democrats' majority in the U.S. House and whether Republicans would flip a second Iowa congressional seat this cycle that's been in Democrats hands since 2007, and clinch a 3-to-1 majority of Iowa's four congressional seats.

Miller-Meeks lost three previous runs for the seat against Loebsack in 2008, 2010 and 2014.

She was in Washington, D.C., Wednesday attending the second session of orientation for new members of Congress.