Highland bond’s passage upheld

WASHINGTON — A panel of contest court judges ruled 2-1 Monday morning that a narrowly-passed $15 million bond issue at Highland schools would stand, even though precinct officials mistakenly handed out ballots to 96 voters who were not school district residents, and should not have been allowed to vote on the matter.

After announcing the decision, Contest Court Panel Member and retired Ottumwa-based Attorney Richard Gaumer said the group recognized that the improper ballots may have shaped the race’s outcome, but said state code didn’t give them the authority to throw the results out.

He cited a section of Iowa Code which authorizes contest courts to nix an election result only if disregarding a disputed precinct would change the election’s outcome. In this case, it would not: ballots at every other precinct would still add up to a passing margin for the bond, with or without the inclusion of Ainsworth’s in-person ballots.

“There was significant discussion among the panel that this isn’t the right result. It is the result that’s dictated by the law,” Gaumer said. “When there is a significant mistake, to do it over would be another alternative. Unfortunately, we don’t have that authority as an election contest panel … the legislature has determined the way we’re supposed to handle it.”

Gaumer led the decision-making panel, flanked by Highland school board Vice President Dan Ruth and Ainsworth City Council Member Ron Greiner — appointees from either side of the dispute.

The move followed a two-and-a-half-hour trial, where attorneys questioned and cross-examined staff from the county auditor’s office.

Highland Superintendent Ken Crawford said the ruling was a win for students at the schools, where the property tax-funded bond will help pay for a new multipurpose facility, secure entrances at the elementary building, new classrooms, and upgrades to the high school commons area.

“At the end of the day, passing the bond issue, putting in all the $15 million items we have in the bond issue, helps our students,” he said. “It helps our community, and it helps our school grow. There’s no other way to put this than that, this is for the kids.”

It frustrated opponents, meanwhile, who argued the panel’s decision overlooked a mistake that may have altered the bond vote’s outcome.

Ron Greiner — who submitted the challengers’ petition — said the statute cited by the rest of the panel effectively disenfranchised the entire Ainsworth precinct.

“Having already closed the Ainsworth school building, apparently the Highland school board is no longer interested in including Ainsworth,” he said in a statement, a few hours after the decision. “Enrollment at Highland is already (lower) than when they closed our building. Ainsworth parents should think carefully about where they want their children to attend school.”

Petitioners argued improper ballots could have altered outcome

The Highland bond issue passed by 22 votes on Election Day. But petitioners challenging the result argued 96 improper ballots handed out in Ainsworth gave that many voters a chance to sway the outcome, despite not living in the school district, and thus not paying property taxes for the bond in question.

The majority of those given an improper ballot did vote on the bond measure: election results shared by the county show only 26 undervotes on the public measure, meaning at least 70 of the improper ballots were filled out one way or the other. But election officials have repeatedly said they had no way to know how those at-least 70 people voted.

While she acknowledged the technicalities of state code, petitioner Attorney Sasha Finke said the challenge met the spirit of state law. She cited precedent from a 1967 case in Iowa where judges rejected an election challenge because the number of contested ballots was insufficient to effect the outcome.

“Contestants are not required to show how the 96 out-of-district electors voted. They must only show that the number of irregular ballots cast by non-district voters was enough to place doubt in the result,” she wrote in a brief to the contest court’s panel ahead of Monday’s hearing. “If the 96 votes by out-of-district electors were all in favor of Public Measure VF, elimination of those 96 votes from the total votes in favor ... would not be sufficient to pass.”

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Ron Greiner put it more bluntly.

“The election was soured by 96 votes, and that doesn’t mean anything to you at all, is that what you’re trying to tell me?” he asked one of Highland’s lawyers at one point in the trial.

The school district’s attorneys said there wasn’t enough information to assume those improper ballots shaped the outcome, however, and pointed to other language in state code that limited contest courts’ decisions.

“We don’t know how any of those people voted, and there’s nothing in the code that would allow us to presume those votes were cast in a particular way,” argued Attorney Emily Kolbe. “Any particular misconduct is not a grounds to set aside an election, unless setting aside that particular precinct would change the outcome.”

It’s not clear whether the 2-1 ruling will stand. In an interview after the trial, Greiner said the petitioners would meet and decide whether they planned to appeal the ruling in the next few days. In the meantime, Gaumer has directed county staff to confirm the bond issue’s passage with formal documentation.

Schools challenged petition’s standing

Highland’s legal team also argued — unsuccessfully — that Greiner’s petition was invalid, asking the panel to throw it out before considering the substance of the case.

Kolbe said the document was formally submitted when its $3,000 deposit was paid, three days after the date she claimed as the 20-day deadline required to do so under state law. That argument was contentious, and the lawyers in the room went back and forth over when the clock started on that deadline.

Highland’s argued it began with the first canvass of votes the week of Nov. 13, when every county in the state verified the results of its own precincts.

“The Iowa Supreme Court has held that a failure to file a bond in a timely manner is a jurisdictional defect in an election contest,” Kolbe said. “This court, therefore, does not need to go any further in debating the merits of the contestants’ petition.”

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The petitioners’ attorney, meanwhile, argued the clock for a deadline started only with the election’s certification after the second tier of canvassing, when counties tally votes cast in their own elections from other counties.

That included, in Highland’s case, results from Johnson and Louisa counties, which the school district reaches into. Those were tallied in Washington County on Nov. 19, giving Greiner a slightly later deadline.

“The key word in the statute is the, ‘Declaration of a winner,’” Finke said. “And the board of supervisors did not declare passage until Nov. 19, 2024.”

A 3-0 vote of the contest court panel sided with the petitioners on that question, overruling a motion by the schools to dismiss the case.

Ruling ends months of confusion

Monday morning’s decision concluded months of uncertainty on a matter that has puzzled Washington County elections personnel and stakeholders alike since early November.

Early reports of an invalid election saw officials suggest the county would redo the vote, a plan that was later walked back after consultation with the county attorney and Iowa Secretary of State’s office. Officials also initially reported that precinct staff denied proper ballots to valid, in-district voters, but later said the inverse turned out to be true: ballots with the bond issue were given to voters who didn’t live in the district.

Staff at the auditor’s office also reported confusion as the election challenge played out. Personnel said they weren’t sure what to do with Greiner’s petition when it first arrived, and nearly accepted the wrong amount of money when he first tried to pay a fee with the petition. Officials were also unsure of the exact timeline Greiner had to supply that cash.

Those issues compounded with uncertainty about the petition’s deadline.

Former County Auditor Dan Widmer, called as a witness during the trial, said much of the miscommunication stemmed from sheer surprise.

“Nothing like this had happened in recent memory, there was a lack of precedent,” he said. “We also discovered, from counsel, that code was somewhat contradictory on the matter.”

Decision-makers, too, struggled with the nuances of ambiguous state code language and court precedents at Monday morning’s trial. Gaumer said the law was frustratingly unclear on the distinction between election canvasses and certifications, as well as any distinction between election “misconduct” versus accidental errors.

He added that Highland’s case wasn’t a perfect match for any prior court rulings.

“It has been an education, I can say, for all three members of the panel,” he said. “We have learned more about election law than maybe we wanted to know, but we do know it now.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com