Iowa Republican to ask House to toss challenge by Democratic challenger

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) has asked Congress to dismiss a petition from her Democratic competitor Rita Hart who is challenging the results of the election after Miller-Meeks won by six votes.

Alan Ostergren, an attorney for Miller-Meeks, filed a motion in the House on Thursday, the Des Moines Register reported, asking that the current election results be left as they are.

“The precedents of the House, going back a century or more, require contestants to avail themselves of every single remedy they have under state law before they go to Congress,” said Ostergren in his filing.

Miller-Meeks won the election for Iowa’s 2nd District after a districtwide recount. Out of about 400,000 votes, she won by six.

Hart announced in December she would be appealing the results of the election directly to the U.S. House of Representatives. Hart’s campaign stated they were overstepping the in-state legal review as there was not enough time to properly review the votes that were left out.

Hart is arguing that 22 votes were incorrectly left out of the count and were not included when the election was recounted.

Ostergren argued that Hart was merely going to the House because she knew her appeal would not stand up to scrutiny in the in-state process. He said her avoidance of the Iowa legal system “suggests that they don’t think their arguments will pass muster if a judge looks at it but might pass muster if a partisan were to look at it,” the Register reported.

The House Administration Committee will now review the motions from both parties. If it decides to move forward with an investigation as Hart has requested, the results could be decided by majority vote in the House.

As the newspaper notes, this situation could place House Democrats in a difficult position as they have disparaged former President Trump and his GOP allies for repeatedly challenging the results of his own election. His objections and those of his supporters in Congress have been blamed for ultimately inciting the riot that took over the Capitol on Jan. 6.