The 2020 election is finally over. The last contested race was resolved when Rita Hart withdrew her election contest before the U.S. House of Representatives on March 31. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks won the race for Iowa’s Second Congressional District by six votes. Hart had claimed that had 22 other ballots been counted, she would have won the race by nine votes. Miller-Meeks countered that Hart had the chance to raise her claims before an Iowa contest court but did not. Her default, Miller-Meeks argued, meant that the House should not consider the contest.
I had a front-row seat to this fight. I was the lead attorney for Rep. Miller-Meeks in the state recount proceedings and then in the contest of the election’s results before the House. I got to see a real-life stress test of Iowa’s election laws and then an epic legal and political fight play out on a national stage.
First, a bit of the backstory. The unofficial returns had Miller-Meeks up by about 280 votes on election night. While close, this margin seemed large enough to survive a recount. Recounts rarely change election results by more than a handful of votes.
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