GOP-Led Iowa House Hands Seat To GOPer After Rejecting 29 Mail Ballots
Source: Talking Points Memo
By DAVID PITT
January 29, 2019 9:46 am
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Republican-led House voted Monday to reject 29 absentee mail ballots cast in a northeast Iowa House district, handing the seat to a Republican who won by nine votes in the first contested election to go before the Legislature in 27 years.
The mailed absentee ballots were confirmed by a U.S. Postal Service scan of a barcode on the envelopes as having been sent to election officials on time, but House Republicans insist those barcodes are not allowed under state law to be used to validate ballots.
Iowa law says mailed absentee ballots must be postmarked to confirm they were mailed by the deadline one day before an election. The 29 ballots had no postmark.
Legislators, realizing mail ballots often are no longer postmarked, updated the law in 2016 to allow a specific code called an intelligent mail barcode to be used to authenticate ballot timeliness if a postmark is missing. The Postal Service has acknowledged absentee ballots are not always postmarked.
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/iowa-house-reject-absentee-mail-ballots-michael-bergan-win
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The House voted 53-44 along party lines to reject the ballots and dismiss Koether’s challenge. Democrat Bruce Hunter said democracy suffers when legitimate votes are denied.
“It seems nobody will ever deprive the people of Iowa the right to vote except the Iowa Legislature. For 29 people in Winneshiek County, democracy is dead,” Hunter said.
Koether said she and some of the voters may file a lawsuit.
Her attorney has said the inconsistent way of affirming votes in Iowa may present a constitutional equal protection challenge. Another county in the same House district, Fayette County, counted 12 ballots with no postmark or barcode. The county election official has acknowledged that was a mistake.
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