DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Republican legislators leading a committee to review the results of a contested election for a northeast Iowa House district said Wednesday that they plan to recommend not opening and counting 29 absentee mail ballots that could reverse the outcome of the race.
Rep. Steven Holt, chairman of the committee, said since the ballots had no postmark and didn’t have a seldom used county election official tracking barcode, they can’t be counted even though postal officials have confirmed they were mailed in time to be valid votes.
Holt says the committee on Thursday will report to the full House its recommendation to reject the 29 ballots. The House, also led by Republicans, hasn’t set a date to vote on the issue.
It’s the first contested election to be decided by the Legislature since 1992.
“Our report is that we recommend that we do not open and count the ballots because we have to follow the law,” Holt said. “That’s why we have the law. Every sacred right has to have some rules around them so that they are in fact protected.”
Iowa law says mailed absentee ballots received after election day must have a postmark to allow election officials to determine they were mailed by the mandatory deadline of the day before the election. However, the postal service doesn’t typically postmark absentee ballot envelopes. So, in 2016 the Legislature passed a law allowing county auditors to buy from the postal service an intelligent mail barcode service that tracks ballots. The law, however, was made optional and only seven Iowa counties use it because of the additional cost.
The Iowa Secretary of State’s office has reported that 1,045 ballots were not counted in November statewide due to lack of postmark or barcode or arriving too late.
The 29 ballots in question were stamped with a barcode used by the postal service for its internal tracking and a court-ordered scan of those determined the ballots were mailed on time to be valid. County and state election officials, however, said that type of barcode doesn’t comply with the law.
Committee member Rep. Brian Meyer, a Democrat, says Republicans “have turned this election contest into a sham” for refusing to hear from voters and election officials before deciding whether to open the ballots and count them.
“It’s really a disenfranchising of those voters. They did nothing wrong. We know the ballots were in on time. The reality is we should err on the side of democracy and count those ballots,” he said.
Democrat Kayla Koether trails Republican incumbent Michael Bergan by nine votes for the Iowa House District 55 seat. Counting the ballots could reverse the results of the election.
“This is about empowering our fellow Iowans who voted to know that their voices are going to be heard,” she said.
Bergan was seated to represent the district but Koether contested the election results which means the House must decide whether the votes are counted.
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