Prichard disappointed in Iowa House vote to reject ballots

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Legislator Todd Prichard said he isn’t pleased with the decision earlier this week by the Republican-led Iowa House to reject 29 absentee mail ballots cast in a northeast Iowa House district.

“I was disappointed in the vote, because I think it was clear that the legal thing to do — and the right thing to do — would be to count those ballots,” said Prichard, a Charles City Democrat who represents Iowa House District 52, which consists of Floyd, Chickasaw and the eastern third of Cerro Gordo counties.

The vote Monday handed Iowa House District 55 to Republican Rep. Michael Bergan, who won by just nine votes out of more than 14,000 votes cast on Nov. 6. It was the first contested election to be decided by the Legislature since 1992.

Democrat Kayla Koether filed the election challenge, which by law means the House had to decide whether the ballots are opened and counted. Koether said lawmakers have the authority to interpret the law in a way that allows them to count the ballots of voters who did everything right.

“They are making a choice here about how to interpret the law and whether they will do so in a way that includes these 29 voters who want their votes to be counted or not,” she said. “They can follow the rule of law and count these ballots.”

The House voted 53-44 along party lines to reject the ballots and dismiss Koether’s challenge.

The mailed absentee ballots were confirmed by a U.S. Postal Service scan of a barcode on the envelopes as having been returned to election officials on time, but House Republicans say those barcodes are not allowed under state law to be used to validate when ballots were mailed.

“This isn’t comfortable. This isn’t pleasant and we don’t change the rules in the middle of the contest. That’s why we have to follow the rule of law in this case,” said GOP Rep. Steve Holt of Denison.

For Prichard, the contested election was his first political and legal battle as the new Iowa House minority leader. He said that to him, it was a matter of election integrity.

“To me, it kind of flies in the face of common sense and legal sense,” said Prichard, who is an attorney.  “It’s clear that we know the votes were mailed on time — there’s no question about that. I don’t understand why it became a partisan issue. That’s unfortunate.

“The next step is really going to be up to Kayla Koether, and how far she wants to go,” Prichard said. “We’ll be supportive, to the extent that we can.”

Koether said she and some of the Winneshiek County voters may file a lawsuit.

Koether’s 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.

According to a response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Associated Press, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate’s office said about 1,045 absentee ballots received by mail were rejected in the November election because they were not postmarked or were received too late.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.