More than 390,000-plus votes in Iowa’s 2nd District have been counted and recounted and Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks was finally certified by the state as the winner — by six votes.
But Democrat Rita Hart is not giving up. Last week, the 2018 Democrat nominee for lieutenant governor and 2020 opponent to Miller-Meeks filed a petition with the House Administration Committee claiming that 22 votes she insists were “unlawfully excluded” in the counting actually give her victory.
So now the question is increasingly will House Democrats vote to deny Miller-Meeks a seat when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 6th and is sworn in.
If they do so, it will only be the second time that the House has ignored the landmark Supreme Court ruling “Powell v. McCormack” about the seating of a U.S. Representative.
In January, 1967, controversial Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, D-N.Y., who came under fire in and outside Congress for alleged misuse of his office and official expenses, was denied his seat by a vote of 307 to 116.
The embattled lawmaker then launched a legal counterattack which culminated in the May 1969 Supreme Court ruling that if someone is a resident of the state from which he or she is elected to the House, meets the minimum age requirement for service in the House (25), and holds a certificate of election, then the House must seat that person
“‘Powell v McCormack’ addressed the House's exclusion of Powell for corruption in the preceding Congress,” Ken Kramer, former Republican U.S. Representative from Colorado and retired judge of the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, told Newsmax. “The Supreme Court ruled that Powell should have been seated because Congress can only consider the constitutional requirements of age, length of citizenship, and state residency.”
Kramer referred to the one time the House appeared to violate the “Powell Precedent” by refusing to seat Republican Rick McIntyre in 1984.
“The House eventually voted to seat [Democratic Rep. Frank] McCloskey, a member of the Democrat majority party, even though McIntyre, a member of the Republican minority party, in a very close election, had been certified the winner in accordance with Indiana
law.
“As was true in most close elections, various issues arose about which ballots should be counted and which should be discounted. In effect, the House majority overruled the Indiana determination, in violation of the Powell principle which only permits Congress to review constitutional requirements.”
Kramer pointed out that “an argument could be made that ‘Powell’ had nothing to do with determining which candidate had the most votes. I do not find this argument persuasive because the ‘Powell’ doctrine would seem even more important in contested elections where the majority in Congress pick a candidate of its party rather than a minority winner certified in accordance with the law of the applicable state.
“In ‘Powell,’ it was Democrats kicking out a Democrat where in McCloskey it was the majority kicking out the minority, which seems to be far more egregious in subverting the voter's will.”
Should the majority in the House not seat certified winner and minority party candidate Miller-Meeks, Kramer warned, “I think we are back to the same violation of Powell as occurred with the failure to seat McIntyre. If such occurs, I hope that it will be litigated so as to obtain a clear precedent that ‘Powell’ applies to contested elections."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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