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Final legislative approval of new rules for Iowa election recounts
The Iowa Senate has sent the governor a bill to set new guidelines for election recounts.
“Fair elections are the absolute bedrock of our system of government,” Senator Ken Rozenboom, a Republican from Pella, said. “This legislation will correct flaws in our current system.”
Rozenboom began senate debate of the bill by point out there are no current limits on which candidates can ask for a recount. “Now, under today’s laws, a candidate can request a recount whether an election is decided by five votes or 15%,” Rozenboom said.
Under the bill, candidates in statewide or federal races may only request a recount if the margin between the two leading candidates is 0.15%. For all other races, the difference between the candidates would have to be less than one percent or 50 votes — whichever is less.
The bill would only allow recounting ballots by hand in extraordinary circumstances, so all or nearly all ballots would be recounted by the same tabulation machines used on Election Day. That change has been sought by Secretary of State Paul Pate after there was no uniformity in how counties conducted recounts in a 2020 congressional race — the one Mariannette Miller-Meeks won by six votes.
“We’re a bit polarized in elections. We’ve got some that are really, really close and it keeps happening over and over and over, so I don’t think it’s going away,” Pate said this past weekend during an appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa PBS. “We really want to make sure the recount thing is under control.”
Another change in the bill puts county auditors and their staff in charge of recounts. Under current law, the two candidates in a recount each choose a person to serve on a recount board and then agree on who a third board member should be. Pate said those three-member recount boards wind up being observers anyway. “The auditors are the ones who actually process the ballots, puts them through the tabulators,” Pate said. “…I don’t think that’s a big change.”
Democrats who voted against the bill say they’re concerned about county auditors who might be in charge of recounting the ballots in their own election. Senator Sarah Trone Garriott of Waukee has faced two recounts in her three successful races for a senate seat. “Taking out the candidate’s representatives and the neutral party, putting it on a partisan elected official and the staff who are supervised and employed by them does not make it more fair,” she said.
According to Pate, Iowa is the only state which does not have election officials in charge of recounts. Under the bill each campaign would be able to have up to five observers in each county where a recount is being conducted.
