IOWA CITY, Iowa — A slim lead held by a Republican candidate for an open congressional seat in Iowa has gotten even smaller as counties recount their votes.
Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks led Democrat Rita Hart by 47 votes in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District in unofficial results before recounts began last week.
So far, 15 of 24 counties have completed recounts and sent their new unofficial totals to the state.
None of the four counties Hart carried have reported new totals, including Scott and Johnson.
The latest results from Iowa's 2nd Congressional District can be seen at the bottom of this story.
The Quad City-Times reports that both campaigns say Hart netted 30 votes in Scott County, where the recount concluded Saturday. If so, that would shrink Miller-Meeks' lead to single digits.
Miller-Meeks' campaign criticized the process used by the recount board in Scott County, arguing it is not allowed under state law and cannot be trusted.
That process involved conducting a machine recount, and then recounting ballots by hand that could not be read. Miller-Meeks' campaign argues that Iowa law requires either a machine or a hand recount, not a combination.
Hart's campaign argues that the recount boards — which include one representative from each campaign and one neutral member — have discretion to decide how to proceed.
Statement from Miller-Meeks' campaign:
"The Hart campaign has reached a new low by wanting to use numbers from a broken machine. When the Jasper County recount board met they agreed to a machine recount. But the optical-scan machine broke down before it could be started. When the technician replaced the broken parts, the machine could not read the ballots reliably. Remember, this county has already been through a recount ordered by the Secretary of State. That machine count matched the corrected numbers in the certified results. Now, when the machine breaks down, the Hart campaign thinks they won some kind of victory.
The Miller-Meeks for Congress campaign is committed to integrity in the recount process. The law must be followed and broken vote-counting machines should be properly fixed before they are used. If the Hart campaign thinks its path is through breaking the law and broken vote counting, they should do the decent thing and concede already."
Statement from Hart's campaign:
“Last Saturday, at the urging of the designee appointed by Mariannette Miller-Meeks, the Jasper County recount board voted to conduct a machine recount of absentee ballots.
However, the machine broke shortly after the recount began. Miller-Meeks’ Campaign’s designee insisted on waiting for the machine to be repaired, which the recount board agreed to do. Now, a machine recount of the absentee ballots has been completed with the repaired machine and Rita Hart has netted 9 votes.
Unfortunately, as is quickly becoming a pattern across multiple counties including Scott County, the Miller-Meeks Campaign is unwilling to play by the rules they sought at the beginning of the recount, and now disputes the machine recount that was conducted at their urging. The point of a recount is to get a final, correct vote total, not recount and recount until one candidate is satisfied with the outcome. The Miller-Meeks campaign can’t count the ballots again or introduce some new process simply because the margin narrowed.
Iowans understand that you don’t get to change the rules just because you don’t like the outcome, but that is exactly what the Miller-Meeks Campaign is trying to do because they are losing ground.”