IOWA CITY, Iowa: A Democratic congressional candidate who trailed by six votes after a recount said Wednesday she will forgo further legal challenges in Iowa and instead appeal directly to the U.S. House for additional recount proceedings.
Rita Hart’s campaign had until Wednesday afternoon to contest the election under Iowa law following Monday’s certification of results in which Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks was declared the winner of the closest House race in decades.
An election contest in Iowa would have set in motion the formation of a five-judge panel that would have been required to rule on who won the race by Tuesday, Dec. 8.
Hart’s campaign said that quick timeline would not allow enough time to review all the ballots, including thousands of unexamined undervotes and overvotes and a small number of others that were not counted for a variety of reasons.
Instead, the campaign said that Hart would file an election contest with the U.S. House under the Federal…