Panel accepts Miller-Meeks' ballot after residency challenge

An absentee and special precinct board in Scott County decided Tuesday to accept U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ ballot cast in the 2024 election, rejecting a challenge from a Bettendorf resident who argued she does not live in the county.

The challenge focused on Miller-Meeks’ claim for a homestead tax credit on an Ottumwa acreage she owns with her husband, arguing that she should not be able to claim both a homestead tax credit in Ottumwa and a voting residence in Davenport.

In Iowa, absentee and special precinct boards for each county meet to review military and overseas ballots that arrived after Election Day, challenged ballots and ballots that were unreadable by machine tabulators. The boards consist of poll workers chosen by county auditors.

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The panel in Scott County met Tuesday to decide on the eligibility of provisional ballots and military and overseas civilians’ ballots that came in after Election Day. By the end of Tuesday, an additional 63 ballots were counted in the county. The Scott County Board of Supervisors will meet at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday to canvass the vote.

Miller-Meeks’ attorney, Alan Ostergren, submitted a defense in writing, arguing that state law provides voters do not lose their residency if they temporarily reside elsewhere, and a homestead tax credit is permitted if a spouse still resides there.

Miller-Meeks' campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The three-member board of poll workers decided Tuesday to accept Miller-Meeks’ ballot to be counted, saying that living at her Ottumwa residence at least six months out of the year did not disqualify her from casting her ballot in Scott County, and she had active voter status in Scott County and had not tried to vote in Wapello County.

Miller-Meeks and her husband own a home and acreage in Ottumwa, where she’d claimed residency since the 2000s. She was first elected, by a six-vote margin, in 2020. In the redistricting after the 2020 census, Wapello County was drawn out of the Southeast Iowa district she represented.

When she announced her run for re-election, she said she would retain her property in Ottumwa and take up residency in the newly drawn district. In 2022, she changed her residency to the same LeClaire address as a state senator. Ahead of the 2024 race, she claimed residency instead at the Indian Ridge apartments in Davenport.

Cindy Snyder, Indian Ridge property manager, previously told The Gazette that Miller-Meeks is a resident there, pays the market rate for the unit and has paid in full every month since moving in.

The challenge to Miller-Meeks’ ballot was filed Oct. 31 by Bettendorf resident Harold John “HJ” Dane III. On Dane's challenge form, he asserted that Miller-Meeks “is not a resident at the address where the person is registered”; “has falsified information on a registration form or on a declaration of eligibility” and “is not a resident of the precinct where the person is offering to vote.”

After the board meeting, Dane said he probably would submit a challenge to Miller-Meeks' voter registration, a separate process that would go before the county auditor for a hearing where both sides could present evidence. Dane, who said he's a former Republican, said he filed the challenge because he "cannot abide by lies and deceit."

Separate from Dane's challenge, a LeClaire resident earlier this year filed a request with the federal Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Miller-Meeks’ voting address.