Christina Bohannan to request recount in Iowa’s 1st District race against Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks

For the second time in three elections, Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks narrow victory will go through a recount.

Democratic candidate Christina Bohannan said she will ask for a recount in the tight race in Southeastern Iowa's 1st Congressional District.

Miller-Meeks leads the Iowa City Democrat by 802 votes out of about 414,000 votes counted in the Nov. 5 race, according to partially reported canvassed results. That’s about two-tenths of a percentage point ahead of Bohannan.

The two-term incumbent has declared victory, and has moved forward this week confident that she will be successful in her bid for re-election. The Associated Press has still not called the race, and results have yet to be finalized.

"I have no doubt that my election will be certified and I will be victorious … by more than 6 votes,“ Miller-Meeks wrote in a letter to House Republican colleagues earlier this week announcing her candidacy for a spot in House GOP leadership as House Republican Conference secretary.

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Alan Ostergren, an attorney for Miller-Meeks’ campaign, called the margin of victory “insurmountable” and accused Bohannan of “needlessly costing taxpayers money” on a districtwide recount.

Miller-Meeks’ campaign, in a statement, called Bohannan’s request for a recount a “delaying tactic to thwart the will of the people.”

“A recount won't meaningfully change the outcome of this race as the congresswoman's lead is mathematically impossible to overcome,” according to the statement. “Mariannette was humbled to win the support of the majority of voters and we remain confident Mariannette Miller-Meeks has been reelected to a third term.”

The 69-year-old ophthalmologist and Army veteran who claims an address in Davenport and maintains a residence in Ottumwa unsuccessfully ran for Congress three times before she won in 2020 by six votes. Her victory held up after a protracted recount, during which Democratic rival Rita Hart briefly contested the outcome in the U.S. House. It was one of the closest House races in U.S. history.

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Miller-Meeks then defeated Bohannan by 7 percentage points in 2022.

Bohannan, a 53-year-old University of Iowa law professor and former state lawmaker, tried again to unseat the two-term incumbent in the Nov. 5 election, waging a rematch in one of the most competitive U.S. House campaigns in the country.

In a statement, Bohannan campaign manager Jindalae Suh said the vote count has resulted in "a razor-thin margin" and recounts are to be expected in such a close race.

"To be absolutely certain that every voter is heard, the Bohannan campaign will request a recount in all 20 counties across the district, as permitted by Iowa law," Suh said. "We have full trust in this process and will accept the results regardless of the outcome. All Iowans should feel confident that at the conclusion of this transparent, precinct-level recount process, every lawful vote will be counted and reported accurately.”

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Under Iowa law, Bohannan has until 5 p.m. Monday to requests recounts in all 20 counties that make up the district, which includes Iowa City, Davenport and rural Southeast Iowa, now that county boards of supervisors have certified election results.

The 2020 race narrowed from an 282-vote lead for Miller-Meeks before a district-wide recount began, to 47 votes after late-arriving mail-in absentee and provisional ballots were counted, and precinct reporting errors were corrected in Jasper and Lucas counties — eventually narrowing to the final six-vote margin.

There also was a never-resolved 131-ballot discrepancy between a recount board’s tabulation of the absentee ballots received by the Scott County auditor and those included in the county's certified canvass of election results after Election Day.

With no late-arriving absentee ballots this go-around due to a change in Iowa law — and absent known precinct reporting errors — the chances of finding enough outstanding votes to overcome a 800-vote gap is slim to none, said Derek Muller, a nationally recognized election law scholar at the University of Notre Dame and a former UI law professor.

“You would need a tabulation error to change the outcome,” Muller told The Gazette last week. “There were hundreds of ballots incorrectly tabulated in Jasper and Lucas counties in 2020. … Unless the final margin is less than 100, I don’t know that a recount is going to change anything.”

Posting to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday, Muller noted “the delta from the old #IA01 (then #IA02, 24 counties) certified result (47) to final result (6) was 41. The bulk of that change — 26 of the 41 — was likely attributable to a tabulation error during the recount in Scott County.”

Because the margin of victory separating the candidates is less than 1 percent of the total number of votes counted in the race, the state will cover the cost of the recount. In all other instances, the candidate is responsible for costs associated with the recount. Costs paid by the candidate are refunded if the recount changes the election outcome.

Each county would designate a recount board made up of three members: one chosen by the apparent winner, one by the candidate requesting the recount and a third person agreed upon by both. If they cannot agree on a third person, the chief judge of the judicial district will appoint one.

Recounts must be completed by Dec. 2, when Iowa's state board of canvassers must certify the statewide election results.

By the end of the campaign, most national forecasters had the 1st District election as a toss-up, and some — including Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball — shifted it to leaning Democratic. The race drew millions in outside spending from Democratic and Republican groups for its potential for determining which party controlled the House.

House Republicans went into the election with a slim, 220-212 majority with three vacancies. As of Wednesday, Republicans had won enough seats to hold on to their House majority, in addition to controlling the U.S. Senate and the White House.

Democrats tried to flip the seat by attacking Miller-Meeks' record of opposing abortion rights, with the issue top of mind for many voters since an Iowa law took effect that bans most abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy.

But Miller-Meeks, like many Republicans in the state and across the nation, focused on the economy and immigration, playing to voters' frustrations over the high cost of groceries and everyday expenses and the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Associated Press and Erin Murphy of The Gazette contributed to this report.

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com