With all the recounts concluded, it appears Republican Mariannettee Miller-Meeks will head for Congress as she finished the recount with a six-vote lead.
Miller-Meeks said on Twitter it is the “honor of a lifetime” to be elected to serve the people of eastern and southeastern Iowa in Congress.
“Iowans are tenacious, optimistic and hard-working,” she said. “I will take those same attributes to Washington D.C.”
Her campaign put out a statement on Saturday thanking the county auditors, their staff and the volunteers who helped conduct the recount.
“While the race is extraordinarily close, I am proud to have won this contest and look forward to being certified as the winner by the state’s Executive Council on Monday,” she said.
According to the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Rita Hart’s campaign manager (Zach Meunier), said they will closely review what the county and state boards do Monday, “with an eye toward making sure all Iowa voices are fully and fairly heard.”
In a statement released by the Hart campaign, Meunier notes that Hart was down 47 votes when the recount started.
“As more ballots have been counted, the margin has narrowed dramatically and is now down to a mere six votes — making this the closes Congressional race in recent history, and one of the very closes in the last hundred years.”
The campaign accused the Miller-Meeks campaign of seeking to keep legitimate votes from being counted.
“We have said from the beginning of this recount process that the most important thing is that Iowans’ voices are heard and their votes are counted fairly,” the Hart campaign said.
