Under the Constitution, each house is the final judge over any dispute related to the election and seating of members.  Fortunately, this power is only rarely invoked.  But we may be facing one (or more) of those rare instances this year.

As this post is going live, we are in the midst of a recount for Iowa’s second congressional district.  Each county is individually certifying their recount.  Most of the counties have certified the new numbers, but a handful have not yet made their numbers official.  Based on the official numbers from the counties that have certified the recount result and the original count from the remaining counties, the margin is 35 votes.  But unofficial reports from the remaining counties show a swing of 36 votes which would mean that the Democrat would win by 1 vote.  Of interest in Iowa is the law governing recounts.  The law allows each county to choose between a hand recount or a machine recount or, maybe, a hybrid recount (in which ballots which are kicked out as overvotes or undervotes are examined to see if there is a valid vote).    These differences between the counties means that the final result from Iowa will differ from what a full hand recount would have shown or what a full machine recount would have shown.  And that invites further review.

Likewise, it seems like the race in New York’s twenty-second district is also close.  Because New York counties are not required to report interim counts, we will not know the final counts officially until all of the counties certify their results.  Some of the counties have officially released their current counts, but, in other counties, reporters are relying on sources to report the state of the count.  It appears that the race in New York is as close or almost as close as the race in Iowa.  Currently, final results are up in the air as the courts have been asked to review provisional ballots to determine which ones should be counted (and, apparently, one county used post-it notes to distinguish between the already counted ballots and the rejected ballots and those post-it notes fell off in transport). Continue Reading...