Monday, November 23, 2020

Closest House Race

 According to Hot Air, there is a House race in Iowa that is down to single digits in the vote counting.

The closest House election in the country is even closer now. I wrote about this race earlier this month. Iowa Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks led Democrat Rita Hart on election night by fewer than 300 votes. Then an election auditor discovered that Jasper County had counted a block of 406 votes for Miller-Meeks twice. Subtracting those double-counted votes put Hart in the lead. But then another county discovered it had failed to report 271 votes for Miller-Meeks, putting her back in the lead but only by 47 votes. Now a recount has tightened the race to single digits.

Currently, six votes by the last count.

I remember a judgeship in a small rural parish in Louisiana, back in the late '80s or early '90s.  The sitting judge had died and they held an election to find a replacement.   The vote came out a dead-tie.  Both candidates became plaintiffs and started suing everyone in sight.  Because they had no sitting judge, the state Supreme Court appointed an ad-hoc judge (retired) from another parish to sort it out.

I  happened to know the parole officer who worked that parish, his office was down the hall from mine.  I stopped in to ask about the dilemma, and asked if he was going to take his caseload book to the Registrar of Voters and see how many of his caseload had illegally voted in that race.

"Have you lost your damned mind?" he retorted.  "I don't even want to walk down the hall of the Courthouse."  He lived in that parish, and certainly did not want to be the star witness in the case.

They eventually decided that disaster, and I don't recall how it turned out.

1 comment:

Old NFO said...

LOL, smart man!