Over at the Election Law Blog, I have this guest post, “Iowa’s Second Congressional District Contest Should Be Dismissed for Lack of Exhaustion of State Remedies.” It begins:

Iowa’s Second Congressional District is officially one of the closest congressional elections in American history. Congresswoman-Elect Mariannette Miller-Meeks led by 47 votes after the official canvass. After challenger Rita Hart requested a recount in all 24 counties, Miller-Meeks led by just six votes. Miller-Meeks received a certificate of election from the state and will be seated, absent an extraordinary move from the House of Representatives, in the 117th Congress.

Hart has filed an election contest under the Federal Contested Elections Act of 1969. Under the Constitution, each House is “the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.” In doing so, however, Hart skipped the opportunity to file an election contest in Iowa courts.

Hart’s lead-up to the election contest was a thaumatrope. On one side, the Hart campaign alleged that not all the votes were counted, and every vote needed to be counted. On the other side, the Hart campaign complained that the time to seek an election contest in state court was too short, so the House was the only mechanism for it. Spinning this thaumatrope, the two claims appeared as a single concern.

But now that the contest has been filed, we see two distinct claims. The first are discrete claims about twenty-two ballots that were not counted that the Hart campaign argues should have been counted, amply within the window of a state court contest to resolve. The second are sweeping claims asking for, effectively, a second recount (or a third count) of thousands of ballots, something a contest court would never have entertained because Hart would have been estopped from raising it.

I’ll provide an overall setup of the dispute, then dig into some of the specific claims Hart raises in the contest. I’ll refer to some of the points in the Notice of Contest, but I’ll also refer to relevant facts omitted from the Notice. But in short, Hart raises two types of claims, and both should be dismissed, in my judgment, on fairly straightforward procedural grounds: the first claim should be dismissed for lack of exhaustion; the second claim should be dismissed for estoppel, waiver, or laches.