Lawyer seeks to overturn 2 Democrat House election losses

FPI / December 7, 2020

Marc Elias, the Democratic National Committee’s election lawyer and legal adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, is representing Democrats in Iowa and New York who are seeking to have their losses for House seats overturned.

Elias is the same lawyer who filed more than 50 lawsuits around the country challenging state election laws in advance of the 2020 presidential election. The lawsuits helped pave the way for expanded vote-by-mail in last month's election.

The Democrats are Rita Hart of Iowa, and Rep. Anthony Brindisi of New York.

Hart lost to Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District by six votes.

The Democrats' legal team, led by Elias, reportedly plans to appeal to Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Administration Committee to certify Hart as the winner.

Under the Federal Contested Elections Act, the House can certify a winner in close and contested races. The Democrats last did so in 1985, when the House Administration Committee declared Indiana Democrat Rep. Frank McCloskey the winner of a close race in which his Republican challenger, Richard McIntyre, was certified as the winner by state election authorities. Democrats used their House majority to seat McCloskey and Republicans walked out of the chamber in protest.

The Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial Saturday: “Hart’s campaign said it will bypass an Iowa court appeal and ask the Committee on House Administration to intervene. The House has final say on its Members’ elections and the Supreme Court has held that courts can’t intervene in those decisions under the Constitution’s Article I.”

In New York, Brindisi trails Republican Claudia Tenney by 12 votes in the state's 22nd Congressional District. The Tenney-Brindisi race has garnered much attention recently after more than 50 votes appeared seemingly out of nowhere nearly a month after Election Day.

Politico reported: "Brindisi and Hart have both retained counsel from Perkins Coie, the premier Democratic election law firm — a sign they are gearing up for a lengthy legal process. The head of Perkins Coie’s election law practice, Marc Elias, is a recount expert who successfully led Democrat Al Franken’s efforts in Minnesota’s 2008 Senate race. Franken trailed about around 200 votes after the initial count but overtook then-Sen. Norm Coleman in a recount."

Prior to the November election, leftist media reported extensively on the effort by Elias to change the rules on how mail-in ballots are delivered and counted.

Elias pushed for reforms that include making ballots postage free or prepaid; counting ballots postmarked before Election Day; making it more difficult for election workers to subjectively reject ballots based on signature matching; and allowing community groups to help collect and deliver ballots that have already been filled out and sealed.

Several swing states whose results are in dispute by President Donald Trump's campaign legal team instituted at least some of those changes in 2020.

Most major media also fail to report that Elias in 2016 was responsible for hiring Fusion GPS on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee to produce the bogus “dossier” compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.

Free Press International