Letter to Trade Associations, Firms, and Businesses - Cotton, McConnell, Ernst, Grassley Send Letter To Businesses Regarding Democrats' Theft Of Iowa House Seat

Letter

To all companies that support free and fair elections,

Just a few weeks ago, much of corporate America publicly condemned the actions of members of Congress who voted to overturn a certified election, and even in some cases promised to stop supporting those members. We write to ask if you are taking the same position with respect to members of the House of Representatives who are poised to overturn a state-certified election in the second Congressional district in Iowa.

Last fall, Republican State Senator Mariannette Miller-Meeks defeated Democrat Rita Hart to represent Iowa's second district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Under Iowa law, this result was confirmed after multiple recounts by bipartisan election officials. Iowa's bipartisan Board of Canvass unanimously certified Miller-Meeks as the winner.

Instead of accepting this certified result, Democrat Rita Hart refused to go to the Iowa courts to present evidence of legal irregularities before a panel of impartial judges. Instead, she appealed directly to the only partisan actor with the power to overturn the results of a certified election: Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who is moving forward with a process in which the House may "exercise its discretion to depart from Iowa law."

Speaker Pelosi should have declined to get involved and applied the same standard that she stated just a few weeks ago: certified elections need to be honored. Instead, Speaker Pelosi started the process to take the election away from the people of Iowa to allow the House of Representatives to vote on a party-line basis on who should fill the seat.

This effort to overturn a free, fair, and certified election is an unacceptable attempt to undermine a legitimate democratic process. The people--not politicians--are responsible for electing their representatives. Our democracy depends on this.

We are asking you to apply the same standard to this attempt to overturn an election that you applied to the Republicans who objected to certain states' electoral votes, and publicly condemn the actions of the Democrats who are seeking to overturn the state-certified election of Representative Miller-Meeks. If you decide to not speak out about this brazen attempt to steal an election, some may question the sincerity of your earlier statements and draw the conclusion that your actions were partisan instead of principled.