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Democratic Senate Front-Runner Cannot Appear On Ballot After Signatures Ruled Invalid

   DailyWire.com
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An Iowa state court judge ruled that former Democratic Congresswoman Abby Finkenauer is ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot for the 2022 U.S. Senate race.

Judge Scott J. Beattie, a judge in Iowa’s 5th Judicial District, wrote in an opinion Sunday that Finkenauer, the front-runner in Iowa’s Democratic Senate primary, was ineligible because she did not meet the required number of signatures she needed to appear on the primary ballot.

Under Iowa state law, Senate candidates are required to collect at least 3,500 valid signatures on their nominating petitions in order for ballot placement, including at least 100 signatures in 19 different Iowa counties.

According to the Des Moines Register, Finkenauer’s campaign submitted 5,000 total signatures, more than the required number overall, but two Republican Party officials objected to three signatures in two counties, arguing that they were invalid because they did not date their signatures correctly: one signature had a birthday instead of the correct date, another had no date, and another was dated with the signer’s zip code. Iowa’s State Objections Panel, which oversees such objections, found that Finkenauer “substantially complied” with the rules, citing past precedent, and claimed that it was clear when the petitions were signed because previous and subsequent signatures had correct dates.

Judge Beattie rejected the panel’s reasoning. He wrote that the signatures at issue did not comply, even in part, with relevant state law, which requires voter signatures to be dated with “the date of signing.” Since the signatories “either put nothing in the blank for the date or put information that was not the date of the signature,” they could not be considered to “substantially comply with the law.” “The plain and obvious meaning [of the law] is that the signature should be accompanied by a date indicating when it was signed. Failure to include the date means the signature is not valid,” Beattie wrote, adding that the Panel’s decision was “'[b]ased upon an irrational, illogical, or wholly unjustifiable interpretation of a provision of law.’”

Beattie thus concluded that Finkenauer did not meet the legal requirements, and her name would not be included on the Democratic Primary ballot. “The Court takes no joy in this conclusion,” Beattie wrote. “This Court should not be in the position to make a difference in an election, and Ms. Finkenauer and her supporters should have a chance to advance her candidacy. However, this Court’s job is to sit as a referee and apply the law without passion or prejudice. It is required to rule without consideration of the politics of the day.”

Finkenauer was elected to the House of Representatives in 2018. She served for a single term, then lost to Republican Ashley Hinson in 2020. She was considered the front-runner in the Democratic Primary and was expected to face off against incumbent Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who announced in September that he was running for an eighth term. A recent poll conducted by Democratic polling firm GBAO found that Finkenauer led the field with 64% of the primary vote, while the second-place Democrat earned just 15%. But according to RealClearPolitics, the Iowa Senate Race is considered safely Republican.

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