Opinion ID: 1726497
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Strict Compliance Approach to Jurisdiction of Election Challenges in Iowa.

Text: This court has had two occasions to consider the statutory requirement to file bond as security for costs in election challenges. The first was Haas v. Contest Court, 221 Iowa 150, 265 N.W. 373 (1936). In Haas, the court considered the filing of a bond in an election contest under a precursor to Iowa Code section 62.6. The plaintiffs in Haas filed a bond with the Iowa Secretary of State and filed a written notice of their intent to challenge the election before the Board of Canvassers had certified the final result. Both the filing of the bond and the written notice of intention were, therefore, premature under the applicable statutes. Haas, 221 Iowa at 156, 265 N.W. at 376. Once the Board of Canvassers reached a final result, the plaintiffs refiled their written notice of intention, but did not refile the bond. The Secretary of State, however, accepted the bond and approved its amount within the statutory period. Id. at 157, 265 N.W. at 376. In Haas, we held that the premature filing of the bond did not oust jurisdiction as there was sufficient compliance with the statutes. Id. at 157, 265 N.W. at 377. The second case was de Koning v. Mellema, 534 N.W.2d 391 (Iowa 1995). In this case, the plaintiffs sought to challenge a school bond election that passed by a slim margin. De Koning, 534 N.W.2d at 393. The plaintiff filed the required statement of intention but did not file a bond as required by statute. Id. When the plaintiff demanded that the county auditor name a member of the contest court, the county auditor declined on the ground that no bond had been filed. Id. The plaintiff then filed an action for mandamus in the district court, seeking to compel the county auditor to appoint a member of the contest board. Id. The district court denied relief on the ground that the bond had not been filed and the plaintiff appealed. Id. at 394. The plaintiff asserted that the bond requirement did not apply to the case, that the auditor waived the bond requirement, and that the failure to post bond did not prejudice the auditor and thus the action should not have been dismissed. Id. at 396. In canvassing the applicable legal principles, this court noted that it was generally recognized that to initiate special proceedings, such as election contest proceedings, the statutory provisions necessary to confer jurisdiction must be strictly complied with by the contestants. Id. at 394. The court noted that statutory provisions for election contests granted a privilege that did not exist at common law and, as a result, the right to bring a challenge was contingent on statutory compliance. Id. Plaintiff contended that because the auditor did not request a bond when the contestants filed their statement of intention, the requirement was waived. Id. at 396. This court rejected that argument, noting that the statute clearly placed a duty on the contestants to file the bond and that the auditor was merely the recipient of the election contest statement and not a party to the contest. Id. Finally, this court rejected the notion that the bond requirement could be avoided by a claim of lack of prejudice. The court noted that prejudice to the county auditor is irrelevant as the bond is designed to protect the school district, not the county official. Id. In any case, citing Haas, the court observed that the legislature has already determined by the express terms of the statutes that if a bond is not filed within twenty days, prejudice will result. Id. If the approach in de Koning and Haas were to be applied to the facts of this case, the district court ruling would be affirmed. Iowa Code sections 62.5 and 62.6 are special statutes that confer subject matter jurisdiction on district courts. The rule, as interpreted by this court in de Koning and Haas, imposes a mandatory requirement on election contestants to file a bond within twenty days of the certification of the results of the challenged election. The contestants in this case simply did not meet the statutory requirement. Iowa Code section 62.6, however, does not explicitly require the bond to be filed within twenty days of an election's certification. While there is a significant issue of error preservation, we affirm this court's prior holdings in Haas and de Koning, which extend Iowa Code section 62.5's twenty-day deadline to the filing of bond. First introduced in 1851, the predecessor of sections 62.5 and 62.6 was contained in a single Code provision, comprised of a single sentence. See Iowa Code § 345 (1851). In 1873 the provision was minimally revised. While the filing of an intention to contest and bond remained in a single section, the requirements were divided into two separate sentences. The bond requirement was further amended from must file . . . bond to must also file . . . bond. Iowa Code § 697 (1873). It was not until 1924 that these requirements were separated into two provisions. See Iowa Code §§ 1024-25 (1924). The original inclusion of the filing of the intention to contest an election and the filing of a bond in a single section, with one time limit, demonstrates the legislature's intention to require that both be filed within twenty days of an election's certification. Moreover, the later insertion of the word also reinforces this interpretation. As a result, we see no reason to depart from Haas and de Koning  bond must be filed with the county auditor within twenty days of an election's certification. Appellants, nevertheless, claim that the auditor did not perform her duty in this case. They argue that the auditor refused to set the level of the bond in a timely fashion and, as a result, it was impossible to comply with the statute. [2] The statute, however, does not require the auditor to do anything until a bond has been filed. Once a bond has been filed, the auditor is then required to approve it. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines approve as to accept as satisfactory. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 57 (10th ed. 2002). Clearly, the filing of a bond is a condition precedent to approval by the county auditor. If an auditor refused to perform his duty after the filing of the bond, a different result might occur. See O'Loughlin v. Otis, 276 N.W.2d 38, 40 (Minn.1979) (suggesting a defect in jurisdiction may not be present if a contestant has done everything within his power to fulfill statutes and a public official either fails or refuses to perform duty). We need not address this question, however, as it is not presented by the facts of this case. The appellants also argue that because bond was accepted by the auditor and the auditor appointed a member to the contest court, AHST cannot challenge the sufficiency of the bond. In de Koning, however, we stated that the county auditor did not have authority to waive jurisdictional defects. De Koning, 534 N.W.2d at 396. As a result, the appellants' implicit argument that the auditor waived the statutory requirement is without merit.