In re

── In re ── Court: Supreme Court of Iowa Date: May 01, 2026 Category: General In the Iowa Supreme Court No. 25–0873 Submitted March 26, 2026—Filed May 1, 2026 In re Election Contest of Highland School Bond Referendum. Ronald Greiner and Marcus Fedler, Appellants, vs. Highland Community School District, Appellee. Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Washington County, Michael Carpenter, judge. Election contestants appeal the district court’s affirmance of a contest court’s rejection of an election contest. Affirmed. May, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which all justices joined except Mansfield, J., who filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Sasha L. Finke (argued) of Finke Law Firm, PLC, Ainsworth, for appellants. Andrew Tice (argued) of Ahlers & Cooney, P.C., Des Moines, for appellee.  2 May, Justice. Iowa’s elected lawmakers have enacted a statutory framework that governs election contests. Under this framework, if an election is contested on the basis of “illegal votes,” the contestant must provide a statement “setting forth the names of the persons who are alleged to have voted illegally.” Iowa Code § 62.5(2)(e) (2024). This case involves a contest of a school bond election. The basis for the contest is “illegal votes.” But the contestants did not provide any names of any persons who are alleged to have voted illegally. Because the contestants did not comply with the statutory requirement of naming the persons who are alleged to have voted illegally, the contest cannot succeed. The district court was correct to affirm the contest court’s rejection of the contest. We affirm. I. Background Facts and Proceedings. In 2024, the Board of Directors for the Highland Community School District (Highland CSD) called an election on a $15 million bond measure to fund improvements at two school buildings. The bond measure was placed on the ballot for the November 5 election. The Highland CSD includes parts of Washington County. Washington County has five voting precincts. One of these precincts, Ainsworth, is at the center of this case. In Ainsworth, all election-day voters cast their votes at the same polling place. But some Ainsworth voters resided inside the Highland CSD, while others did not. So, on election day, two kinds of ballots were delivered to the Ainsworth polling place. One kind of ballot included the Highland CSD bond measure. The other kind did not.  3 But election officials at Ainsworth overlooked this distinction. So, for part of the voting day, ballots with the bond measure were distributed to all Ainsworth voters. At some point in the day, officials corrected course. From then on, ballots with the bond measure were distributed only to voters who were registered as residing in the Highland CSD. By statute, the bond measure needed 60% approval to pass. Iowa Code § 296.6. This threshold was achieved. The bond measure passed with 61.3% of the vote, consisting of 1,361 “yes” votes and 861 “no” votes. Within the Ainsworth precinct, the bond measure received 246 “yes” votes, 256 “no” votes, and 41 “undervotes” (meaning that 41 ballots did not reflect any vote on the measure). No record evidence shows how any particular person voted or where they resided. But the record does contain a relevant email from the Washington County Auditor. It reports that although 289 Ainsworth voters were registered as residing in the Highland CSD, 385 ballots with the bond measure were distributed to Ainsworth voters. This suggests that 96 voters received a ballot with the bond measure but were not registered as residing in the Highlan