Iowa Caucuses Yield Chaos And No Winner Yet Named

February 4, 2020 2020 Elections, Democrats

The Iowa presidential caucuses were thrown into chaos late Monday after the state Democratic Party said it found “inconsistencies,” delaying results and causing widespread confusion across the state.

The Iowa Democratic Party said early Tuesday that it would release the results of the Iowa caucuses later Tuesday after “manually verifying all precinct results.”

Party chair Troy Price said the party is “validating every piece of data we have against our paper trail. That system is taking longer than expected, but it’s in place to ensure we are eventually able to report results with full confidence.”

USA Today reports:

More than 2,500 campaign stops. A field that at times topped 20 candidates. And more than 1,600 Iowa Democratic caucus precincts, primed to kick off the 2020 primary season.

And it only took about three hours for it to start crumbling. The results of the Iowa Democratic caucuses were delayed Monday night, with the state party citing issues with the reporting process that involved three times the results as previous caucuses.

It wasn’t the first time the Iowa caucuses have produced late results, but Monday night’s issues come after months of heightened criticism of the caucus process and calls for Iowa to lose its vaunted first-in-the-nation status.

The New York Times reports:

The app that the Iowa Democratic Party commissioned to tabulate and report results from the caucuses on Monday was not properly tested at a statewide scale, said people who were briefed on the app by the state party.

It was quickly put together in just the past two months, said the people, some of whom asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

And the party decided to use the app only after another proposal for reporting votes — which entailed having caucus participants call in their votes over the phone — was abandoned, on the advice of Democratic National Committee officials, according to David Jefferson, a board member of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.