'Complete Disaster': Iowa Dems Blasted for Total Caucus Meltdown
The Iowa Democratic Party is under fire for a long delay in reporting results from the state’s presidential caucus on Monday.
This year was set to be the first that the party used a new app to report results.
But at midnight Eastern Time, roughly two hours after most caucus sites had closed, the vast majority of the results had not been released.
“The app just straight up wasn’t working,” Shawn Sebastian, the caucus secretary for Story County Precinct 1-1, told The Washington Post.
The official party line was that the issue wasn’t the app but rather “inconsistencies” that were found as party leaders, for the first time, reported three sets of results, according to The Post: “the original number of people who had aligned for a candidate, the numbers for each candidate upon realignment and the number of delegates awarded to each candidate.”
“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” read a statement from Iowa Democratic Party spokeswoman Mandy McClure.
“In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report.”
“This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion,” she added. “The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”
Despite the lack of a clear winner, candidates still delivered speeches from their respective caucus night party locations.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota was the first to do so, and other candidates followed.
As a whole, the night was a “complete disaster,” according to The Hill.TV’s Saagar Enjeti.
What a complete disaster https://t.co/y9EKpqbRfb
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) February 4, 2020
Others expressed similar sentiments:
This is no way to run an election in Iowa or anywhere. As I‘ve been saying at #ElectionMeltdown book events, you are much more likely to be disenfranchised by incompetence than voter suppression or fraud. https://t.co/G1zlM9pTVL
— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) February 4, 2020
BREAKING: The Iowa Democrat Party said they found “inconsistencies” with caucus results.
The fix is in.
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) February 4, 2020
Wait A Second:
So, you’re telling me that the democrats want a complete government takeover of your healthcare,
where you lose your private insurance,
but they can’t even run an Iowa caucus?
Socialism in action. #IowaCaucuses
— #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) February 4, 2020
Imagine if Dems had spent less time on Impeachment and more time double checking their Iowa caucus app
And they want to run the country
— Matt Schlapp (@mschlapp) February 4, 2020
[it appears a leftist may do well in the iowa caucuses]
dnc: uhh we forgot how to count
— Elizabeth Bruenig (@ebruenig) February 4, 2020
This is going to take forever. The Iowa caucus “results” are a disaster and nobody will believe them. #IowaCaucuses
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) February 4, 2020
So the operative word of the night for #IACaucus is “disaster.” Will wait to see if it turns into full-blown “unmitigated disaster.” Popping popcorn. /1 https://t.co/C5ASxYwIxs
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) February 4, 2020
If the Democrats can’t run a #caucus that they had four years to prepare for, how the hell can anyone think they could actually run the country? #IowaCaucuses #iowa
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 4, 2020
“If the Democrats can’t run a #caucus that they had four years to prepare for, how the hell can anyone think they could actually run the country?” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted.
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