The many, many things that seem to have gone wrong with the Iowa Democratic Party’s vote-counting process.
The Iowa caucuses, the first contest of the 2020 Democratic primary, have been going for hours, and at this point it’s clear that results are badly delayed. As of 11:40 pm, not a single precinct’s votes have been publicly reported by the state party; at this point in 2016, 90 percent of precincts had reported their totals.
In a statement at 11:30 pm Monday, the Iowa Democratic Party said the delay was due to “inconsistencies” between multiple sets of results, saying they were trying to “validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report.”
The Iowa caucuses this year are a complicated process involving three different vote counts. For the first time, the state Democratic Party is supposed to be publicly reporting two different raw vote totals for every candidate (one with all candidates in the mix, and one after those who did not get at least 15 percent of the vote were eliminated), as well as the number of delegates each candidate actually wins in the final vote total.
Technical difficulties also appear to be in play: By Monday afternoon, reports were trickling out about problems with the mobile app that precinct chairs were supposed to be using to report their results, although the party said late Monday night that the app was not hacked and did not crash.
The delays forced cable news to fill an ever-expanding amount of airtime, but they could also end up being politically significant — fueling intraparty fights and casting doubt on the viability of the caucuses.
