Iowa Democratic Party Says ‘Coding Issue’ Delayed Results: Live Updates

The Iowa Democratic Party said Tuesday that there were delays in announcing the results from the precincts because the new app that it planned to use for its caucus results reported only partial data, thanks to a coding issue.

“As part of our investigation, we determined with certainty that the underlying data collected via the app was sound,” say Troy Price, the party chairman. “While the app was recording data accurately, it was reporting out only partial data. We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed.”

Mr. Price said that the party planned to release results later on Tuesday, but he did not provide specifics. The Iowa Democratic Party scheduled a call at noon to brief campaigns on the latest developments in its attempt to count and report results from Monday’s caucuses.

“While our plan is to release results as soon as possible today, our ultimate goal is to ensure that the integrity and accuracy of the process continues to be upheld,” Mr. Price said.

Sean Bagniewski had seen the problems coming.

It wasn’t so much that the new app that the Iowa Democratic Party had planned to use to report its caucus results didn’t work. It was that people were struggling to even log in or download it in the first place. After all, there had never been any app-specific training for this many precinct chairs.

So last Thursday Mr. Bagniewski, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Polk County, Iowa’s most populous, decided to scrap the app entirely, instructing his precinct chairs to simply call in the caucus results as they had always done.

The only problem was, when the time came during Monday’s caucuses, those precinct chairs could not connect with party leaders via phone. Mr. Bagniewski instructed his executive director to take pictures of the results with her smartphone and drive over to the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters to deliver them in person. She was turned away without explanation, he said.

It was a surreal opening act for the 2020 campaign that included unexplained “inconsistencies” in results that were not released to the public, heated conference calls with campaigns that were hung up on by the state party, firm denials of any kind of hacking and a presidential primary left in a strange state of almost suspended animation.

“A systemwide disaster,” said Derek Eadon, a former Iowa Democratic Party chairman.

Amid the chaos and confusion, there were conflicting candidate speeches declaring various degrees of victory, as Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign released its own set of favorable partial results, and multiple campaigns hoped that the mess would not lessen the eventual impact of what they said appeared to be a disappointing first test for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

As Democrats struggled to count the votes in the opening presidential nominating contest, the one person clearly rejoicing was the man they hope to evict from the White House.

“The Democrat Caucus is an unmitigated disaster,” President Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning as the Iowa results remained unknown. “Nothing works, just like they ran the Country. Remember the 5 Billion Dollar Obamacare Website, that should have cost 2% of that. The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is ‘Trump.’”

But Mr. Trump, who won the Republican caucuses in Iowa handily, rejected suggestions that the breakdown in counting should cause the state to lose its status as the first stop in the presidential nomination process.

“It is not the fault of Iowa, it is the Do Nothing Democrats fault,” he wrote. “As long as I am President, Iowa will stay where it is. Important tradition!”

Read more here.

They are a mix of campaign veterans and political rookies, deeply committed to a complex Democratic process that defies most accepted tenets of representative elections.

They number more than 1,600, and they are the volunteers — precinct leaders, and the people they deputize — whom the Iowa Democratic Party relies on to ensure that its time-honored process runs smoothly, and that the results are reported accurately.

And on Monday night, all those years of experience came up against a smartphone app that the volunteers either didn’t use or couldn’t log in to, and a help line that left them on hold for hours.

According to more than a dozen Iowa Democratic Party officials, county chairmen and volunteers involved in running precincts, many precinct leaders ignored the party’s request that they download the app before caucus night or found the process of installing it too cumbersome.

Some did try to make it work. Sarah Banks, a 39-year-old career adviser at Grinnell College, served as a caucus secretary, deputized by her precinct leader to record and submit results. She said she logged in to test the state party’s app Monday afternoon with no problem. But when it came time to report the actual tallies on Monday night, her app failed. She spent the next four hours trying to phone in results.

“We had three of us call and we were all on hold,” Ms. Banks said. “When I was on hold for an hour, the phone disconnected.”

Sarah Truitt, co-chair of the Clarke County Democrats, said she was told to use the email address mathworksheet@iowademocrats.org to report results.

John Grennan, 44, the Democratic chairman in Poweshiek County in central Iowa, said seven of the 10 people running precincts in thee county never downloaded the state party’s app to begin with, choosing instead to phone in results as they always had. Others did try, but were unable to properly enter a security code to download and access the app, let alone submit results.

“A lot of people were like, ‘I’m getting a virus on my phone’ and just quit it.”

More on the volunteers who were supposed to make the caucuses run smoothly here.

NASHUA, N.H. — Fresh off an overnight flight from Des Moines, Pete Buttigieg met the mayor of Nashua, Jim Donchess, for a coffee at the Riverwalk Café downtown.

“You did a great job last night on your speech,” Mr. Donchess said, as he greeted Mr. Buttigieg on a sidewalk outside of the coffee shop.

“Thanks,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “Felt good.”

As the two men walked down the sidewalk, Mr. Buttigieg told the Nashua mayor that it was “frustrating” to not have good results, but said “you can’t deny” that he had had a strong night.

Mr. Donchess, a four-term mayor, announced his endorsement of Mr. Buttigieg this morning, though said he had been considering it for some time and was not influenced by the reports of a strong finish in Iowa.

As the two men ordered beverages — a black coffee for Mr. Buttigieg, and an oolong tea for Mr. Donchess — Mr. Buttigieg again spoke of his desires to get the “final numbers” but stated faith in the overall process.

“The good thing is there’s a paper trail, and it’s a caucus, so it’s not even secret ballots, so its all verifiable,” Mr. Buttigieg said to the Nashua mayor.

Mr. Buttigieg lingered in the coffee shop for about 10 minutes, sitting down with three voters to talk about local issues. He ignored questions from reporters about whether his speech last night in Iowa, seemingly declaring victory absent any official results, was premature.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts landed in Manchester shortly after 4 a.m., surrounded by senior aides and top surrogates. In brief remarks to supporters, Ms. Warren said she felt good about her campaign’s position — even as the official results remained unclear.

“So when I left Iowa I said it is too close to call and it still is — but I feel good,” she said. “We are in 31 states and have thousands of people on the ground.”

Ms. Warren thanked her team in Iowa and said her organizers there would now disperse to other states.

The campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Mr. Buttigieg released portions of their own caucus-night intelligence, both claiming that they were on track to emerge triumphant. And Ms. Warren’s advisers forecast a close finish among her, Mr. Sanders and Mr. Buttigieg while chastising her opponents for releasing partial information.

“Any campaign saying they won or putting out incomplete numbers is contributing to the chaos and misinformation,” said Joe Rospars, a top adviser to Ms. Warren, alluding to Mr. Sanders and Mr. Buttigieg.

A lot of reasons contributed to Monday night’s events, chiefly a breakdown of the process by which caucus leaders were supposed to report results to the Iowa Democratic Party.

But one factor was baked into that process from almost the moment the caucuses ended four years ago.

Historically, the party had focused on highlighting only one caucus result: the number of delegates each candidate had earned for the state convention. The winner of the Iowa caucuses was the person who earned the most state delegates, which translate into national delegates, which determine the nomination. This year, however, the state party chose to release four results from the caucuses.

That’s because in 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton edged out Mr. Sanders in the state delegate count by a quarter of a percentage point, earning roughly 700 to Mr. Sanders’s 697. That meant 23 national delegates for Mrs. Clinton and 21 for Mr. Sanders — an inconsequential difference between the two rivals.

Mr. Sanders’s 2016 campaign fought for an audit in Iowa — comparing the reported results with the papers on which caucus leaders had recorded voters’ preferences — and accused the state Democratic Party of a lack of transparency.

Largely because of Mr. Sanders’s objections, the party decided to release additional numbers in 2020 that it had always logged but never made public: the number of supporters each candidate had in the first round of voting and the number he or she had in the second round, after nonviable candidates were eliminated and caucusgoers realigned.

The idea was that all this data would provide a fuller picture of each candidate’s strength. But it also made reporting the results more complicated. Read more here.

In a joint statement released Tuesday morning, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst of Iowa and the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds, defended the Iowa caucuses, saying they were confident the results would ultimately be tallied.

“Iowa’s unique role encourages a grass roots nominating process that empowers everyday Americans, not Washington insiders or powerful billionaires,” they said. “The face-to-face retail politics nature of Iowa’s caucus system also encourages dialogue between candidates and voters that makes our presidential candidates accountable for the positions they take and the records they hold.”

They also defended the state’s position at the start of the nominating calendar.

“Iowa’s large population of independent voters and its practice of careful deliberation contributes greatly to the national presidential primary and makes it the ideal state to kick off the nominating process,” they said. “Iowans and all Americans should know we have complete confidence that every last vote will be counted and every last voice will be heard.”

Maggie Astor, Peter Baker, Alexander Burns, Nick Corasaniti, Christine Hauser, Astead W. Herndon, Jonathan Martin and Matt Stevens contributed reporting.



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