The Associated Press announced it is unable to declare a winner in the calamitous Iowa caucuses because of “irregularities.”
The Iowa Democratic Party has released 99% of the results from Monday’s caucuses, showing former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders separated by 0.09 percentage points. Buttigieg leads Sanders by two state delegate equivalents -- which are used to determine a winner and allot national convention delegates -- out of 2,152 that have been counted.
Sanders, meanwhile, leads Buttigieg in the raw vote, 45,826 to 43,195.
The AP said it cannot declare a winner because “here is evidence the party has not accurately tabulated some of its results” and is missing data from at least one precinct.
“The Associated Press calls a race when there is a clear indication of a winner. Because of a tight margin between former Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders and the irregularities in this year’s caucus process, it is not possible to determine a winner at this point,” said AP senior vice president Sally Buzbee.
DNC announces recanvass:
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez called on the Iowa Democratic Party to begin a recanvass, which is not a recount but a check of the vote to ensure the results were added properly.
“Enough is enough. In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass,” he said on Twitter.
But just hours later, Perez clarified that he did not want a statewide recanvass.
“We have a shared interest in making sure we had accuracy, so what we did today is asking to make sure that if people need a recanvass in this precinct or that precinct, that it’s done,” he told MSNBC. “Assuming no candidate files a request, it will be surgical, surgical. Because we want to make sure if somebody raises a question, we have an opportunity to answer that question.”
NYT discovered dozens of errors:
The New York Times discovered errors in more than 100 precincts in Iowa.
In one case, some Des Moines votes for Sanders went to Deval Patrick while votes for Elizabeth Warren went to Tom Steyer.
While the Iowa Democrats addressed that problem, the Times identified errors in more than 100 precincts that it did not address before releasing the results.
Some precincts reported results that did not add up, others allotted the wrong number of delegates to candidates, and some allotted more delegates than they had available.
