Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said that Iowa may lose its first in the nation status after a disastrous caucus.
"I'm frustrated. I'm mad as hell. Everybody is,” Perez told CNN on Sunday.
“Is Iowa about to lose their first-in-the-nation caucus status?” asked host Jake Tapper. “It’s not difficult to imagine South Carolina, New Hampshire, other states that are out of the process—Illinois for example, the governor there is making a big pitch saying, ‘Iowa, you lost your chance, you screwed up, it’s time for another state to take over.’ Is that possibly going to happen?”
“That’s the conversation that will absolutely happen after this election cycle,” Perez replied. “We had a conversation about two really important things—superdelegate reform and the primary caucus issue that we’re discussing now and that’s going to happen again. I have no doubt about it because it’s very necessary.”
"And I think what we're going to do at the end of this cycle ... is have a further conversation about whether or not state parties should be running elections,” he added. "Having said that, we should not have problems. ... This was unacceptable.”
Results marred by errors:
The Iowa Democratic Party released its final results but the Associated Press refused to declare a winner over errors that were obvious in the results.
"There is still some evidence the party may not have accurately tabulated some of its results, including those released late Sunday following a series of revisions," the AP said on Sunday.
The New York Times reported last week that there were errors in the results of more than 100 precincts, including errors in the vote count and the number of state delegate equivalents allocated to candidates.
The party corrected errors between the precinct reports and the data they released but argued it would be illegal to correct errors in the precinct data.
Sanders wants partial recanvass:
The final results show Buttigieg leading Sanders by 2 state delegate equivalents out of 2,152 total. The Iowa Democratic Party said it would award Buttigieg 12 delegates to the national convention while Sanders gets 12, Warren gets 8, Biden gets 6, and Klobuchar gets 1.
But the AP has not allocated the 14th delegate to Buttigieg over the errors. The Sanders campaign called for a partial recanvass of 20 to 30 precincts on Monday.
Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir told CNN that Sanders and Buttigieg will have the same number of delegates “after it’s all said and done.”
