Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Tom Perez on Thursday demanded state officials immediately recanvass the Iowa caucus vote amid fears that the delayed results could be inaccurate or inauthentic.
“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,” Perez tweeted.
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.
— Tom Perez (@TomPerez) February 6, 2020
The directive followed a New York Times report stating that some results published Wednesday were riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies. “In some cases, vote tallies do not add up. In others, precincts are shown allotting the wrong number of delegates to certain candidates. And in at least a few cases, the Iowa Democratic Party’s reported results do not match those reported by the precincts,” said the Times.
As of Thursday morning, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg holds a narrow lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), with the candidates garnering 26.2 percent and 26 percent of the vote, respectively. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is in third place with 18.2 percent, while former Vice President Joe Biden is in fourth with 15.8 percent. In fifth place is Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who received 12.2 percent.
The latest figures represent 97 percent of the released votes.
Party officials have blamed the delay of Monday evening’s results on faulty code in a little-known app that was used to record the votes. The app developer, Shadow, has apologized, with its CEO saying he feels “terrible” about the ongoing chaos.
“I’m really disappointed that some of our technology created an issue that made the caucus difficult,” said Gerard Niemira.
“What happened last night in Iowa should never happen again,” Perez said of the delay earlier in the week. “We have staff working around the clock to assist the Iowa Democratic Party to ensure that all votes are counted.”
“It is clear that the app in question did not function adequately. It will not be used in Nevada or anywhere else during the primary election process. The technology vendor must provide absolute transparent accounting of what went wrong,” added the DNC head.
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