The dumpster fire that is the Democratic Party is on full display for all of America to see. They can’t even manage their own party elections and these are the same people who want to run the country and dictate how the rest of us vote!
Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez is calling on Iowa Democratic officials to immediately recanvass Monday’s caucus vote after days of uncertainty and growing concerns about “inconsistencies” found in the data.
“Enough is enough,” Perez said in a tweet. “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.”
A recanvass is essentially a double-checking of the vote. Iowa officials would have to hand audit the caucus worksheets and reporting forms to ensure that they were correctly calculated and reported.
In a statement released later on Thursday, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price did not address the request from Perez and instead said that the party would take on a recanvass if any of the presidential campaigns request it.
“We owe it to the thousands of Iowa Democratic volunteers and caucusgoers to remain focused on collecting and reviewing incoming results,” Price said, noting that officials “identified inconsistencies in the data and used our redundant paper records to promptly correct those errors. This is an ongoing process in close coordination with precinct chairs, and we are working diligently to report the final 54 precincts to get as close to final reporting as possible.”
As of Thursday morning, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg was clinging to the narrowest of leads in Iowa over Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Thursday, with 97 percent of the caucus vote released.
Buttigieg was at 26.2 percent and Sanders had 26 percent, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., running behind the pair of leaders at 18.2 percent. Former Vice President Joe Biden had 15.8 percent, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., at 12.2 percent and other candidates were in low single digits.
Sanders told reporters on Thursday that he is not concerned about the DNC’s call for a recanvassing.
“We won an 8-person election by some 6,000 votes,” Sanders said. “That is not going to change.”
Klobuchar told NBC News on Thursday that she supported the process.
“You have to make sure that every single vote was counted,” she said. “Sometimes in caucuses things can be close.”
Iowa Democratic caucus results are not actual votes cast. The percentages, based on partial returns of the estimated number of state convention delegates won by each candidate through the caucus process, are known as state delegate equivalents, or SDEs.