US: Iowa caucus errors reports ahead of final results

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - Significant errors have been detected in the long-delayed Iowa caucus results, according to a report published Thursday as the state Democratic party released nearly all of its tabulations in the troubled race.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg are locked in a dead heat for first place, separated by less than 0.1%, an echo of the 2016 election when Sanders narrowly lost to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the state contest.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren trails far behind followed by former Vice President Joe Biden with the Iowa Democratic Party reporting 97% of state precincts. While neither Warren nor Biden are likely to take the lead at this point, it is too close to call who will emerge victorious if final results are officially announced.

But even as the Iowa Democratic Party prepares to finalize its results, the New York Times reported significant and plentiful errors have been detected in the results that have so far been announced.

The errors are so significant that they raise questions about whether final results will ever be released, according to the newspaper, which said the state party has so far failed to fully verify results before publicly releasing them.

"Just about every election night includes reporting errors. They can be difficult to identify, but can often be corrected during a recount or a postelection canvass," the Times wrote. "This year’s Iowa caucuses are the reverse: Errors are now easy to identify, and hard to correct."

Among the problems detected are caucus results from at least 70 of the midwestern state's 1,765 precincts where the final round of votes exceeded the total reported when caucusing began.

That should not be possible given the format of the caucuses where individuals can choose to leave if their chosen candidate fails to gain the necessary support in a first round of voting. But new individuals are not allowed to enter the process after it begins, meaning that there was either a counting error or malfeasance in at least 70 precincts, which account for about 4% of the total.

Each precinct is further allotted a given number of what is called state delegate equivalents, which are ultimately used to formulate a caucus winner. But some precincts reported more than they were given, according to the Times.

Moreover, the newspaper found that in dozens of precincts the final preference vote and the number of state delegate equivalents doled out do not correspond.

In yet more troubles for the party, some votes had been reported for candidates other than those they were intended for, a sign that the Iowa Democratic Party does not have sufficient quality check controls in place for this beleaguered process.

With Sanders and Buttigieg neck and neck the Times said the errors it found would not be sufficient to believe either candidate did "materially better" in troubled precincts than elsewhere in the state, but given the narrow margin that separates them it said the errors could prevent an official announcement on a projected winner.

"Even if the appropriate candidate is deemed the winner, the irregularities in the results are likely to do little to restore public confidence in the Iowa caucuses," the Times wrote.