As Monday turned into Tuesday, there was no victor in Iowa. There weren’t even any official results. As the campaigns came to learn, the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) found “inconsistencies” in reporting the three sets of results it promised to deliver. The information was to come from precinct captains, who were to report it through a newly developed app.
But they ran into trouble as caucuses finished, and a backup option to report results over the phone ran into its own issues. When CBS News attempted to call the Iowa Democratic Party Caucus Hotline, a recorded message said, “Thank you for calling the Iowa Democratic Party’s Caucus Hotline. All of our operators are currently busy. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. We look forward to talking to you soon,” before playing hold music.
One precinct captain who was trying to report his results was on hold for an hour and had apparently just gotten through to the IDP — with CNN listening as he was about to report his results — when the party hung up on him on live television.
This wasn’t an isolated incident.
“I was on hold for 40 minutes at my precinct. I gave up and hung up and returned to our HQ,” said Black Hawk County Vice Chair Nate Guber.
As word of the confusion and chaos spread, the IDP held a conference call with the presidential campaigns in an effort to explain the issues with the reporting system. In another call with reporters at 2 a.m., state party Chairman Troy Price said he wanted to emphasize this is a “reporting issue, not a hack” and “this is why we have a paper trail.” The party said it was turning to other methods to collect results.
“In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report,” the IDP said in a statement. “The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”
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