In a strongly worded editorial on Thursday, The Des Moines Register called on the Iowa Democratic Party to move quickly to prove that Monday’s results are correct.
Advertisement
For good measure, the editorial is entitled, “Something Smells In the Democratic Party”.
It gets sharper from there.
Because the caucuses are run differently than the usual primary process – voters physically arrange themselves around the room to signal their support – the Hill notes that a full recount would be impossible, and a Democratic official confirmed to The Hill Monday night that there is no recount provision. “But the refusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy”, the paper’s editorial staff wrote.
Clinton won with 49.9 percent over Sanders at 49.6 percent.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, from left, former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea acknowledge supporters during a caucus night rally at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Monday, Feb. 1, 2016. “Break silly party tradition and release the raw vote totals”, it concludes. Nevertheless, the Sanders campaign hasn’t formally demanded a recount of the caucuses, although they are reviewing the results on their own, precinct by precinct.
The Des Moines Registry released an editorial Wednesday evening criticizing the Democratic National Committee (DNC), who oversaw the votes, citing “too many accounts have arisen of inconsistent counts, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers, confused voters, cramped precinct locations, a lack of voter registration forms and other problems”. But it’s unclear what can be done retroactively about, for example, people who left because they couldn’t register or the security gaps between the sign-in tables and the actual caucus site (I wandered in and out of three different precinct deliberations, and while I didn’t try to “caucus”, it’s not entirely clear I couldn’t have).
Advertisement
These few questions they are raising should not obscure the fact that we took more steps than ever before to ensure the accuracy of our results. We partnered with Microsoft and the Republican Party of Iowa on a reporting app that was used with great success on caucus night to report a majority of our precinct results. Just yesterday, we met with the Sanders campaign who brought us a small amount of specific concerns, and the Clinton campaign has also asked us a small amount of questions. We could wind up with nobody winning Iowa, which would not exactly convince future candidates and observers to invest the vast time and money Iowans crave. First, however, we need answers to what happened Monday night.
