The chairman of the Democratic National Committee on Thursday called for a recanvass of the results of the Iowa caucuses, potentially delaying yet again the results in the first-in-the-nation presidential contest.
“Enough is enough,” DNC chair Tom Perez tweeted. “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 a review of the worksheets from each caucus site to ensure accuracy.
The IDP will continue to report results.
— Tom Perez (@TomPerez) February 6, 2020
Recanvassing requires double-checking existing vote counts, not re-doing the caucuses themselves.
In a statement shortly after Perez’s own, Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price said the state party was “prepared” for any recanvass requests by qualified presidential campaigns — he made no mention of the national party chairman’s request.
“In such a circumstance, the IDP will audit the paper records of report, as provided by the precinct chairs and signed by representatives of presidential campaigns.”
NEW from Iowa Democratic Party chair Troy Price: "Should any presidential campaign in compliance with the Iowa Delegate Selection Plan request a recanvass, the IDP is prepared." pic.twitter.com/MUSE26alPo
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) February 6, 2020
Perez’s announcement added to confusion about the Iowa tally. The state party has delayed completing the count of the state’s caucuses for days, first blaming a faulty app that was used to transmit data from the precinct level to the state, and then saying they were still collecting and verifying vote tallies.
As of Thursday morning, the state had released result data for 97% of precincts, showing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg neck-and-neck in the count of “state delegate equivalents,” which the state uses to determine the contest’s winner and allocate convention delegates.
Analysts had noticed errors and inconsistencies in some of the data that the party did release.
Tom Perez just invalidated the Iowa caucuses. He should back it up by a threat not to seat the IA delegates at the convention. In doing so, he might’ve killed the Pete Buttigieg candidacy.
This also denies Bernie an opportunity to declare a victory as it appeared he might take the lead through the satellite caucuses. However, since Team Bernie is almost single mindedly focused on this count for the purposes of generating fundraising and buzz, it might be the case (as Nate Cohn suggested) that the remaining non-Satellite caucus sites favor Buttigieg and he might not actually get into the State Delegate Equivalent lead. He may instead want a recount to address tabulation errors. Bernie may now turn his full attention to maximizing a win out of NH and draw the buzz factor from that (decent chance of doing that).
There’s a mild reprieve for Elizabeth Warren, whose campaign seriously underperformed, but she isn’t getting the scrutiny that Biden is getting. For Biden, turning the page to NH is the most important thing which he did well yesterday. A good debate on Friday which propels him to a second place finish will probably be his best possible outcome.
So glad there are paper ballots that can be re-counted! Think how horrible a mess we would be in now, had we not paper ballots.
The idea that everyone needed to know the totals immediately is what got us into this mess.
I’m happy to wait. Counting paper ballots doesn’t take that long.
As much as I despise Sanders and agree that IA Dem party should be punished, it’s ridiculous if DNC try to put its thumb on the scale to help Biden so blatantly by following your suggestions. The backfires and damage to the party for years to come will be horrible.
Tom Perez made a public announcement which in effect says he doesn’t have confidence in the result as currently tabulated. It is what it is. If confidence in the vote count matters, then you do a recount/recanvass. If IA Dem Party refuses to do it, you don’t seat the delegates. DNC has issued penalties like that before. The reason Perez went public is because the IA Dem Party has not reached an agreement with the DNC on this.
I also don’t believe Perez would’ve made this statement without a nod an approval from Team Sanders.
In this particular case, paper ballots aren’t a big help. Read the NYT article linked in the TPM article about what happened at the caucus sites. It’s the tabulation of the paper ballots caucus goers turned in, that’s flawed in many cases.
Precinct organizers put results in wrong columns, counted people who showed up after the first ballot (which they shouldn’t have), and made simple math errors. A re-canvassing might fix a math error or wrong column here or there, but it can’t fix all those problems.