Iowa Caucuses Marred With Confusion Due to Technical Failures, Count Reporting Issues

The Democratic primary for the 2020 presidential election got off to a rough start in Iowa on [...]

By Michael Hein

The Democratic primary for the 2020 presidential election got off to a rough start in Iowa on Monday night, as technical issues delayed the announcement of results. The Democratic party has assured the American people that the issue stems from "a systemwide disaster," and is not the result of hacking. There are still no official results available from the caucuses at the time of this writing.

The Iowa caucuses got underway on Monday night, and experts were already wary of changes to the process. According to a report by The New York Times, the Iowa Democratic Party adopted an app for tabulating and reporting the results of the voting rather than their previous method of calling results in by phone.

Many people working the polls received no training on the app whatsoever, and as a result technical issues emerged from the start. When many were unable to even download or log in to the app, they decided to revert to their old method instead. Unfortunately, they reportedly found themselves unable to reach Iowa Democratic Party leaders by phone.

"I don't even know if they know what they don't know," Polk County Democratic leader Sean Bagniewski told The Times.

This internal issue quickly led to panic in the wider world, where people all over the U.S. were awaiting results with baited breath. Iowa is one of the decisive states that will help determine who the Democratic nominee is, so national news outlets were giving blow-by-blow updates on the lack of results.

Meanwhile, speeches from the candidates themselves put a whole new spin on the chaos. Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign released promising early results, while Mayor Pete Buttigieg heavily implied that he had won the state altogether.

"Tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality," he said.

A campaign spokesman for Buttigieg posted screenshots of results from precincts where he had won on Twitter.

Chief strategist for Senator Elizabeth Warren's campaign, Joe Rospars, admonished these other campaigns for "putting out incomplete numbers" and "contributing to the chaos and misinformation." However, he himself had posted claims about the results as well.

"It's a very close race among the top three candidates (Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg)," he tweeted, "and Biden came in a distant fourth."

At the time of this writing, there are still no reliable results for the Democratic caucuses in Iowa. Any claims made my campaigns, parties or individuals online have not been officially verified by the Iowa Democratic Party.

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