WASHINGTON/MANCHESTER, New Hampshire--Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez on Thursday called for an audit of the Iowa caucuses after an array of problems delayed results from the party's first 2020 presidential nominating contest and created uncertainty about their accuracy.
However, the Iowa Democratic Party's leader said it would comply only if a campaign asked for an audit. No winner has been declared four days after the caucuses took place in roughly 1,600 locations throughout Iowa on Monday night, and the troubled process has clouded Democrats' initial efforts to find a challenger to Republican President Donald Trump in November.
"Enough is enough," Perez wrote in a Twitter post. "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."
Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price later said the local party did not plan to start an immediate audit. “We owe it to the thousands of Iowa Democratic volunteers and caucusgoers to remain focused on collecting and reviewing incoming results," Price said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Should any presidential campaign in compliance with the Iowa Delegate Selection Plan request a recanvass, the IDP is prepared."
Under party rules, a recanvass would involve a hand audit of caucus-site math to recount the worksheets and forms that were submitted via telephone and a new mobile app on caucus night. With 97% of precincts counted, Pete Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has 26.2% of state delegate equivalents and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has 26.1%, according to the state party.
Buttigieg, ahead in the delegates that will be used to determine a winner, has claimed victory in the race. As has Sanders, who has a slight lead in the equivalent of Iowa's popular vote, which will not be used to determine a winner.
It was not clear when the remainder of the results would be released. Party officials initially attributed the delays to a technical problem with the new mobile app, but other concerns have since emerged, complicating efforts to release the final tallies.
The Iowa Democratic Party received an "unusually high volume of inbound calls" to its caucus hotline on Monday night from "callers who would hang up immediately after being connected, supporters of President Trump who called to express their displeasure with the Democratic Party, and Iowans looking to confirm details," a party official said.
The call volume was "highly irregular" compared with previous caucuses, the official said.
The New York Times has also reported that more than 100 precincts reported results that were inconsistent, had missing data or were not possible under the caucus rules, casting doubt on the count. The Iowa Democratic Party declined to comment on inconsistencies.
