The takeaway of the Iowa caucuses Monday night was not who won the first contest in the nation. It was instead a story of confusion and chaos as the Iowa Democratic Party failed to release the results at all for hours after the caucuses ended.
At 11:30 p.m., Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was the first candidate to come out and address her supporters, admitting that she, too, was in the dark about what was taking so long. The other candidates delivered speeches to their own supporters shortly thereafter, all acknowledging that they had no answers.
“Let me begin by saying, I imagine ― have a strong feeling, that at some point, the results will be announced. And when those results will be announced, I have a good feeling that we’ll be doing very, very well here in Iowa,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
The Iowa Democratic Party insisted that, in short, the system they put in place to report the results didn’t work out. It was too slow, overloaded and led to delays. The party tried to reassure people that there was no hacking of the system, pointing instead to “inconsistencies” in three sets of caucus results.
“This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion,” said Mandy McClure, communications director for the party.
But that wasn’t enough for the campaigns. The Joe Biden campaign sent a letter to party officials, demanding “full explanations and relevant information regarding the methods of quality control you are employing.”
The confusion took much of the wind out of not only what was supposed to be a shining moment for Iowa, but also for whoever emerged as the winner of the caucuses. Instead of leaving Iowa with momentum, some of the candidates would be getting on a plane for New Hampshire with uncertainty.
The Iowa Democratic Party tried something new this year. In the past, it released only the number of state delegates each candidate received. But this year, in an effort to be more transparent, it was also releasing the number of votes candidates received in the first and second rounds of the caucuses.
But that also made the reporting process more difficult. The party decided to use an app, allowing precinct chairs to report and transmit caucus results more quickly, at least in theory. But officials were secretive about the technology, refusing to reveal which company designed the app or what security measures were put in place to safeguard the results.
But that app didn’t seem to work for everyone, and the backup system failed miserably. Shawn Sebastian, a precinct chair in Ames, Iowa, tried to call a hotline number they were given to report results.
After being on hold for more than an hour, the operator hung up on him while he was live on CNN.
Oh my god@shawnsebastian, a Story County precinct captain, had been on hold with the Iowa Democratic Party for over an hour trying to report results.
CNN had him on to talk about the process. While on air, he got off hold.
Before he could get back to the call, IA Dems hung up pic.twitter.com/oIs7dC5buq
— jordan (@JordanUhl) February 4, 2020
There seemed to be significant confusion from precinct chairs on how to tally results and what to report. And a call between the campaigns and the Iowa Democratic Party, ended abruptly, according to CNN, with party officials unable to give a time for when results would be ready.