An atypical delay allowed candidates to declare their success.
The Iowa Caucuses, the first test of democratic presidential candidates ‘ ability to stand up to President Donald Trump in November’s election, have reached an awkward impasse.
A few hours after they ended, the Democratic Party in that state was unable to report any voting results.
Party representatives in the state explained the delay as a “problem with transmitting results,” while stressing that the special app that officials at polling stations were supposed to download results through was not hacked.
“The original data and paper protocols are in order. It just takes time to pass the results on,” said the party’s communications Director, Mandy McClair.
McClair said that officials found “inconsistencies in three sets of transmitted data,” which led to the need to reconcile the results with “source data” and paper documents.
It seems that one of the sources of problems was a new mobile app designed to transmit the results of the vote to the party. The organizers of the Caucuses reported problems with loading the app and other failures.
Tom Courtney, Chairman of the Des Moines County Chapter of the Democratic Party, said the app created “chaos.” As a result, he said, district leaders tried to pass the results to the party’s headquarters in the state by phone, but they were sometimes too busy to answer calls.
After Tuesday came, and there were still no results, the candidates had little choice but to appear in front of their cheering supporters and portray optimism against the backdrop of uncertainty.
The party said the problem was not the result of a “hacker attack or interference.”
Democratic representatives promised that the results of the vote would be released later on Tuesday, but did not say when.
The announcement comes after tens of thousands of voters spent several hours trying to choose from among about a dozen candidates who have spent much of the past year trying to win the first voting state and then challenge President Donald Trump in the fall.
The embarrassment allowed each candidate to claim success, although the party’s statewide office did not announce any results when Monday turned into Tuesday.
“It looks like it’s going to be a long night, but we’re feeling good,” former Vice President Joe Biden said, suggesting that the final results will be “close.”
“We are ready for a long journey,” he added.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said he has a feeling that he will show “very good results in Iowa” as soon as they are published.
“Today marks the beginning of the end for Donald Trump,” he predicted.
Former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg made the unquestionable statement.
“We still don’t know all the results, but we know that, in the end, Iowa, you shook the country,” he said. – By all indications, we are moving to new Hampshire as winners.”
Against this background, one event did not come as a surprise: President Trump won the Republican Caucuses. The victory is mostly symbolic, given that he had no serious opponents.
The President’s campaign staff did not fail to speak out about the Democrats ‘ problems.
“The Democrats are stewing in the chaos with the Caucuses, which they created, having suffered the most disorderly disaster in history,” said Trump’s Manager of staff, Brad Parscale.
“Naturally, people will question the integrity of the entire process,” he added. – And these are people who want to run our entire healthcare system?”
