Dempocalypse Now: It’s only one bad night, but it’s hard to imagine Iowa going worse for Democrats than it just did – By Andy Kroll (Rolling Stone) / Feb 4 2020
One candidate claimed victory before a single vote was officially reported. Another released his own internal and incomplete election results. A surrogate for a third candidate cast doubt on the integrity of the vote. The state party tried to assure the public that the problems were “not a hack or an intrusion.” A hashtag trended on Twitter calling for Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez’s resignation.
As Monday night bled into Tuesday morning, the Iowa caucus had no winner. Due to a technology snafu, party leaders and volunteers found themselves struggling to report their final caucus tallies. The candidates were furious. Julián Castro, the former candidate who now backs Elizabeth Warren, called it a “total mess.” The public went to sleep with no clue about the outcome of the opening contest of the 2020 campaign. Pundits predicted that Iowa had so botched the job that the state would surely lose its coveted first-in-the-nation status.
For the Democrats, it was nothing short of a nightmare scenario.
Now, to be clear, there was no evidence as of early Tuesday morning that vote counts had been manipulated or destroyed, according to public news reports and statements by the Iowa Democratic Party. “The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results,” a party spokeswoman said.
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