Iowa caucus results: State party blames coding issue for delays

The first-in-the-nation nominating contest suffered an embarrassing stumble Monday night when technical problems forced the Iowa Democratic Party to delay the announcement of the results of the Iowa caucuses. A day after the caucuses, no winner has yet been announced, and none of the results have been released.

The Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) said Tuesday that it has identified a problem in the app it used to report results in Monday night’s caucus.

The party is blaming a coding issue in its reporting system. It says that the app recorded the data correctly, but was only reporting out partial data. The party claims that the flaw did not affect the ability of the precinct chairs to report their data accurately. And it also said that there’s no sign that hacking played a role in the problem with the app.

At this point, the party plans and hopes to release the results of the caucuses later today.

The major candidates took the stages at their watch parties starting around 11 p.m. ET and began moving on to New Hampshire, which holds the nation’s first primary next week.

Republicans, meanwhile, gloated on social media over the chaos. President Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale called it the “sloppiest train wreck in history.”

Coding problem with state party’s app caused delay
The Iowa Democratic Party has identified the reason for inconsistencies in the data from the caucuses Monday night, pointing to a fault with the app used to report the results.

“While the app was recording data accurately, it was reporting out only partial data,” IDP chairman Troy Price said in a statement. “We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed. The application’s reporting issue did not impact the ability of precinct chairs to report data accurately.”

Price also said, “We determined with certainty that the underlying data collected via the app was sound,” and that there is no sign that cyber hacking is to blame.

When the precincts began reporting their results last night, the IDP began checking their “accuracy and quality” and found “inconsistencies with the reports.” During an investigation, the IDP staff turned to its backup plan and “entered data manually,” which “took longer than expected.”

At this point, the precinct-level results are still being reported to the state party, which still plans to release the results later today. The IDP said that the required paper documentation of the caucuses meant that it was “able to verify that the data recorded in the app and used to calculate State Delegate Equivalents is valid and accurate.”

Iowa senators and governor are confident “every last vote will be counted”
Iowa Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds defended the caucuses and Iowa’s privileged spot in the presidential nominating process in a statement they released Tuesday about the delay in reporting the results.

“Iowans and all Americans should know we have complete confidence that every last vote will be counted and every last voice will be heard,” they wrote.

Reynolds, Grassley and Ernst, all Republicans, declined to criticize Democrats, and said that the process “is not suffering because of a short delay in knowing the final results.”

They also noted that the caucuses are supported by President Trump, who tweeted about the caucuses and also blamed Democrats for the delay.

“It is not the fault of Iowa, it is the Do Nothing Democrats fault,” he wrote Tuesday morning. “As long as I am President, Iowa will stay where it is. Important tradition!”

Mindful that the reporting failures would prompt more questions about whether Iowa should continue to be the first state to vet presidential nominees, Reynolds, Ernst and Grassley said of their state, “Iowa’s large population of independent voters and its practice of careful deliberation contributes greatly to the national presidential primary and makes it the ideal state to kick off the nominating process.”