BUTTIGIEG HAS NARROW LEAD OVER SANDERS IN CHAOTIC DEM CAUCUS
WASHINGTON: Pete Buttigieg is set to make history as the first openly gay man to win a presidential nominating contest held by a major party. So could the state that gave him this opportunity, Iowa, which is facing fresh scrutiny of its arcane nominating process.
As counting continued 24 hours after the caucuses closed, Buttigieg has a narrow lead over Senator Bernie Sanders, who was the clear front-runner in polls. Senator Elizabeth Warren is third and former vice president Joe Biden, who was expected to not do well, fourth.
Iowa Democratic Party officials sought to blame the delay on “coding issues” in the reporting of outcomes from polling stations and sought to allay fears of hacking and intrusion. “We have every indication that our systems were secure and there was not a cyber security intrusion,” it said in a statement.
Reports said a newly adopted smartphone app for reporting the outcome from the caucus centres may have been at the heart of the delay. It was commissioned just two months ago and deployed for use without adequate testing.
Party officials and volunteers who ran the caucuses were unfamiliar with the new app and had not been adequately trained, according to the New York Times, which pointed out the app did not work uniformly and malfunctioned and that there was a new format for tabulating results. There is a paper backup of the data and the officials will get it right eventually, even if it takes time.
But the quaint nominating method of caucuses has also come under scrutiny with longtime critics arguing their reservations about it, saying it’s undemocratic.