Iowa’s coveted voting status in doubt after delay
Iowa’s DES MOINES, IOWA — coveted position as the firstin-the-nation presidential nominating contest faces its most daunting challenge in light of problems that kept the state Democratic Party from reporting results.
The caucuses were already facing plenty of headwinds amid criticism that the overwhelmingly white state isn’t representative of the country’s diversity. And the final weeks of the campaign were complicated by President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, which sidelined several candidates and left Iowa eerily quiet at a pivotal moment. But the Iowa Democratic Par- ty’s failure to release results Monday night left the contest, long criticized for its compli- cated rules, one step closer to losing its status.
“With this reporting debacle, it may be the end,” said Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic presidential campaign operative and veteran of multiple Iowa campaigns. “And that’s from someone who loves the state and the process there.”
Iowa Democratic Party officials, who run the con- test, said Monday night that results were indefinitely delayed, not because of an outside hack but because of the malfunction of an app that was intended to ease the reporting of results from almost 1,700 precincts.
Once the app failed, the backup telephone reporting method became bogged down as leaders from the hundreds of precinct caucuses tried reporting to Iowa’s 99 counties, then each of those county chairmen to the state party, prompting an epic telephone backlog.
Party officials said they were preparing to release at least half of the results by late Tuesday afternoon.
If state party officials could get the results out Tuesday, “it looks really bad, but they can survive,” said veteran Iowa Democratic strategist Jeff Link. “We have to name a winner.”
It was another blow to a party-run process that few Americans understand for its differences from a primary election, including anti- quated rules and a mathematical threshold for candi- date viability in the Demo- cratic contests.
Those criticisms were in light of mounting pressure over the past several campaigns for Democrats to begin the march to the nomi- nation in a place more demographically representative of the increasingly racially and ethnically diverse party. Iowa’s population is 85% white, while the Democratic Party is much more racially and ethnically diverse.
Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price said he expected efforts to strip Iowa of its status to continue.
“That conversation takes place every four years,” Price told reporters Tues- day. “There’s no doubt that that conversation will take place again.”
That sentiment took a short breather after Barack Obama became the first African Amer- ican candidate to win the caucuses in 2008, en route to the presidential nomination and the White House.
But former Housing and Urban Development Sec- retary Julián Castro gave renewed, prominent voice to the sentiment even as he was running for president in Iowa last year, saying the contest “does not reflect demo- graphically either the United States or, certainly not, the Democratic Party.”