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Breakdown, go ahead give it to me

Image via Iowa Starting Line tweet: “At one Des Moines precinct tonight, an attendee brought in a concealed bottle of wine, dropped it, and it shattered everywhere.”

For those of you who fell asleep last night waiting for caucus results out of Iowa (my hand’s in the air), there is not much new to report this morning except chaos, meltdown, debacle, etc. Headline writers grabbed for the nearest thesaurus.

Axios reports “not a single result” has been reported from the Iowa caucuses yet this morning.

The Iowa Democratic Party blamed the delay on “inconsistencies” in sets of numbers reported from the field. The New York Times reports a vote-reporting phone app the party developed only in the last two months gave users headaches. Iowa Democrats adopted the process under pressure:

… the party decided to use the app only after another proposal for reporting votes — which entailed having caucus participants call in their votes over the phone — was abandoned, on the advice of Democratic National Committee officials, according to David Jefferson, a board member of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.

Axios reports new rules instituted to increase transparency went haywire:

The big picture: The debacle overshadowed the winners-losers story of the night, opened Democrats to accusations of incompetence by the Trump campaign and reignited the debate about how long this small, predominately white state should keep its lock on first-in-the-nation status.

Reporters Alexi McCammond and Margaret Talev add:

  • There were reports that some caucus leaders couldn’t get the app to work; they were left on hold anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours with the hotline they were supposed to use to report issues with it, or report via telephone rather than the app. 
  • “We found inconsistencies in the reporting,” a party statement said. “In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail.”
  • The statement said the snafu, which left cable anchors with hours to fill and nothing to say, was “not a hack or intrusion.”

“The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results,” the Iowa Democratic Party said in a statement.

Campaigns headed into New Hampshire’s February 11 primary having to improvise Iowa results and/or imagine momentum they believe they have. Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders declared victory based on unverified counts by their campaigns. Elizabeth Warren arrived in Manchester, N.H. telling supporters Iowa was “too close to call.” 

“We’re going to walk out of here with our share of delegates,” Joe Biden told supporters in Des Moines. “We don’t know exactly what is it yet, but we feel good about where we are.” Unverified internal tallies released by the Sanders campaign suggest the front-runner is no longer the front-runner.

Naturally, the Republican candidate who bankrupted his casinos and whose father repeatedly bailed out his failed businesses crowed that Iowa was “an unmitigated disaster” for Democrats.

So, while you wait:

https://youtu.be/ZYzy8LtyLsk

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