MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — The Iowa Democratic Party extended the deadline to challenge official results from the state’s caucuses just 30 minutes before the original deadline.
Campaigns now have until Saturday at noon CST to submit evidence of inconsistencies in reported precinct data and until Monday at noon to request a recanvass or recount of results.
The previous deadline to request a recanvass was noon CST on Friday.
With 100% of precincts reporting, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg held a razor-thin lead of less than one-tenth of 1% in state delegate equivalents over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders won the popular vote.
The results were delayed due to technical problems with an app meant to transmit results from precincts to headquarters, and each precinct was instead verified manually by the Iowa Democratic Party. But more than 100 precincts showed obvious errors, such as incorrect allocation of state delegate equivalents to numbers of voters on first and final alignment that are inconsistent with caucus rules.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez called on Thursday for a recanvass of the Iowa caucus results, which entails double-checking reported totals to ensure they were tabulated correctly. “Enough is enough,” he said.
The Iowa Democratic Party swiftly responded with a statement on Thursday that noted only a candidate could request a recount, and if they did so, the campaign would have to pay for the cost of the recanvass. The deadline to do so after full reporting on Thursday night was noon CST on Friday.
Buttigieg was supportive of a recanvass or recount, saying during CNN’s town hall on Thursday that the party should do “whatever they need to do in order to make sure that the information is clear and verified” — but indicated that he would not be the candidate to request one.
“I’ll leave it to the party to get into that. But you know, what I’ll say is nothing can take away what happened on Monday, just an extraordinary moment for the movement that we have built, and now, we’re looking ahead to New Hampshire and beyond,” Buttigieg said.
Sanders also did not express a desire to take on the responsibility of requesting a recanvass despite noting that there are clear errors in official results.
“What I expect will most definitely happen is that Mr. Buttigieg and I will end up with the same amount of delegates — 11 now, each probably a little bit more. That’s what will happen, ain’t going to change, and what certainly is not going to change is the fact that in terms of the popular vote, we won a decisive victory,” Sanders said in a press conference on Thursday.
In a CNN town hall on Thursday, Sanders shot down the idea of taking on a recanvass. “We have got enough of Iowa. I think we should move on to New Hampshire,” he said.
