The Iowa Democratic Party plans to begin a partial recanvass of the Iowa caucus results on Sunday.
Two Democratic presidential candidates, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, requested that the party recanvass results after catching inconsistencies in vote totals from several areas. The party agreed to recanvass results from select areas, according to the Hill.
Party officials expect the recanvass to take two days. Before starting, officials will provide details and cost estimates to both campaigns, including the costs that each campaign will be responsible for covering. The campaigns can then choose to scrap the recanvass if they choose.
The Iowa caucuses took place on Feb. 3, but results from the first-in-the-nation contest were not available for days afterword. An app designed to report vote totals failed because of coding errors, forcing precinct chairs to call in to a hotline to report results manually. The hotline also failed as traffic caused extreme delays reporting results.
The incident was a national embarrassment for the Iowa Democratic Party and the Democratic Party at large. The state party received a torrent of condemnation from Democrats and equally as much mocking from Republicans.
Nina Turner, the national co-chair for the Sanders campaign, suggested in the aftermath that the Democratic National Committee run by Tom Perez was using the Iowa caucus chaos to hurt Sanders. Perez called for a recanvassing of the results three days after the caucus, which Turner suggested was a way to call into doubt positive results coming in for Sanders.
Sanders later distanced himself from Turner’s comments, saying that his “impression” was not that Perez was trying to undermine the results. Sanders won the popular vote in the state but fell behind Buttigieg in delegates awarded.
