The Iowa Democratic Party’s embarrassing delay in reporting results from its presidential nominating caucuses fueled arguments that the state should not hold first-in-the-nation status.
“This is a total mess,” said former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, who ended his own presidential bid last month before endorsing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “I respect the people of Iowa, they’ve been great — but it’s become very clear that our democracy has been misserved by a broken system.”
In November, Castro came out against Iowa being the first state in the nominating process in part because its overwhelmingly white population does not reflect racial diversity in the country or the party.
“We’re going to have to evaluate after this primary is done — at the DNC — evaluate how we do this,” Castro told reporters Monday. “The debate thresholds, the order of the states, the caucus versus primary. What happened tonight made the argument for itself, nobody can deny that this is a broken way to do it. It was a total mess.”
This is a total mess. I respect the people of Iowa, they’ve been great—but it’s become very clear that our democracy has been misserved by a broken system. #IACaucus
— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) February 4, 2020
“The idea of the caucus itself has failed to meet the viability threshold,” said CNN commentator Van Jones. “We’ve all been saying the whole time, why Iowa in the first place? It’s 90% white, you know, when you have a party as diverse as this, to be in a state that’s not diverse is terrible.”
“You only have one job, Iowa!” Jones added.
The whole idea of the caucus has failed to meet the viability threshold. #IowaCaucuses @CNN @AC360 #CNNElection pic.twitter.com/6JU0zBRg9x
— Van Jones (@VanJones68) February 4, 2020
“Get rid of the #IowaCaucuses! That’s the message tonight,” said Larry Sabato, University of Virginia professor and director of the school’s Center for politics. “It’s a mess in more ways than one. If this were a primary, we’d have a larger turnout AND the damn results would be known by now.”
Get rid of the #IowaCaucuses! That’s the message tonight. It’s a mess in more ways than one. If this were a primary, we’d have a larger turnout AND the damn results would be known by now.
— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) February 4, 2020
Analysts suspected that difficulties using an app meant to report caucus site results and struggles reporting new metrics of raw vote totals contributed to the snafu. An Iowa Democratic party spokesperson said that the delay was due to “inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” and was not the result of “a hack or an intrusion.”
