Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign plans to file a request to recanvass some Iowa precincts following a debacle last week that resulted in delayed results from the first-in-the-nation caucuses.
The Iowa Democratic Party on Sunday allocated its delegate count, nearly a week after the state’s caucuses took place. The results were delayed for days because of a “coding issue” with an app used to report the numbers, but the latest data showed Pete Buttigieg edging out Sanders for delegates, bringing in 14 delegates to the Vermont senator’s 12.
However, campaigns have until 1 p.m. EST on Monday to ask for a recanvass, which is essentially double-checking the results. Joining CNN Sunday evening, Sanders’s campaign manager Faiz Shakir revealed that his team would do so. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez had previously called for a recanvass following “inconsistencies.”
“You can expect us to be asking the Iowa Democratic Party for a recanvass of the discrepancies that we have identified and found for them,” Shakir announced. “We will be searching for and identifying even more. It’s been handled incompetently, from our perspective, and we will be asking them to look at some of these obvious discrepancies that have affected our count. And I think after it is all said and done, it should be the case that we have the same number of national delegates as Pete Buttigieg.
“So we’ll see how this plays out, Ryan. But you can expect some action from the Sanders campaign tomorrow,” he said, later continuing, “The truth of the matter is, Ryan, that we want to fight for every delegate this campaign has earned, and if we feel like we have been wrongly stopped from earning those delegates, we’re gonna fight for them, and that’s our job.”
Buttigieg, 38, declared victory early on Monday night based on his campaign’s internal figures, peeving his rivals. After more than two days of partial results trickling in, Sanders also declared victory, citing his lead in the raw vote total. However, the final results released Sunday gave Buttigieg the raw vote lead in addition to delegates, at 564.302 compared to 561.528 for Sanders.
With Iowa nearly in the rear-view mirror, most 2020 Democrats have turned their attention to New Hampshire, where the first-in-the-nation primary is set to be held on Feb. 11.
