The Iowa caucus scandal has continued to get more egregious by the hour, with new revelations routinely pouring in about extremely suspicious manipulations taking place which all just so happen to disadvantage the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the first Democratic electoral contest of 2020. By the time you read this article, there will likely have been more. Following the failure of an extremely shady app developed by vocally anti-Sanders establishment insiders which reportedly was literally altering vote count numbers after they were entered, Black Hawk County supervisor Chris Schwartz shared the election results in his county on Facebook so the public could have some idea of what’s going on as the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) slowly trickles out the results of the caucuses.
Sanders supporters quickly highlighted the fact that the IDP’s reported numbers for Black Hawk County were wildly different from those reported by Schwartz, with votes taken from Sanders and given to minor fringe candidates Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer. The IDP then announced that it would be making “a minor correction to the last batch of results”, which just so happened to be in Black Hawk County and just so happened to give Sanders back some votes (but still remains different from that reported by Schwartz). It’s probable that this only happened as a result of one Black Hawk County supervisor taking to social media to report the vote tallies for this one particular county. What about all the Iowa locations where this did not happen and local Democratic Party officials didn’t report their numbers on social media? Does anyone actually believe that the one instance where the IDP got caught is the one instance in which such vote tampering occurred? That would be a very silly belief to hold, in my opinion. It would be like a store clerk discovering that a can of beans is completely rotten, then going ahead and putting the rest of the pallet on the shelf under the assumption that the other cans are fine. Another of the countless revelations hemorrhaging from this fustercluck is a report from CNN and The New York Post that the DNC, not the IDP, is “running the show” in managing the Iowa caucus scandal. This means that this Democratic presidential primary scandal is being managed by the same committee which orchestrated the last Democratic presidential primary scandal, and that the campaign being victimized by this scandal, that of Bernie Sanders, is the same in both cases. This would be the same DNC whose chairperson, Tom Perez, recently stacked its nominating committee with dozens of odious alt-centrist establishment insiders who are ideologically opposed to Sanders in every meaningful way. “Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez has nominated dozens of lobbyists, corporate consultants, think tank board members, and former officials linked to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton to serve on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) nominating committee this July,” Kevin Gosztola reported for Grayzone last month. “Many of Perez’s nominees are vocal opponents of Senator Bernie Sanders and spoke out against his campaign when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2016.”
As these scandalous revelations continue to emerge I don’t see anyone online expressing surprise that the Democratic establishment is once again stacking the deck against Sanders, but I do see some people expressing surprise that they are being so brazen about it. Which is perfectly understandable; if this party wants to screw over progressive voters, you’d expect that they’d at least try to hide it a little bit so they don’t alienate their progressive base before November. The flaw in this expectation is its premise that Democratic Party elites care if their party wins in November. They do not. Put yourself in the shoes of one of the leading movers and shakers within the Democratic Party for a minute. Pretend you’re getting a nice paycheck, pretend you’re getting great healthcare benefits, pretend you get plenty of prestige and exclusive access and invitations to classy parties. And pretend you’re the type of person who’s willing to manipulate and deceive and kiss up and kick down and do whatever it takes to get to the top of such a structure. Now ask yourself, if you were such a person in such a situation, would you care if voters pick Donald Trump or Pete Buttigeig in November? Would it affect your cushy lifestyle in any way whatsoever? Would you lose your job, your prestige or your influence? No party elites lost those things in 2016. Why would you expect this time to be any different? But you might be at risk of losing your cushy lifestyle if a forcefully anti-elitist progressive movement gets off the ground and takes control of your party. So you’d stand everything to gain by doing everything you can to prevent that from happening, and, because you don’t care if Trump gets re-elected, you’d stand absolutely nothing to lose. These people do not care if Trump gets re-elected, because they lose nothing if he does. The only people who stand anything to lose are the ordinary citizens who are suffering under a corrupt status quo of soul-crushing neoliberalism and increasing authoritarianism, many of whom currently support Sanders. Democratic Party elites are perfectly happy to keep shrieking about Russia for another four years while making sure that the status quo which rewards their manipulative behavior remains intact, and ensuring that they never wind up like those poor suckers out there who are suffering from poverty and lack of healthcare. And everything I just said is equally true of the media class who are currently working in conjunction with the DNC’s shenanigans to spin Pete Buttigeig as the clear winner of the party’s first presidential electoral contest. They enjoy all the same perks, and move in many of the same circles, as Democratic Party elites, and it’s all conditioned on their protection of the status quo.
I keep seeing the word “incompetence” thrown around. “Gosh these Democratic Party leaders are so incompetent!”, they say. “How can anyone be so bad at their job?” Well, they are not bad at their job. They are very, very good at their job. It’s just that their job isn’t what most people assume it is. Their job is not to win elections and garner public support, their job is to ensure the perpetuation of the status quo which rewards them so handsomely for their malignant behavior. Toward this end they are not incompetent at all. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re doing it well. They are extremely competent. Depraved, certainly. Sociopathic, possibly. But not incompetent. They’re happy to make their nefariousness look like incompetence though, whenever they can get away with it. Any manipulator worth their salt always will be. If they can make their planned, deliberate acts of sabotage look like innocent little oopsies, they’ll gladly do so. But you learn in life that whenever you see someone making a lot of “mistakes” which just so happen to benefit them every time, you’re dealing with manipulation, not incompetence. What do the bad guys say in the movies when they order someone’s murder? They say “Make it look like an accident.” If it’s an accident you’ve got no trouble. You won’t be seen for what you are. But of course it’s no accident, and anyone with clear eyes and good intentions sees this. If you see someone working hard to make you believe that it’s incompetence, you are dealing with someone who is invested in maintaining the status quo in some way. You are being manipulated. The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly the way it’s intended to work. It ain’t a bug, it’s a feature. And that feature will remain in operation until the entire sick system is torn down and replaced with something healthy.
Now why would a Republican leaning poster try and bolster the idea that a 78 year old man who just had a heart attack lead the Democratic ticket and try to support division among democrats in a public forum?
Things that make you go hmmmm for $500 Alex.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Yep, that's it. That's what I'm doing, I'm the one creating division. You know like I rigged the DNC personally in 16 and I personally created a scandal in Iowa.
I saw this wasn't being discussed and posted an article. Period.
Why would a near constant Trump whiner come into a thread where an article was posted without comment and attack the person, not the article itself.
Biden is slipping fast and there is nothing the DNC can do about it. Everyone was tied up in Washington for the impeachment, giving Biden and Butt free reign to campaign all over Iowa. Biden failed miserably.
They won't allow Bernie or Warren to win because they are socialists and the DNC does not want the Democrat party to be socialist. They would lose all the moderate Dems in the process.
They don't want Butt because he is seen as a young and future political figure, not yet ready to be President.
None of the above, except for Biden, has Black voters support.
Bloomburg is their only hope so watch him rise with the DNC's help. They already changed the rules so he can be on stage at the debates.
I don't disagree with most of that. It would seem the DNC and their base want the opposite. The only way I see them beating Trump is with Sanders and the DNC is very clear it seems to me, they do not want that.
I think Sanders would flip more Trump voters than people realize. Such as myself.
Black Hawk County supervisor Chris Schwartz shared the election results in his county on Facebook so the public could have some idea of what’s going on as the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) slowly trickles out the results of the caucuses.
Sanders supporters quickly highlighted the fact that the IDP’s reported numbers for Black Hawk County were wildly different from those reported by Schwartz,
"Cooky conspiracy theories" I guess are actual results posted not matching what the IDP reported.
So cooky that no other County has offered up their actual results to disprove it. Neat.
Its just to bad that the fascist party disenfranchised your vote to rig their election for the WHITE PRIVILEGED Monster HILLARY you should be appalled.
My personal thoughts are that all Media attention is now on the Democrats and their candidates as impeachment has ended.
I don't think they want all that attention (as your last post shows), so I won't be surprised if they come after Trump again, taking those hot spotlights off of themselves.
My personal thoughts are that all Media attention is now on the Democrats and their candidates as impeachment has ended.
I don't think they want all that attention (as your last post shows), so I won't be surprised if they come after Trump again, taking those hot spotlights off of themselves.
Time will tell.
Nice chatting with you.
Trump makes himself a target, if they are still taking that bait after 4 years they deserve to lose.
It’s just astounding to me that 4 years later, it’s almost exactly the same situation. DNC pushing an old guard candidate that no one likes, shady stuff surrounding Bernie that they deny until the Debbie Wassermans of the world resign making it outrageously obvious, taking Trumps obvious media bait.
Now why would a Republican leaning poster try and bolster the idea that a 78 year old man who just had a heart attack lead the Democratic ticket and try to support division among democrats in a public forum?
Things that make you go hmmmm for $500 Alex.
Of course they don't want that. However it isn't good to be messing with the vote count.
If everybody had like minds, we would never learn.
BTW, I recommend this website to keep track of all the vulnerabilities out there.
“Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family.” -AOC
There won't be one. The app sucked and then the phone lines backed up just like when everyone's cable tv goes out.
But Orange Man bad.
“Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family.” -AOC
Yeah, Bernie may eek out a victory over a guy nobody ever heard of six months ago. That must make his supporters so proud!
You should laugh at this AFTER super tuesday. This is Bernie's year bro. AND I'm not even going to post all the 'proof' that there was a crap load of mistakes that ALL went against Bernie... that's why they are talking recount today. But hey, conspiracy theories huh...
BTW, an eeked out win is still a win. And Pete put everything he had into winning Iowa.
Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
Iowa Caucus Results Riddled With Errors and Inconsistencies
The mistakes do not appear intentional, but they raise questions about whether there will ever be a completely precise accounting.
Results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses were delayed by “quality control checks” on Monday night. Days later, quality control issues have not been resolved.
The results released by the Iowa Democratic Party on Wednesday were riddled with inconsistencies and other flaws. According to a New York Times analysis, more than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, that were missing data or that were not possible under the complex rules of the Iowa caucuses.
In some cases, vote tallies do not add up. In others, precincts are shown allotting the wrong number of delegates to certain candidates. And in at least a few cases, the Iowa Democratic Party’s reported results do not match those reported by the precincts.
Some of these inconsistencies may prove to be innocuous, and they do not indicate an intentional effort to compromise or rig the result. There is no apparent bias in favor of the leaders Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders, meaning the overall effect on the winner’s margin may be small.
But not all of the errors are minor, and they raise questions about whether the public will ever get a completely precise account of the Iowa results. With Mr. Sanders closing to within 0.1 percentage points with 97 percent of 1,765 precincts reporting, the race could easily grow close enough for even the most minor errors to delay a final projection or raise doubts about a declared winner.
The errors suggest that many Iowa caucus leaders struggled to follow the rules of their party’s caucuses, or to adopt the additional reporting requirements introduced since 2016. They show that the Iowa Democratic Party, despite the long delays, failed to validate all of the results fully before releasing them to the public.
Mandy McClure, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Democratic Party (I.D.P.), said the party reported the data as provided to it by the precinct caucuses.
“The caucus math work sheet is the official report on caucus night to the I.D.P., and the I.D.P. reports the results as delivered by the precinct chair,” she said. “This form must be signed by the caucus chair, the caucus secretary and representatives from each campaign in the room who attest to its accuracy. Under the rules of the delegate selection process, delegates are awarded based off the record of results as provided by each precinct caucus chair.”
Just about every election night includes reporting errors. They can be difficult to identify, but can often be corrected during a recount or a postelection canvass. This year’s Iowa caucuses are the reverse: Errors are now easy to identify, and hard to correct.
The errors are detectable because of changes to the way the Iowa Democratic Party reports its results, put in place after the Sanders campaign criticized the caucus results in 2016. This cycle, and for the first time, the party released three sets of results corresponding to different steps in the caucus process. The rules are complex and thorough, and they create conditions in which the results can be obviously inaccurate or inconsistent within a precinct.
First, caucusgoers express their preference for a candidate upon arrival, and these votes are recorded in a “first alignment.” Then, candidates with limited support at a precinct, usually less than 15 percent, are deemed not viable; their supporters get a chance to realign to support a viable candidate. The preference at this point is recorded as well, and it’s called the final alignment.
Viable candidates can’t lose support on realignment, but there were more than 10 cases where a viable candidate lost vote share in the final alignment, even though that is precluded by the caucus rules.
No new voters are permitted to join the caucus after the first alignment. But in at least 70 precincts, more than 4 percent of the total, there are more tabulated total votes on final alignment than on first alignment.
Many of these cases could be simple tabulation mistakes in a precinct caucus that otherwise went smoothly, like a West Des Moines precinct that reported the first alignment results only for the “nonviable” candidates (those who didn’t meet the 15 percent threshold) but still reported final alignment results for the viable ones. Others appear to be more serious.
At the next step in the process, each precinct allots county delegates based on final preference, and these county delegates are reported to the news media as “state delegate equivalents,” which approximate the number of delegates won at the state convention. Each precinct caucus gets a set number, but a handful of precincts allotted more state delegate equivalents than they had available.
Notably, there are dozens of precincts where there is a discrepancy between the final preference vote and the number of state delegate equivalents allotted. This includes more than 15 cases in which a candidate received fewer state delegate equivalents than another despite receiving more votes in the final alignment.
In these cases, it is not obvious whether the state delegates or the final alignment results were reported inaccurately.
The Iowa Democratic Party has corrected some errors, but the errors became far more frequent on Wednesday as the count dragged on.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Iowa Democratic Party released a wave of results showing Deval Patrick sweeping central Des Moines. That was incorrect. Mr. Sanders’s votes had been reported as being for Mr. Patrick, while Elizabeth Warren’s tallies went to Tom Steyer.
A plausible explanation is that an Iowa Democratic Party staff member accidentally copied the results of one column too far to the left in a spreadsheet for some precincts. Such errors inevitably occur in manual data entry, but the Iowa Democratic Party does not appear to have enough quality checks to assure that it reports accurate results.
The Iowa Democratic Party quickly corrected these errors, and they are not included in our overall count of discrepancies in more than 100 precincts. The party has not yet addressed other irregularities reported to it or circulating on social media. In another case, The Times alerted the party to an error at 6 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday that remained in the data released several hours later.
The Times is continuing to report the Iowa Democratic caucus results as released by the party and has alerted the party to an extensive list of precinct errors.
There is no reason to believe that Mr. Sanders or Mr. Buttigieg did materially better in the contaminated precincts than they did elsewhere, either over all or controlling for their demographic characteristics. But the tabulated result could be close enough for the remaining ambiguity to preclude a projection of a winner.
Even if the appropriate candidate is deemed the winner, the irregularities in the results are likely to do little to restore public confidence in the Iowa caucuses.
BTW, an eeked out win is still a win. And Pete put everything he had into winning Iowa.
Yeah, Pete was the only one trying.
Like I said, nobody knew who he was six months ago. Now he just gave Bernie a run for his money and everybody knew who Bernie was. Even name recognition didn't help him the more people got to know Pete.
Now Pete has people's attention. I realize Pete's odds are still slim. But Iowa is a perfect example of how much people are willing to listen to an extremely intelligent moderate.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Yeah, Bernie may eek out a victory over a guy nobody ever heard of six months ago. That must make his supporters so proud!
Got news for you - Bernie is the early front runner. Period. Doesn't matter how far left the guy is, and he's way left of where I am, he's the absolute front runner at this point.
Biden - sorry, too much baggage and I see him wilting under Trump attack.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
BTW, an eeked out win is still a win. And Pete put everything he had into winning Iowa.
Yeah, Pete was the only one trying.
Like I said, nobody knew who he was six months ago. Now he just gave Bernie a run for his money and everybody knew who Bernie was. Even name recognition didn't help him the more people got to know Pete.
Now Pete has people's attention. I realize Pete's odds are still slim. But Iowa is a perfect example of how much people are willing to listen to an extremely intelligent moderate.
And as much as I hate it, voters do strongly follow a herd mentality. 'Momentum' in an election is a very real thing.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
Got news for you - Bernie is the early front runner. Period. Doesn't matter how far left the guy is, and he's way left of where I am, he's the absolute front runner at this point.
Biden - sorry, too much baggage and I see him wilting under Trump attack.
And Biden was the front runner before him and Liz was running in second. And....
I'll say it again. Nobody even knew who Pete was six months ago. The more they learn about him the better he does. What I'm talking about is how much ground he's covered in a short period of time. That can not be denied.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
You know what? I'd be just fine with Pete beating Bernie as long as there are no more DNC style shenanigans. I mean, just let the best man win. No cheating, no rigging, no BS.
Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
DNC chair calls for Iowa to recanvass caucus vote, says 'enough is enough'
Quote:
By Phil Helsel Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez is calling on Iowa Democratic officials to immediately recanvass Monday's caucus vote after days of uncertainty and growing concerns about "inconsistencies" found in the data.
"Enough is enough," Perez said in a tweet. "In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass."
A recanvass is essentially a double-checking of the vote. Iowa officials would have to hand -audit the caucus worksheets and reporting forms to ensure that they were correctly calculated and reported.
In a statement released later Thursday, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price did not address the request from Perez and instead said that the party would take on a recanvass if any of the presidential campaigns request it.
"We owe it to the thousands of Iowa Democratic volunteers and caucusgoers to remain focused on collecting and reviewing incoming results," Price said, noting that officials "identified inconsistencies in the data and used our redundant paper records to promptly correct those errors. This is an ongoing process in close coordination with precinct chairs, and we are working diligently to report the final 54 precincts to get as close to final reporting as possible."
DNC Chair Perez calls for Iowa Democratic party to recanvass caucus votes FEB. 6, 202002:21 As of Thursday morning, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was clinging to the narrowest of leads in Iowa over Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with 97 percent of the caucus vote released.
Buttigieg was at 26.2 percent and Sanders had 26 percent, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., running behind the pair of leaders at 18.2 percent. Former Vice President Joe Biden had 15.8 percent, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., at 12.2 percent and other candidates were in low single digits.
Sanders told reporters Thursday that he is not concerned about the DNC's call for a recanvassing.
"We won an 8-person election by some 6,000 votes," Sanders said. "That is not going to change."
Klobuchar told NBC News on Thursday that she supported the process.
"You have to make sure that every single vote was counted," she said. "Sometimes in caucuses things can be close."
Iowa Democratic caucus results are not actual votes cast. The percentages, based on partial returns of the estimated number of state convention delegates won by each candidate through the caucus process, are known as state delegate equivalents, or SDEs.
The totals were put out by the Iowa Democratic Party over the past two days after chaos over the caucuses Monday night. More data may be released Thursday.
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In addition to the estimates of convention delegates, the Iowa Democratic Party also released two other numbers:
In voters' initial candidate preference at the caucuses, Sanders had 24.7 percent, or 42,672 votes, and Buttigieg took 21.3 percent, or 36,718 votes.
In voters' reallocated preference, Sanders had 26.5 percent, or 44,753 votes, and Buttigieg had 25 percent, or 42,235 votes. The reallocated preference is the raw tally taken after the caucus process known as realignment. If a caucusgoer's initial candidate preference did not receive enough support to meet the precinct location's viability threshold (15 percent in most caucus locations), the caucusgoer is allowed to shift his or her support — or realign — to another candidate who did attain viability.
Results from the contest were delayed by what organizers said was a problem with a smartphone app. Final tallies had been expected that evening, but instead, partial results were released Tuesday and the remainder Wednesday.
Nevada's Democratic Party, which had planned to use the app for its Feb. 22 caucus, said a day after the fiasco in Iowa that it would not use the app after all. The state's Democratic Party said Tuesday that it had previously developed backup plans for its reporting systems and was in the process of "evaluating the best path forward."
Cybersecurity experts who examined a public version of the smartphone app told NBC News it contained technical and design flaws and appeared to have been rushed into use.
Caucusgoers gathered Monday at nearly 1,700 sites across Iowa to tally support for their preferred candidates. As the delay stretched on into Tuesday, candidates came out to give speeches that sounded a lot like declarations of victory despite no numbers to support or refute them.
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ANALYSIS Iowa meltdown, Trump bump are 2020 warning signs for Democrats The state has 41 pledged delegates up for grabs, and the high-stakes contest traditionally plays a major role in determining who is a legitimate contender in the race.
Even with only a little more than 90 percent reporting in Iowa, Buttigieg on Wednesday night continued to tout the caucus as a win, telling a New York fundraiser that "we remain in the lead."
"There is just no question that Monday in Iowa represents an astonishing victory for our vision, for our candidacy and for this country," the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor said according to a pool report.
First, if Bernie DID win by 6,000 votes, he of all people should know those excess votes should be redistributed equally. You're not allowed to have more than someone else that is in need.
Secondly, I wouldn't be surprised if, during a recanvass, Biden ends up the winner. Might even be Hillary, actually.
The caucus was Monday. Here it is Thursday late afternoon, and the IDP still doesn't know? CAn't run a simple state caucus?
How do u go from one extreme to the other? ... please help me understand ... there on polar opposite ends of the spectrum ...
Please explain
Very complicated. It would take a couple beers and an hour to really explain properly. They aren't as different as meets the eye.....Trump just lies about who he is to appease his base. I voted more against Hillary than I did FOR Trump.
The common thread, for me, they both upset the establishment status quo. I like the idea of healthcare, Student Debt forgiveness and green initiatives and limiting people so wealthy that Ayn Rand would blush. I also like 2A and not caving to crying, whiney far left people crying bigotry on virtually everything.
I'd rather watch it burn than let the establishment gestapo create ruling families. A Trump, Sanders card is was ideal for me in 16, so I am good with either come 2020.
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