On Sunday night, the Sanders campaign requested a partial recanvas after the Iowa Democratic Party announced the final delegate count. The announcement came even after a large number of clear errors were pointed out in the final data released by the state party.
The Iowa Democratic Party said they had legal advice they could not alter the results of math sheets from precincts, even if it was clear that the sheets contained errors and or miscalculations. One journalist described the sheets as “riddled with errors”.
Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir told CNN that the count has “been handled incompetently,” and that after it’s said and done, Sanders will have the same amount of delegates as Pete Buttigieg.
Based on the results, the final delegate count for the national convention announced by the Iowa Deocratic Party is 14 for Pete Buttigieg, 12 fror Bernie Sanders, eight for Elizabeth Warren, six for Joe Biden and one forAmy Klobuchar.
This comes despite of a near tie in state delegate equivalent between Buttigieg and Sanders, and Sanders winning the popular vote on first and second alignment by over one percent.
Suspicions have been raised about the integrity of the count, especially since the Democratic National Convention took over following the disaster that was the night.
The count was again halted after satellite caucus numbers showing Sanders pulling back to near level with Buttigieg on state delegate equivalents prior to being finalised tonight.
Just some examples of irregularitiee, highlighted by journalist Daniel Nichanian, include:
- An error from the Des Moines 14th precinct costing Sanders 0.28 SDEs where his opponent received more SDEs in spite of Sanders having 50 votes to his opponent’s 31;
- An error in Carroll County where 0.11 of an SDE that should go to Amy Klobuchar is given to Pete Buttigieg;
- Precincts such as the Sioux City 5th having allocated an additional delegate to the amoun they are actually permitted.
Media outlets, including the Associated Press have shown reluctance to call the race, even after the final official results were released.
