The frustrated head of the Democratic National Committee demanded Thursday that Iowa party officials conduct a complete recount of the botched caucus vote — as Sen. Bernie Sanders was declaring victory despite the three-days-late incomplete tally.
“Enough is enough. 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,” DNC chairman Tom Perez said in a tweet.
The call for a “recanvass” came three days after the Iowa caucuses, and with Sanders (I-Vt.) declaring victory in the first-in-the-nation nominating state, though no winner has been officially named and still only 97 percent of the tallies have been counted.
Speaking at his campaign’s New Hampshire headquarters in Manchester, Sanders noted that his campaign was winning the popular initial vote “by some 6,000 votes.”
“What I want to do today, three days late, is to thank the people of Iowa for the very strong victory they gave us at the Iowa caucuses on Monday night,” Sanders said. “When 6,000 more people come out for you in an election than your nearest opponent, we here in northern New England call that a victory.”
The delay in counting and delivering the results from the Monday night caucus is being blamed by the Iowa Democratic Party on a glitchy app that prevented precincts from transmitting the results.
Precinct leaders then attempted to call in the results to party headquarters. But once phone lines became overloaded, a number of precinct leaders gave up and went to bed without reporting their results.
That prompted the IDP to move to Plan C, manually examining the worksheets from each caucus.
Iowa Democratic officials told party leaders they expected to release final caucus results from all but a few precincts later Thursday.
The results show Pete Buttigieg and Sanders nearly tied for the most delegates with 97 percent of precincts counted.
President Trump’s campaign seized on Perez’s announcement. Trump and his allies have repeatedly insinuated that the Democratic establishment wants to deny Sanders a victory at any cost.
Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh tweeted that Perez’s announcement “translated” to “Bernie looks like he’s taking the lead and we can’t have that.”
Murtaugh also mocked the Democrats for the Iowa debacle.
“Ain’t no caucus like an Iowa Democrat caucus ‘cause an Iowa Democrat caucus don’t stop!,” he tweeted.
Sanders even joked that “maybe the Iowa vote will come in before the November election.”
With Post wires
