Iowa Democratic Party can’t say when the full results will be in
The Iowa Democratic Party will release 62 percent of the results of the caucuses on Tuesday evening, but has no timeline for when the full results will be released.
Party chairman Troy Price said in a brief press conference that the state party is continuing to review the “irregularities” in reporting of the results and has no set timeline for when the review will be complete.
“We’re going to take the time we need to get these results done. Now that we have the first batch coming out here … we’ll continue to go through our processes verifying everything,” he said.
Price said the initial batch of results would be a cross-section from all 99 of the state’s counties.
And he insisted that the data had not been compromised and would be accurate.
“I want you to know we know this data is accurate,” Price said. “We also have a paper trail and documentation that we’ve been able to use to verify the results.”
The Iowa Democratic Party is under immense pressure to release the results of Monday’s caucuses, which have been delayed due to reporting issues and a problem with a cellphone app that was meant to transmit the final tallies.
The campaign for former Vice President Joe Biden has questioned whether the final tally can be trusted and has involved its lawyers in the process.
Price said there is no evidence of malfeasance or that the data was compromised in any way. Rather, he said that a “coding” issue led to a problem in transmitting the data from the precincts to the state party and that they’re working overtime to match paper results to the electronic transmissions.
“We’ve been working day and night to make sure these results are accurate … the underlying data, the raw data is secure,” Price said. “It was always secure, this was a coding error in one of the pieces on the back end, but the raw data is secure.”
The presidential campaigns, voters and the news media are furious over the delay, which comes after a year of heavy campaigning in which the candidates spent tens of millions of dollars in hopes of a top finish at the first-in-the-nation caucus state.
Most of the candidates have moved on to New Hampshire, which will hold its primary on Feb. 11.
The state party’s bungling of the results has raised questions about Iowa’s status as the first state to vote and about the viability of caucuses.
Price declined to weigh in on the future of caucuses or his future as state party chairman.
“I made a commitment to see the caucus process through, that’s what I’ll work on,” Price said.
Updated at 5:28 p.m.
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