Joe Biden’s campaign sent a letter to the Iowa Democratic Party late Monday night demanding “full explanations” as to why no caucus results had been reported more than four hours after doors opened.
“These acute failures are occurring statewide,” Biden campaign counsel Dana Remus wrote, before asking that the party give a full explanation to the campaign “regarding the methods of quality control you are employing, and an opportunity to respond, before any results are released.”
JUST IN: Biden campaign general counsel Dana Remus sent a letter to top Iowa Democratic Party officials demanding “full explanations and relevant information” for the “failed” systems the IDP deployed for tonight’s caucuses.
Read the letter: pic.twitter.com/w6RtTVkDPt
— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) February 4, 2020
Biden trailed Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) by approximately four points heading into the caucuses, according to RealClear Politics polling average.
The Iowa state party released several statements over the night, as results on an unprecedented three separate tallies of votes remained unreported. The party initially said that “around 25 percent of precincts” had reported, but later warned that the delay was due to “inconsistencies in the reporting.”
“This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results,” Iowa Democratic Party press director Mandy McClure said in a statement.
Many Iowa precinct chairs were forced to abandon a new app that was implemented to report results over “technical issues,” and had to instead manually deliver results, which led to long delays.
An Iowa precinct chair appeared live on CNN and said that had been on hold for over an hour while waiting to relay results. When he was patched through live on television, the state party hung up on him before he could deliver the results.
Story County Precinct 1-1 secretary Shawn Sebastian on CNN:
“I’ve been on hold for over an hour with the Iowa Democratic Party … I just got off hold so I’ve got to get off the phone to report the results … Hello? They hung up on me. OK, I’ve got to get back in line on hold.” pic.twitter.com/rUYxAzDbb6
— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) February 4, 2020