Last week’s Iowa caucus saw plenty of drama on both the Republican and Democratic sides. On the GOP end, Donald Trump nearly lost (the rest of) his bloody mind after coming in second after Ted Cruz. This gave the world plenty of reason to relive Trump’s “loser” quotes before Trump unleashed on Ted Cruz by accusing him of election fraud. Of course, Cruz’s behavior was largely sketchy, but there was some other weirdness happening too.
The Democratic caucuses saw Hillary Clinton win a precinct by way of a coin toss, which likely affected the “virtual tie” that Bernie Sanders gamely announced. The spectacle of these coin tosses looked ridiculous, and Iowa knows it. The state’s largest newspaper, the Des Moines Register, published an editorial which began as follows: “Once again the world is laughing at Iowa.” The paper begrudgingly admitted their “quirky” overall political process, but “what we can’t stomach is even the whiff of impropriety or error.” The paper called for an audit of the Democratic results, partially because they “were too close” but also because of the coin-toss factor. Now, the paper follows up with an announcement that errors have been found:
[A]s errors are being discovered, the final tally is being changed, party officials confirmed to the Des Moines Register on Friday.
“Both the Sanders and Clinton campaigns have flagged a very small number of concerns for us, and we are looking at them all on a case-by-case basis,” Iowa Democratic Party spokesman Sam Lau told the Register.
Well, it remains to be seen whether anything will come of these errors, but there reportedly “numerous” mistakes found, which could affect the delegate count for both Clinton and Sanders. However, it’s interesting that both Sanders and Clinton complained about the alleged discrepancies. Sanders would be the most likely party to take issue, but perhaps Clinton wished to widen her lead? We’ll see what happens next.
(Via Des Moines Register)