The Iowa caucuses took place on Monday, February 3, but everyone woke up on Tuesday morning without any official results. According to reports, the results have been delayed after an app recording the data was deemed to be inaccurate.
“We as the party have taken this very seriously, and we know how important it is for us to make sure that our process is secure and that we protect the integrity of the process,” Troy Price, the chairman of the Iowa State Democratic Party said, via FOX News. “We want to make sure we are not relaying information that could be used against us.”
An official statement also discussed the issue.
“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results. In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report,” Iowa Democratic Party communications director Mandy McClure said in a statement Monday night.
“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.”
From the Wall Street Journal:
The app was intended to help the precinct chairs record the results from each round of voting and take care of the delegate math. Then the precinct chair was supposed to use the app to send the results to the Iowa Democratic Party. But critics expressed concern about the reliability of the app given security concerns around the 2020 elections. Cybersecurity experts also roundly criticized the Iowa Democratic Party’s decision to not identify the app maker publicly or allow it to be subject to open security and reliability testing.
We will have to see whether the results will be released later in the day or whether the bizarre delay will continue throughout the week.