DNC Chairman Tom Perez Calls for 'Immediate Recanvass' in Iowa

[babylonsister]

Hoping for a different outcome?


https://www.thedailybeast.com/dnc-chairman-tom-perez-calls-for-immediate-recanvass-in-iowa?ref=home

DNC Chairman Tom Perez Calls for ‘Immediate Recanvass’ in Iowa
‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’
Emma Tucker
Updated Feb. 06, 2020 1:19PM ET /

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez called on the Iowa Democratic Party on Thursday to “immediately begin a recanvass” in the state after the caucus disaster earlier this week. “Enough is enough,” Perez tweeted, citing the “problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results.” The Daily Beast reported that a DNC aide defined Perez’s “recanvass” as a hand audit of caucus math worksheets and reporting forms to make sure that they were correctly tallied and reported in the telephone intake sheets and caucus reporting app.

The Iowa Democratic Party released partial results from Monday’s state caucuses and several updates on Wednesday. Ninety-seven percent of the vote has been released, which shows former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) almost tied for first place ahead of the rest of the Democratic candidates. Perez’s tweet comes after further delays and errors in the reporting of the Iowa caucus results.

[7wo7rees]

1. Not so fast Tommy.

According to a 21-page caucus recanvass and recount manual the Iowa Democratic Party prepared before Monday's caucus began, presidential campaigns can request a recanvass of results by sending Iowa party chair Troy Price a letter by noon Friday.

The manual does not say explicitly say that a DNC chair can request a recanvass — it only lists presidential campaigns as possible requesters.

"Requests must present credible evidence suggesting that results were misreported or erroneously counted," the manual said.

A committee will validate the requests, according to the manual, and include the cost "assessed to the candidate in order to complete the recanvass."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/02/06/iowa-caucus-results-pete-buttigieg-bernie-sanders-close-delegate-race/4675289002/

[phleshdef]

2. The DNC can throw the whole fucking thing out if they want to.

[stopdiggin]

13. and not recognize IA delegates?

or attempt some scheme to replace them? (which of course wouldn't engender ANY calls of "rigging" by the various campaigns.)

[phleshdef]

14. Look up the Florida and Michigan primaries from 2008.

[stopdiggin]

18. FL and MI clearly (and quite deliberately) broke national rules

and the consequences were spelled out .. also quite clearly .. before and after the broken rules. (I'm quite familiar with the events)

Not an analogous situation at all.

[phleshdef]

21. I didn't say it was analogous.

But if the DNC feels like Iowa is a fatally flawed election, they can have a hearing and take a vote and possibly solve it some other way. There are no laws preventing them from doing that.

[stopdiggin]

23. there are no laws period

It's a private organization .. following rules set out for itself.
And that leads us back to my original post on this thread. Are they going to disallow all delegates selected by the state? And following that .. what?

[phleshdef]

24. I doubt they would disallow them.

That was why I brought up Florida and Michigan. They didn't disallow delegates from those states when all was said and done. They just cooked up an alternate way to allocate them.

[totodeinhere]

15. He still has his free-speech rights to call for another canvas if he wants.

It may or may not have legal force but he could at least call for it. And why wouldn’t anyone want to make sure that everything was counted properly? What is wrong with total transparency?

[Ghost Dog]

17. It does appear to be a reasonable thing to call for.

Have all worksheets been held in safe custody?

[7wo7rees]

19. I see your point.

Maybe we learn something new here?

[Onyrleft]

3. I voted in a paper ballot primary once;

but unfortunately they used a beta version of paper and everything went haywire.

We really should force Iowa to change to primaries and go last next time over this.

[HarlanPepper]

4. We're on to Cincinnati

And by Cincinnati I mean New Hampshire.

[Aaron Pereira]

5. Dan Merica from CNN is reporting concern about satellite caucus location delegate allocation.

NEW: Perez took the step of calling for a recanvass specifically because of issues around how the Iowa Dem Party was allocating state delegate equivalents from satellite caucus sites, two sources tell CNN.

Satellite locations are primarily immigrant and minority voting sites. I'd like to hear Tom Perez address what the specific problem is with these locations.

[Ghost Dog]

20. Satellite locations are primarily immigrant and minority voting sites.

Do I correctly infer from this that there has been racial segregation in this process?

[Aaron Pereira]

22. Many are Spanish language caucus sites.

No segregation.

[Ghost Dog]

25. Ok, but why are they "satellites"?

I don't know how this works. "Satellite" normally means subsidiary. Why aren't they caucuses in their own right?

[Aaron Pereira]

27. Not sure. I think that's just the nomenclature the IDP settled on.

They are caucuses in their own right just built for for voters who want to participate in the process in case of language barrier, disability, work times etc. We had a similar set up in Washington State when I lived there with the purpose of making the caucus process more inclusive and accessible.

[Ghost Dog]

28. Ok, thanks Aaron.

'Inclusive' sounds good.

[Hortensis]

6. "Hoping for a different outcome?" Disgusting.

And I really mean it. Good for Perez for calling for results people can trust.

You might want to read the NYT article on just how messed up the results are. There is no indication at this point, though, that either Sanders' or Buttigieg's standings were affected by the massive numbers of mistakes in especially roughly 100 out of 1600 districts.

[babylonsister]

10. No, dear, this is disgusting...

DNC members discuss rules change to stop Sanders at convention
The talks reveal rising anxiety over the Vermont senator's momentum on the eve of voting.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/31/dnc-superdelegates-110083

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. Yes, it is. n/t

[Hortensis]

29. We are at war, and for your own sake at least you

need to realize it. Ultimately we're all intended to be civilian casualties, of course. Our intelligence services say Putin's aim is to "sow chaos" as part of bringing down our nation. Collapse -- economic and social collapse so severe that we can't stop him from invading several nations in Europe and Eurasia. And that China, Iran and others are up to the same thing -- taking out the planet's one remaining superpower.

We don't know what our party leaders do, but Sanders' strange surge combined with collapse of Biden's support is alarmingly similar to the last weeks of 2016 when, after months of all the polls saying he was way behind Hillary, and with the senate in the Democratic bag and even the house a possibility, the polls switched almost on a dime, Trump was elected and the Republicans gained several senate seats and a pack of house seats as well.

The Iowa caucuses and media all coffeed up and in place with nothing to say rioting over it. And where have many of those who hung at DU's once-healthy AA forum gone (angrily) and why have they stayed mad and away from the nation's largest by far Democratic forum?

Are these last few days starting to look just a little chaotic to you by any chance?

How COULD Sanders have spent nearly a year with all the polls saying he was locked in a second tier, always at least double digits below the frontrunner, then suddenly have the polls flip and that frontrunner finish FAR BEHIND him? Deja-vu weird a bit?

Sanders has some filthy baggage from 2016. He AND Trump were both used to defeat our nation, both accepting Russia's assistance, Sanders apparently just benignly, and many Democrats know it. For the past year Sanders' support was always much lower than in 2016 because of it, but now he's suddenly soaring Trump-style nationally and seemingly no one remembers or cares the role he willingly played in the 2016 tragedy? His betrayal of the voters he never warned?

And, yes, let's look at the new current and timely rage at the evil DNC supposedly betraying Sanders (just like did NOT happen in 2016), completely deflecting attention from the possibility that Sanders is once again being used by Repub-Russia to defeat us.

All this may sound like it could be caused by too much time travel in a Stephen King novel, but given the repeated warnings by our intelligence services that it IS happening, it's seems far more likely that we are in the middle of very dangerous attacks in the new cold war that we're currently LOSING. And whatever the DNC may be doing to protect our party from being the one falling under Putin's attacks this time would make sense in that scenario.

[Gravitycollapse]

31. Biden was untested before this. His support was hypothetical.

I think we might be seeing a more realistic picture of his support now. Whereas, Bernie's support has been known for a while since he competed in the previous election.

This is not to say that Iowa is THE determinant for who will win the nomination. But this was the first test for Biden and he came up short---Biden himself admitted that.

[Hortensis]

33. Yes, but the bizarre polling/supposed voter shift pattern is the same.

Before 2016, did you ever live through an election where ALL the polls were consistently similar for a year and more and then suddenly ALL completely wrong (or were they?) ?

Never, right? Well, it just happened again, and we know Russia has continued its election interference without pause from 2016 to now, with every intention of making this one a knockout blow.

[Gravitycollapse]

34. I think you're looking for things that don't exist. The polling data is decentralized...

Conducted by many agencies, all of which can be held to account.

It's far more likely that there was a systematic error amongst the pollsters (they had faulty assumptions) than some grand conspiracy by a foreign government.

[Hortensis]

35. The "grand conspiracy" is real. And Russia is the foreign government.

The most dangerous one so far anyway. You know, the nation heavily involved in corrupting the Republican Party, getting its asset elected PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and permanently altering the balance of power away from us over much of the planet, but especially the Middle East? The Russia that intends to invade and re-conquer all the nations formerly part of the Soviet Union?

THAT grand conspiracy.

[Gravitycollapse]

36. None of that involved hacking into/manipulating large volumes of decentralized data.

Russian interference was much more direct. They spent tons of money and resources on psychological operations. They persuaded people to support Trump and sowed division amongst some on the left---primarily through social media. They didn't have to do anything remarkable to accomplish this. The infrastructure was already in place.

[Hortensis]

37. Yes, they did. I don't share your confidence in Russia's lack

of resourcefulness, though. It seems likely to me that the polls were as right as they ever are and that voter behavior and whatever changed.

But you're obviously paying attention, so you must realize there are a lot of things to wonder about these days. Top of my list is that just last year Sanders endorsed Putin's suggestion to dismantle NATO, which was created to protect Europe from Russia, and to instead create a new organization with Russia as a member that would turn its attention to protecting Russia's new interests (courtesy of Trump's assistance) in the ME. Given that alarmed European nations are currently being forced to re-arm to protect themselves against the threat of Russian invasion -- for the first time in many years, Sanders' position would seem to greatly benefit Russia and risk great potential harm to us and the NATO nations.

Just last January, Sanders used a flimsy excuse of needing to meet with employees at the exact time the vote was taken to skip a very close vote to reimpose the Derepaska sanctions Trump/Repubs had cancelled, a major slap in America's face.

He had also broken with our party to join the Republicans in voting against sanctions on Russia before that in 2017, weakening our stand against Russia. Those sanctions were to be for Russia's interference in the 2016 election, Russian interference that assisted Sanders himself through the primary and beyond ("beyond" right up to today, according to our intelligence agencies).

Given all the weird happenings and Russia's known interference in our primary election, I don't think it's unreasonable to remind people of these things. Because Sanders benefiting, Biden badly hurt, strange numbers, and seeming swings of voters are all what we saw in 2016 and the kind of thing you would expect to see from Russian meddling to take down our frontrunner.

[LongtimeAZDem]

7. Given the reports by McCaskill and others that delegates were given to people who weren't viable, in

violation of the rules, a re-canvass won't help.

The whole thing is invalid.

[stopdiggin]

16. if indeed this happened

(I'll wait for confirmation before swallowing on that)
I'd be pretty certain that this was a result of confusion. Delegates would/should be apportioned only on the final realignments. And it's a pretty simple matter of math ... How non-viable candidates would end up with delegates? I'd need to see this and have it explained.

(Part of the confusion this year was a "new" rule that said participants could not migrate from a first choice if that choice was "viable" in the first vote. In and of itself, that sounds kind of non-caucusy? Not the way it use to be done, and I wonder if some caucus goers didn't fully understand the "new" process?)

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Calling for a recanvass is like calling for a recount in Florida in 2000

ie the obvious thing to do, to check the result.

[Faux pas]

9. They effed it up so well last time,

why not try it again?

[Autumn]

11. IDP is waiting for the satellites to come in and be checked. We can wait.

There's no reason to start over, at this time.

[dem4decades]

26. People are making a lot of accusations here. Without material to back it up.

[Horizens]

30. Because

we all want to hear more about the IOWA caucus?!

[mitch96]

32. "Hoping for a different outcome?"

Color me weird and why oh why does all this confusion smack of russian interference?
It's their plan to show that democracy does not work and this just plays into their narrative.
YMMV.
m

[Recursion]

38. Oh my God that's a horrible idea. Get this fucking story off the TV.