Forget A Recanvass, Democrats Must Refuse To Seat Iowa Delegates,,😲😲❓

[Iamaartist]

The DNC has ordered a recanvass of the Iowa caucus, but the party should refuse to seat Iowa delegates unless they are needed to determine the nominee.

DNC Chairman Tom Perez announced the recanvass:

Enough is enough. In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass


A recanvass isn’t going to fix this mess.

Short of Iowa redoing their caucus, which would outrage both voters and the candidates, the DNC needs to tell Iowa that their delegates won’t be seated unless they are needed to determine the nominee.

Multiple candidates have declared victory. The delegates are going to be split between at least four and as many as five campaigns, so no one campaign would be more harmed than any other by refusing to seat the Iowa delegation.

The DNC also needs to ban caucuses. States choose how they run their process, but the DNC can refuse to accept the results if a state runs a caucus. The caucus system is a constant source of drama and problems. It is time for the caucuses to be retired.

Since there are going to be questioned about any result, the best thing for Democrats is to refuse to seat any delegates from this clusterf— of a caucus.






https://www.politicususa.com/2020/02/06/iowa-caucus-recanvass.html



The whole caucus should be invalid,,,my opinion ..a mess like this. Can not be.trusted

[jalan48]

1. LOL-Biden would love this.

[Fresh_Start]

2. no, that would not be acceptable

complete the recanvass

[ancianita]

3. Tom Perez, instead of looking like he's badgering good faith people, should act decisively.

There's nothing wrong with requiring primaries.

It would take all the future drama out of media reporting.

It would make the party's leadership look smarter and Democratic primaries efficient.

Just my opinion.

[relayerbob]

4. Baloney

The votes were recorded, and any recanvass or recount is only going to show marginal differences, if any, in how things turned out.

Crying over spilt milk, especially when it's still drinkable, comes off as sour grapes, to mix up some metaphors. Sounds very desparate.

There's absolutely no reason, at all, to discriminate against those who chose to show up and put their time and efforts into their process

[W_HAMILTON]

6. The problem is that the votes recorded showed that they didn't follow their own rules in some cases.

In particular, some viable candidates LOST votes on the final alignment, which apparently was completely against the rules this time around (if a candidate was viable after the first alignment, their votes were supposed to be "locked in" and therefore could only gain support in the final alignment).

I'm also still wondering how nonviable candidates after the first alignment got to join up with other nonviable candidates in the final alignment and earn delegates, which I also thought was against the rules, even though I've heard some people state that the rules didn't preclude this.

It is just a confusing mess and it was run poorly on top of that.

Caucuses should be eliminated.

[Iamaartist]

12. I agree...we cant let canidates claim..to be winner when the app was not even tested..and new..mmm

[relayerbob]

16. Agreed on no more caucuses

But as it is, the actual delegate count going into the convention would be off by little or none, on a race that has little to no impact in the final count anyway.

As far as the nonviables joining up, that was clearly explained as not against the rules, right from the start.

I hold my previous position that the people who went to vote and who tried their best, despite all the crap, (and the RW phone interference) should have their voice heard. If a delegate or two are off, that won't change the results of the convention, even if it is annoying and should never happen again.

[IndyOp]

22. The question I need to be answered is - in how many cases did they not follow their own rules?

A thorough canvass to determine how many sites didn't follow the rules could get us past a lot of confusion. Any and all sites at which the caucus staff - and candidate reps - could all agree that the counts were valid should be included in the final result. What happens with the rest is up to Iowa. In our modern world, no elections are 100% accurate - someone is always going to be ticked off.

The fact that future caucuses should be eliminated sounds sensible to me - and - we can't cancel the caucus that happened 4 days ago.

Someone else on this thread mentioned refusing to seat Iowa delegates at the national convention unless there was a tie. That sounds like a bomb waiting to go off to me - waiting until the result is even *more* critical than it is now? The DNC needs to send staff - and mental health counselors - and include all of the campaigns who want to participate and work this shit out in the next week.

Right now, I think campaigns - including Buttigieg's and Sanders's - are wasting time and effort if they fight over a handful of state delegates in Iowa.

[Skidmore]

28. As if primary voters

don't ever not follow instructions or spoil ballots. Recanvass and toss any ballots but we don't disenfranchise a whole state.

[W_HAMILTON]

29. I don't believe that they should invalidate the entire results.

But I don't know how you can simply "toss out" specific caucus goers from a bad count because who knows what they did at this point? Did they just leave? Did they go against the rules and join someone else?

I don't really see a way to solve this colossal fuckup, which in the end really doesn't even mean that much because even the errors are relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it means that people will view this entire process with suspicion and mistrust, which only serves to hurt our party and our eventual nominee -- and it was all just to benefit a temporary Democrat so that he could claim victory through an absolutely meaningless metric. Ridiculous.

[Skidmore]

33. Because whether a person

chose not to realign with any other candidate if their original candidate was not viable had a box to mark on side two of the ballot. You only had the option of realigning if your original candidate was not viable. This can be readily reconstructed between worksheets and ballots.

[W_HAMILTON]

34. But we've already seen from the counts posted...

...that, in some precincts, viable candidates LOST supporters in the final alignment, which shouldn't be happening based on the rules.

[Skidmore]

35. How often did that occur?

[W_HAMILTON]

39. Several times, apparently.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter much because these are basically an insignificant number of people, in an insignificant number of precincts, resulting in an insignificant difference of SDEs, resulting in an insignificant number of Iowa state delegates being sent to the DNC convention.

But look at all the uproar that has resulted from it.

And, I ask again, what was the point of it all, other than for a temporary Democrat to claim victory based on a completely meaningless metric in a caucus-based system?

[Demsrule86]

25. It would be one think if they were simply recorded but they were not...there was real mistakes made

as some followed the rules about viability and some didn't...sucks for the candidates...but it will never be reliable.

[SWBTATTReg]

5. I am so sorry that this whole mess happened (and I'm sure they are too, in IOWA). It is ...

outrageous being that this was an important event in the whole selection process for our next candidates for the democratic nominees for P and VP. Perhaps next time any state changes their processes for canvassing and/or voting processes for future democratic nominees, that they do an start-to-end testing process, along w/ all of the bells and whistles too, e.g., how to handle public relations and/or news releases, a central point of contact for ID'ing problems and resolving, back up phone numbers in case numbers are compromised, etc.

I wonder if Iowa law enforcement was called into the picture to investigate all of the fraudulent call ins that were meant to distort the political process in Iowa. In MO, we do have an ordinance on the books (and it's actively used too) to prevent interference w/ the political process, including stealing one's political signs (a common thing). They'll actually throw the book at such miscreants. In short, they don't look too kindly on outside interference on political events.

[bucolic_frolic]

7. Wholeheartedly agree

This is disruption of a polling place or event with fraudulent use of telecommunications devices and services. Heads should roll.

[SWBTATTReg]

8. Absolutely man...this is a serious matter, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. I hope the powers ...

that be in Iowa do follow up, besides fixing their applications, etc., follow up w/ law enforcement or the state's FBI bureau.

[Midnightwalk]

13. Agree with investigating the flood of calls

There’s a reasonable chance the culprits didn’t block their numbers. It should be an easy thing to check though shouldn’t it?

[SWBTATTReg]

15. Yes, and they should call back these numbers, and find out why they were calling. I bet you...

that some of the numbers will be that of republican headquarters in Iowa (or perhaps elsewhere)...I wouldn't be surprised.

[Midnightwalk]

20. It wouldn't surprise me

If a lot of the calls were from the same numbers. If the allegations are true that republicans generated the call traffic I’d expect the calls to come from a small number of people. No one would be dumb enough to post online “ hey guys lets do a denial of service attack on the IDP phone lines” would they?

Then again the problem might be that the Iowa Democratic party decided they didn’t need to staff the phone lines because the app made them obsolete and that’s why people were on hold so long.

Thinking more (which usually causes trouble) both theories are plausible. If we don’t hear anything that would make me suspect the latter. That they didn’t staff the lines.

Only silver lining is some political science major is going to be able to write a good paper on what went wrong and why.

[Iamaartist]

14. I agree..this should be look into...and just not past it by as nothing...happen....

It happen in 2016 ,,cant be over looked...in 2020..it smells fishy to me..my opinion🐠

[Gravitycollapse]

9. This is ludicrous. If anything, redo the caucuses.

But completely throwing out any power Iowans have on the nomination process? How is that fair?

[cannabis_flower]

10. So your answer...

Is to disenfranchise the state of Iowa's Democratic voters? That's not right.

[Iamaartist]

17. No its also for voters who never had chance to login to app,and could not get though phones...

[IndyOp]

24. Voters did not use the app - that was for local election staff to report to the state Dems -

Everyone who wanted to participate in a Caucus got to do that. Some caucuses seem to have failed to follow the rules and those should be investigated and possibly repeated, but those caucuses that everyone - DNC national staff, state staff, local staff, and candidate reps can agree were conducted correctly should be reported accurately and that's that.

[msongs]

11. bad idea, bernie and pete earned the FOUR delegates each lol so give em up nt

[totodeinhere]

18. Would you still be saying this if you were not a Biden supporter?

Or do you just want to do away with Joe's poor performance in Iowa?

[Iamaartist]

19. Yes..after 2016 nothing can be trusted..from GOP cons..we have to protect our Dem elections..

[Voltaire2]

21. Sure why not make a bad situation worse?

Always a fine plan.

[Midnightwalk]

23. Bad choices all around

There may be a high error rate in the results compared to a primary, but unless it is outlandishly high it is better than assuming that throwing out the results would be more accurate.

If there were evidence of result tampering I might change my mind. If there was a denial of service attack on the phone lines that shouldn’t effect the accuracy of the underlying paper trail.

Part of the high error rate seems to be the confusing nature of the caucus. There have been reports in the past that the rules weren’t correctly followed. And again this time. That’s part of the problem with caucuses and a reason to eliminate them going forward. But the IDP chose to do a caucus and it isn’t right to change that after the fact.

The mis-app probably raised the error rate but there is a paper trail unless they screwed that up too. That can be helped by recounting.

The controversy will do more harm than the number of delegates at stake. In my opinion try to get better numbers in the background and let the focus move on to the next states. That’s the best thing for party unity and is also the most fair.

[econron]

26. I'm Curious

How many replies to this post actually participated in the Caucus? I thought so....
A lot of misinformation in this thread....

[Tiggeroshii]

27. No.

-_-

[Scurrilous]

30. Iowa Caucus Results Riddled With Errors and Inconsistencies - Blame Bernie. He Asked For This.

'Results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses were delayed by “quality control checks” on Monday night. Days later, quality control issues have not been resolved.

The results released by the Iowa Democratic Party on Wednesday were riddled with inconsistencies and other flaws. According to a New York Times analysis, more than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, that were missing data or that were not possible under the complex rules of the Iowa caucuses.

2020 ELECTION Follow the latest developments, including a call for a recanvass, in today’s live coverage of the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.

In some cases, vote tallies do not add up. In others, precincts are shown allotting the wrong number of delegates to certain candidates. And in at least a few cases, the Iowa Democratic Party’s reported results do not match those reported by the precincts.

Some of these inconsistencies may prove to be innocuous, and they do not indicate an intentional effort to compromise or rig the result. There is no apparent bias in favor of the leaders Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders, meaning the overall effect on the winner’s margin may be small.

But not all of the errors are minor, and they raise questions about whether the public will ever get a completely precise account of the Iowa results. With Mr. Sanders closing to within 0.1 percentage points with 97 percent of 1,765 precincts reporting, the race could easily grow close enough for even the most minor errors to delay a final projection or raise doubts about a declared winner.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/upshot/iowa-caucuses-errors-results.html


Lest we fucking forget who insisted on keeping the caucus format


Bernie Sanders is the reason Iowa went so wrong


'But Sanders' obviously passionate surrogates' claims that something untoward is happening in Iowa at the behest of the dreaded "establishment" ignore the fact that the changes to this year's Iowa caucus were made at the recommendation of the post-2016 "unity commission" established to pacify Bernieworlders. It was them who were convinced that the Democratic National Committee rigged the 2016 primary against Sanders (there is no evidence of this).

The uproar coming from the Sanders backers who'd read stolen DNC emails released by Wikileaks, who were now alleging that a corrupt bargain had been made between the Clinton campaign and the DNC, meant some action had to be taken to mollify Sanders' people, said Khary Penebaker, a DNC member who endorsed Cory Booker last year.

"We recognize that we no longer had control of the narrative despite what we might have thought that actually happened in [2016]. This is where people were at this point, and we needed to make adjustments to accommodate that," he told me, though he stressed that he was speaking for himself and not the DNC.

According to a person with direct knowledge with the process which led to the rule changes, Iowa's "Frankenstein caucus" was the result of accommodations for Sanders supporters who wanted to maintain Iowa's and Nevada's first-in-the-nation caucuses, rather than end the practice of holding caucuses altogether, because caucuses were thought to favor Sanders. The use of the app was necessitated by rules put in place to make the caucuses more like primaries by releasing more data, including first-round preference totals.'

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bernie-sanders-iowa-caucus-winner-trump-democrats-a9317761.html

[Iamaartist]

32. Agree ..Thank-you for that information...😎😁

[Scurrilous]

36. ...

[Iamaartist]

37. Scurrilous

[IowaGuy]

31. Dump your head in a bucket of water, your hair is on fire

This is a drastic over reaction. Soon enough, complete vote totals and accurate delegate counts will be publicly available. The entire caucus plan along with specifics re: software, vendors, paper ballots, etc. were reviewed and voted on by the DNC. I concede it could have gone better and mistakes were made, but none of these changes were made in the dark of night and were reviewed at the highest national level. Many of these changes were requested by Bernie supporting delegates on the DNC rules committee. Are you also suggesting that all the states that were on the rules committee that voted for this be barred from the national convention? As long is your hair is on fire over a couple of days delay in the first step of the delegate selection process, you might as well start screaming hysterically at everybody involved in the process. By the way, if you truly understood the process you would understand that the final count and division of delegates going to the National convention won't be done until June 12th. Relax dude, your getting your panties in a twist over media hyperbole over the imagined importance of this first step in the delegate selection process.

[econron]

41. Amen Brother

If I had a pic of Randy Macho Man Savage I would post it for you IowaGuy!

[Indykatie]

38. Let's Move On and Let This be the Final Nail in the Coffin For the IA Caucus n/t

[UniteFightBack]

42. +1000

[Steelrolled]

43. This is the perfect way to make a very bad situation even worse.

And that isn't easy.