Iowa's nightmare revisited: Was correct winner called?

[pnwmom]

61. No, definitely NOT fraud. Just the typical chaos involving a lot of inexperienced volunteers,

including the Bernie people.

The Des Moines Register article in the OP specifically addressed this situation, in the quote below.

These are all tired, harried VOLUNTEERS trying to run a caucus, while voters walk out the door, go to the bathroom, and otherwise disappear.

They did count everybody, there were 3 fewer than before, and then there was a challenge. And then there was a vote on whether there should be a recount, and the crowd voted no.

The NAYS overwhelmingly voted not to have a recount and the challengers were angry about losing. They wanted to recount more than 400 people because they were afraid the count might be off by 3 or less. Even though the three votes wouldn't make any difference in the delegate assignment.

If the leaders instead had ordered a recount of those 400+ NAY-SAYers, they could have had a mutiny on their hands. Caucus goers only have so much patience, and they'd already been standing in line and at the caucus for hours. By the time the leaders got done counting those 400 AGAIN, they would have lost some more. And their count would have been off AGAIN.

Caucus leaders and attenders are human beings -- not robots.

From the article in the OP:

“Politics is a contact sport with few referees, so torturing your opponents with questions about the transparency of an election can be very harmful and damaging,” said Steffen Schmidt, a longtime political observer and professor at Iowa State University in Ames.

Discrepancies can occur in official elections, and caucuses are not even official election events run by the secretary of state's office, noted Dennis Goldford, a Drake University professor who closely studies the Iowa caucuses.

"The caucus system isn't built to bear the weight placed on it," he said. "There aren't even paper ballots (in the Democratic caucuses) to use for a recount in case something doesn't add up."

A C-SPAN video (http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4578575/clinton-voter-fraud-polk-county-iowa-caucus) was circulated widely on Facebook and Twitter with claims it was evidence of fraud. In truth, it was an example of the mayhem at some of the most crowded caucus sites, when nose counts differed between rounds of voting because some people left or the initial count was wrong. In this case, precinct No. 43 in Des Moines, a majority of voters, including Sanders backers, voted against a recount.

Here are the OFFICIAL RULES. Now imagine you're a volunteer trying to follow them.

http://iowademocrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/IDP-Caucus-Math-One-Pager.pdf