Local political expert responds to delay in Iowa caucus results

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SOUTH BEND, Ind.—Local political expert Jack Colwell responded on Tuesday morning to the delay in the results from the Iowa Democratic caucus.

“It doesn’t reflect well on the Democratic Party in Iowa. I don’t think necessarily that it tarnishes the party nationally,” Colwell said. “It appears to me that this could be the end of the Iowa caucuses. They’ll still have them, but they might not be first in the nation and get all of the attention that they have been.”

Following Monday night’s Iowa caucus, the Iowa Democratic Party released a statement saying inconsistencies in some reporting are causing a delay in the caucus results.

"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. 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,” said Iowa Democratic Party Communications Director Mandy McClure in the statement.

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price said the party is now manually verifying the results.

“The integrity of our process, and the results have and always will be our top priority. At this point, the IDP is manually verifying all precinct results. We want to emphasize that this is a recording, not a hack or intrusion. And it's exactly why we have a paper trail and systems in place to uphold the integrity of our process," Price said.

Colwell speculated on Monday morning that the night’s three separate tabulations, including the first round, second round and state delegates, would be the elements that would cause confusion.

“We didn’t think it was quite going to be like this,” Colwell said.

Former South Bend Mayor and Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg spoke on Monday night in Iowa, drawing criticism online for waiting too long to speak.

“I think he’s cautious. He didn’t want to go out there and say something that suddenly proved to be false,” Colwell said. “There’s no momentum now though because no one knows where he came in.”

Colwell said that President Donald Trump was a winner in Iowa.

“He’s going to be attacking the whole system as rigged. I don’t think it was rigged, but I think it was terribly handled,” Colwell said. “There was a lot of incompetence. He’s going to be able to sell that to a lot of people.”

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