Iowa White House vote turns to fiasco as results delayed
Des Moines: Iowa's vote kick-starting the 2020 US presidential contest degenerated into a fiasco, with Bernie Sanders eager to claim a slim lead in the Democratic caucuses despite the lack of official results.
Iowa is a closely-watched test in the months-long process to determine who will face the President Donald Trump in November, but chaos ensued Monday night as Democratic party officials reportedly told campaigns not to expect an outcome before sometime Tuesday.
In a statement read on US networks, Mandy McClure, communications director at the Iowa Democratic Party, said further checks were ordered after “inconsistencies” were found in the reporting of three sets of results.
“This is simply a reporting issue,” she said, denying there was “a hack or an intrusion.”
The embarrassment is particularly bad timing as US officials are under pressure to demonstrate the integrity of the voting system following 2016, when Russia stood accused of interfering in the presidential election in an effort to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Former vice president Joe Biden's campaign counsel Dana Remus wrote a stern letter to Iowa Democratic Party chair Troy Price complaining of the “considerable flaws” of the night's caucus.
“We believe that the campaigns deserve full explanations and relevant information regarding the methods of quality control you are employing, and an opportunity to respond, before any official results are released.”
Trump called the Democrats incompetent.
“The Democrat caucus is an unmitigated disaster. Nothing works, just like they ran the country,” Trump wrote on Twitter. - AFP