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The latest: Democrats have no Iowa caucus results, blame ‘coding issue’

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February 4th, 2020 by Ric Hanson

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – The Iowa Democratic Party says delays in reporting the outcome of Monday’s caucuses were due to a coding issue that has been fixed. The party says it hopes to release results “as soon as possible.” In a statement Tuesday, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price says, “We have every indication that our systems were secure and there was not a cyber security intrusion.” Price says independent cybersecurity consultants tested the systems in preparation for the caucuses.

Candidates left Iowa Monday night for New Hampshire without the outcome of the contest being announced, a debacle that renewed criticism of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status and the caucus format. Price says as results came in Monday night from more than 1,600 caucus sites the state party ran them through “an accuracy and quality check” and “it became clear there were inconsistencies with the reports.” Price says it took time to investigate the cause, which was later determined to be a coding issue in the app precinct leaders were using to report some data.

Price says state party staff used “pre-planned measures and entered data manually,” which took longer than expected. He says the party has used required back-up paper documentation to verify data recorded in the app was accurate and to calculate delegate counts.