Iowa Caucus Vote Delays Over ‘Quality Control’ Baffles Cable News, Ignites Speculation: ‘Something Is Clearly Off’

Reed RichardsonFeb 3rd, 2020, 11:44 pm
 

As Iowa caucus vote delays inexplicably stretched late into Monday night due to “quality control” issues, cable news pundits sputtered in frustration and online critics began to rampantly speculate about the real reasons for the lack of results.

At 10:30 p.m. ET, CNN political analyst David Chalian noted that the Iowa Democratic Party had reported more than 80% of the caucus results by this time in 2016. And yet, this year, nothing had been released. Iowa Democratic Party officials attributed the delay to “quality control” issues resulting from the use of a new digital app to send results as well as the need to tabulate and report three different sets of numbers.

“This was not the plan,” Chalian told Wolf Blitzer. “Something is clearly off from the plan that the Iowa Democratic Party had at the start of the night. They didn’t expect to have no vote reporting at 10:30 eastern at night.”

Over on Fox News, Mollie Hemingway noted that the delay will fuel more distrust in the Democratic Party’s primary process.

“Of course, the old-fashioned way used to provide results at this hour so that is interesting and it’s worth thinking about why Iowa is so important,” Hemingway noted. “What happens coming out of Iowa, you’re on those morning shows the next morning, the headlines in every newspaper across the country show who the winner is. By winner, they literally mean who got the most votes in that first voting. And we are not getting that. And that is not a great situation because, of course, four years ago Bernie Sanders went head-to-head against Hillary Clinton and a lot of people did not feel think that there was transparency and her stated result as a winner came through. And they need to rebuild that trust with an enthusiastic portion of the coalition. This is going exactly the wrong way.”

MSNBC political analyst and numbers junkie Steve Kornacki, noting the “quality control” justification explained that the network asked for more specifics from the Iowa Democratic Party and did not get any further answers. “They’re telling us ‘abundance of caution,’ no ETA, but yes, zero percent [reported] after 10 o’clock on the East Coast,” he added, as he turned and dropped his clipboard onto a table.

As the delays dragged on to 11:00, CNN’s Van Jones went beyond merely criticizing the absence of vote totals and instead indicted the Iowa caucuses themselves as being compromised.

“This is starting to feel like possibly a real debacle. Technical problems they’re not disclosing we could be late on this. I think that the idea of the caucus has failed to meet the viability threshold,” Jones said. We have been saying ‘Why Iowa in the first place?’ It’s 90% white. You have a party as diverse in a — people want to vote and go home. If you can’t deliver on your one job. You only have one job, Iowa.”

And outside of cable news, the unexpected delays and vague “quality control” explanation were met with strong skepticism as many noted that the confusing lack of transparency was ripe for speculation and conspiracy theories.


Even Trump’s 2020 digital director saw fit to weigh in and stoke the idea of a Democratic establishment conspiracy, without even trying to suggest about what.

Watch video above, via CNN and Fox News.

Tags: