Results from Iowa’s caucuses, the first vote in the race to pick a Democratic candidate to face President Donald Trump, have been plunged into chaos by apparent technology issues.
The state’s Democratic party said the holdup was a “reporting issue”, adding that it expected to “have numbers to report later today [Tuesday]”.
On Monday, voters flocked to more than 1,600 schools, libraries and churches.
Despite the absence of results, several candidates are claiming the lead.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders spoke of his victory, citing internal campaign data that placed him ahead of Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Meanwhile, Mr Buttigieg was quoted as saying that “by all indications” his campaign was “going to New Hampshire victorious”. He is referring to America’s first primary in the US state on 11 February.
Iowa Democratic Party spokeswoman Mandy McClure said: “We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results.”
She added: “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.”
For the first time this year, Iowa Democrats were required to report three numbers to party headquarters, rather than just the final delegate totals.
Ms McClure’s statement was flatly contradicted by party officials at county level, who blamed technology issues for the delay.
They said the app created for caucus organisers to report their results had malfunctioned, leaving precinct captains to call state party headquarters, whose phone lines swiftly became jammed.
Elesha Gayman, the Democratic chairwoman of Scott county, Iowa’s third largest, said many officials were having issues reporting results.
She said they had been left hanging on hold and she knew of only one precinct captain who had been able to report via the app.
Dallas County chairman Bryce Smith also said the app had crashed.
Nate Gruber, the Democratic vice-chairman of Black Hawk county, a part of the state with the largest concentration of African Americans, said he had not been able to use the app either.
“It doesn’t really work,” he said, adding: “No-one can reach the state party to report.”
Calls to the Iowa Democratic Party hotline late on Monday had the same recorded message: “All of our operators are currently busy.”
The Democratic Party establishment spent the past few days hand-wringing over what they might view as a doomsday scenario where Bernie Sanders posted a solid win in the Iowa caucuses. It turns out they’re heading towards an outcome much worse than that.
Three years after having their party servers hacked by Russians in an attempt to disrupt the 2016 election, a “quality control issue” derailed the reporting of the Iowa results.
It’s not a good look for the Democratic Party – or for American democracy.
It will be a snafu that launches 1,000 conspiracy theories and leaves a race that might have received some clarity after a year of campaigning a muddled mess as the primary season gets underway.
