There may be an Iowa recanvass
It’s supposedly a dead heat between Sanders and Buttigieg in Iowa, and there have been calls for a recount:
Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez is calling on Iowa Democratic officials to immediately recanvass Monday’s caucus vote after days of uncertainty and growing concerns about “inconsistencies” found in the data.
“Enough is enough,” Perez said in a tweet. “In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass.”
A recanvass is essentially a double-checking of the vote. Iowa officials would have to hand -audit the caucus worksheets and reporting forms to ensure that they were correctly calculated and reported.
But whatever trust the public once had in the process is gone, perhaps permanently.
The results so far, for what it’s worth:
As of Thursday morning, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was clinging to the narrowest of leads in Iowa over Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with 97 percent of the caucus vote released.
Buttigieg was at 26.2 percent and Sanders had 26 percent, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., running behind the pair of leaders at 18.2 percent. Former Vice President Joe Biden had 15.8 percent, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., at 12.2 percent and other candidates were in low single digits.
New Hampshire has a very different system:
New Hampshire’s primary is an election run by municipal officials, as opposed to the political parties that run the Iowa caucuses.
New Hampshire voters fill out paper ballots in all 309 voting locations, from the most congested ward in Manchester to the most isolated of North Country towns.
The Accuvote machines used by most towns to count ballots can’t be hacked because they aren’t online.
And, as required by the state constitution, the moderator reads the results at each polling location while the clerk records them by hand.
It help to have a small population. I expect it to go quite smoothly.
Perez is a totally off base here.
Bud & Bern should just arm-wrassel for it. (Best of three.)
And then the winner of that “Thrilla ‘n Iowa” can take on Warren in a rain-dance contest (with say-it-ain’t-so-Joe Biden giving the winner a bear hug).
Democracy shouldn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it should be fun!
The Demos will keep running the Iowa caucus until Slow Joe gets 15%, which I believe is the minimum to be awarded delegates. Or they will find an unreported precinct- or create one.
As we know from the EU, if the powers that be don’t like the election results, the only thing to do is to run the election again.
One thing’s been bothering me about the whole Iowa kerfuffle. My general understanding is that the Democrat’s is suppose to be monolithic and controlling to all party members. So if there is a consensus on the top on who should get the nomination then the whole party machine will do what it does to give it to the person.
Yet in Iowa we are not seeing a consensus even among party heads. I don’t buy that there is a big internal civil war going on inside the party. They are monolithic when it’s Orange Man Bad so that should be enough to unite them into one consensus to look for the strongest candidate in their party to beat him. Yet were not seeing that here and now.
I’m tempted to be at ease but I can’t help but feel there is something more going on here behind the scenes which I do not yet know.
I’ve never entirely understood the caucus process, but I do know it’s a more complex, time-consuming affair which favors activists. Iowa 2008 is where Obama broke out as a serious candidate and there were Hillary supporters who were quite angry that Obama’s people seriously gamed Iowa. Let’s let Rush tell it, as he is now a Medal of Freedom winner. (The Hawkeye state is Iowa.)
One of the websites that I track is called HillBuzz. Well, it’s HillBuzz.wordpress.com. Now, this is a website ostensibly run by a bunch of women who want Obama to lose so that Hillary will have a chance in 2012. You ought to see this site. I mean, they’ve got McCain winning Iowa, they’ve got McCain winning Maine, they’ve got McCain winning New Hampshire, they’ve got him winning Ohio, they’ve got him winning Florida, on the basis that the media is not uncovering the depth of anger in the Democrat Party at Obama. And one of the reasons that these babes at Hill Buzz — this is what they say. Now, I’m your host. I gotta digest all this, and it’s a website, I don’t know who these people are, and I don’t know if what they’re saying is true. It’s anecdotal information on a website.
Now, people will look at it and they’ll print it out, it has automatic credibility. Well, you can print it out, put it on a piece of paper, why, it has credibility. I can’t look at it that way. But it’s just overload. They say the big reason that there’s so much anger out there, particularly among Hillary women, so much anger is how Obama cheated in the Hawkeye Cauci. If you remember the polls in the Hawkeye Cauci, Hillary was supposed to do pretty well, but it was a caucus. She didn’t work it that hard because she didn’t think that it was going to be that important. Obama was — this is what these people say. We know, by the way, this is true — Obama was busing in all kinds of people from out of state, and in a caucus situation you vote in public, not in private. So you can be lobbied, you can be pressured, you can be stigmatized as a racist if you, you know, don’t hold your hand up for Obama or write his name down on a piece of paper everybody is going to see you do, and they claim that they are livid.
–https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2008/10/30/obama_media_manipulation_tactics_exposed_in_pro_hillary_blog_post/amp/
At this point, poisonous as our politics have become, and as fanatical and deceitful as the Democrats in particular have so recently proved themselves to be, I cannot have even a reasonable certainty that anything of consequence about these primaries isn’t rigged and, in part or in whole, a fabrication.
The fact that, according to reports, the AP that was used to do the tabulation was one provided by a company with ties to Hillary makes the falsity of any and all results even more likely.
Who the individual caucus goers selected can NOT be recounted, only the counts recorded by the precincts. This is different from a primary where each vote can be recorded by itself on paper then totalled.
This is one of the reasons it is difficult to understand why this caucus count is mind-bogglingly slow. Totalling up the precinct counts should have gone quickly, not taken days. In 2016 they did not have an app and the counts for all of the precincts were recounted and reported by the next day.
This fiasco will definitely not end well for Iowa as their “first in the nation” status, always in jeopardy, will be history. At least this will get rid of the 6 months or more of political advertising and phone calls for residents.
“…yet…”
It’s actually much simpler than that. The only question is, which fantasist do the RUSSIANS prefer? a gung-ho politburo wannabe, whose mastery of word salad and well-practiced scowl have practically made him the second coming of Leo Trotsky; a fake Indian with a golden gift of gab who secretly stashes her questionably-made, shiny wampum under her Beacon Hill tepee; a tyro of questionable administrative ability combined with a most impressive gift for alienating practically everyone, who with a contortionist’s skill finds ever more unbelievable ways of putting his foot in his mouth; or a merrily corrupt, serial fondler who has been making new friends every day now for years.
Tough choice. (One might have sympathy for Putin…)
We should probably consult Hillary, whose expertise in such arcane, if vital, matters is of mythical proportions!
The smart money says Perez wants the ‘recanvass’ because TPTB didn’t steal enough votes for Booty-gag. Need to find more ballots in the car trunks of organizational Democrats. Count every vote!
As Glenn Reynolds (and a platoon of computer science / IT faculty) have been saying: digital technology is suboptimal in the conduct of elections and should not be used. No clue why state legislatures, secretaries of state, and boards of elections wish to do this other than a combination of inerta, stupidity and gamesmanship (which seems to be the motor behind most public policies these days). Everything officialdom has commonly done in the last 40 years have made tabulations slower and the ballot less secure. Has the League of Women Voters done a blessed thing to counteract these trends? Haven’t noticed if they did….
Technical difficulties were first blame with the questionable app that was being used, then mathematical errors seemed to be the problem. And now, Democrats are saying part of the confusion and delay in the night was because Trump supporters flooded the hotline used by precinct chairs in the state.
You know it had to happen.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/02/06/now-democrats-are-blaming-trump-supporters-for-iowa-trainwreck-n2560867
Two things: Trump supporters were named as only one group among the many callers (and it’s not his fault if they did “flood the lines”); and, according to this report, the Iowa party designated the same phone lines for “hot lines” and vote reporting.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/04/the-iowa-democratic-party-is-to-blame-for-caucus-chaos/
SMH so hard I fell on the floor LOL.
For geek fun, read this.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/coding-the-iowa-caucus-for-fun-and-profit/
Hi Artfl – I was typing while you were posting.
So, I’ll add a bonus.
You know it had to happen.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/06/democrat-congresswoman-blames-iowa-caucus-disaster-on-russia/
Couldn’t have been this:
Gringo on February 6, 2020 at 4:01 pm said:
The Demos will keep running the Iowa caucus until Slow Joe gets 15%, which I believe is the minimum to be awarded delegates. Or they will find an unreported precinct- or create one.
As we know from the EU, if the powers that be don’t like the election results, the only thing to do is to run the election again.
* * *
Too true.
They’ve been trying for three years to run 2016 over again.
“The Accuvote machines used by most [NH] towns to count ballots can’t be hacked because they aren’t online.”
My town in MA used to use the Accuvote optical scanner. (We’ve upgraded to a newer model that has more bells and whistles, but is basically the same technology — optical scanning of paper ballots, no network interface.) There was an election a few years that required a recount, meaning that all of the paper ballots were counted again, by hand, in public. The numbers came out exactly the same as those from the Accuvote. It’s a good system.
I heard somewhere that someone in Mayor Pete’s campaign has ties to the software developer. Anyone else see this?
Lynn: yes; a search should turn articles on several different news sites. It doesn’t seem to be as sinister as it sounds, just an overlap in clients.
But then….we’ve seen a lot of those overlaps that WERE sinister, haven’t we.
I don’t want him to win because I don’t want to learn how to spell his name.
And then there is this —
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/481759-the-memo-iowa-caucuses-stoke-democratic-anxiety
OK, Boomer.
Next question.
. . . I don’t want to learn how to spell his name.
Easily solved AesopFan, just spell it “pseudopioushomosexualeugenicistbabykillerwhoknowswhatwomenwant”. Easypeasy.
The Democrat caucus is mainly run by the DNC. The Republican is run by the state GOP. The Democrat caucus is easy to game. Obama gamed it in 2008. Off to NH, the circus has left the state. Now we can go back to being flyover deplorables.
From a twitter person:
Malcolm Fleschner @CultureShlock
BREAKING: To compensate for “mistakes” made in the #IowaCaucuses, the @DNC is saying it will announce the results of the New Hampshire primary three days BEFORE the voting.
back at you Aesop 🙂
Couldn’t have been this:
Using the same phone lines as the hotline instead of another line OR the apps using wifi packets which would have no mattered…
they actually blame the phone lines…
yet, Netflix was still streaming
and you could have discussed, with video, all the details on WeChat
while waiting for your land line not to be swamped…
how about write the results on paper, take a smart phone picture, and send it by text message?
Reports this evening are that the Iowa Democrat chairman is saying they will entertain properly submitted requests from candidates for a re-canvass, but otherwise, they will report their data. As in, stuff it, Perez.
A further report indicates that the same kind of fiasco may occur on Super Tuesday in the Democrat primary in Texas, a much bigger deal.
https://pjmedia.com/election/if-you-liked-iowa-democrats-counting-of-votes-youll-love-what-texas-is-going-to-do-on-super-tuesday/
Chang Yee Fong,
“They are monolithic when it’s Orange Man Bad so that should be enough to unite them into one consensus to look for the strongest candidate in their party to beat him. Yet were not seeing that here and now.
I’m tempted to be at ease but I can’t help but feel there is something more going on here behind the scenes which I do not yet know.”
“Identity politics” is the key. By definition, the democrat party is made up of disparate groups whose sole connection is that they’re all victims and that victim-hood imposes societal obligations to them, i.e. they are owed something; mainly money and special treatment. During the primaries, each group tends to favor the candidate who most caters to their victim-hood. Once a nominee is selected, then the monolithic consensus emerges.
Here’s a cute cartoon on a certain Dem disconnect about voting and electoral college.
https://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2020/02/04/171346
Paper ballots are best.
Funny, most of you don’t understand the concept of ground game. In 2016 Cruz had the best ground game and won Iowa. In 2020 I noted that Buttgieg and Sanders had equally impressive ground games. Hence, a virtual tie, though I suspect the tiny mayor cheated. Its all about the ground game until super Tuesday, then money wins… except Trump broke that rule.
The Des Moines Register, which has been a Democrat operation my whole life, has run hundreds or thousands of polls over the years. Yet one or two days before the caucus, a pivotal political poll or theirs was somehow botched and couldn’t be published.
I really don’t think that there is a plausible excuse for that one. And if that was manipulated, then who knows what else is suspect.
____
Also, I had to laugh at CNN this morning. They were showing the not yet completed Iowa results, but were displaying the results in whole percentage point digits only. So while Buttigieg was about 1% point higher than Sanders in reality, CNN rounded Buttigieg’s number up and Sander’s number down, thereby showing a 2% point advantage to Buttigieg. Lies, damn lies, and bogus statistics.
We don’t need to guess where their bias is. Not that I will ever feel sorry for Sanders.
TommyJay
We don’t need to guess where their bias is. Not that I will ever feel sorry for Sanders.
Here is one more reason for not feeling sorry for Sanders.Bernie Sanders had no problem with Evo’s electoral fraud in Bolivia.
Yet one or two days before the caucus, a pivotal political poll or theirs was somehow botched and couldn’t be published.
I really don’t think that there is a plausible excuse for that one.
TommyJay: I called that “The Case of the Disappearing Poll” after the first Hardy Brothers book I read as a kid, “The Case of the Disappearing Floor.”
The Iowa caucus is not quite into Epstein territory but it’s getting there.
Pragmatically speaking, the DNC is quite right to fear a Sanders victory. It could be an extinction event for the Democratic establishment as we know it. I think the Dems’ recent losing doubling-downs come out of their desperation rather than miscalculation.
I laugh at the D’s caucus operation since it relied on pre-registration of the voter, people being at the location by a certain time (closed doors), an open count of people standing around, time wasted on getting the percentages for viable candidates, then moving around, recounting the people, etc.
Yet for elections, they want the states to allow registration on the day of voting, no voter ID, long open voting times of up to a month, ballot harvesting, and so on.
I think the R’s caucus were done by secret ballot and they were probably partying the rest of the time.
Oklahoma also uses the Accuvote system and I don’t think we have had any issues. But, we also have closed primaries and tomorrow is the deadline for registration by party for the March 3rd election. And, we have voter ID. Absentee ballot envelopes have to be notarized, with the state paying the fee. And there were controls to prevent someone going into nursing homes to gather votes. We have tag agencies who do the license plates, drivers renewals, and notary services. So, there are plenty of tag agencies and banks to provide notary services.
Another point is that many of the voting sites are actually churches since they have large, free parking as well as decent sized meeting rooms. My previous polling places were the local armory (nope after 9/11) and schools (too disruptive with presidential races).
Two questions remain to be answered:
1) if Sanders (I-Vermont) becomes the Democrat nominee will rank-and-file democrats – sometimes referred to as voters – support him?
2) if Sanders (I-Vermont) becomes the Democrat nominee will independents who voted for President Trump – also voters – support him?
For those of you who would entertain a conspiracy theory in this, I would invoke Occaam’s Razor. In this case, it means “Never attribute to malice, that which can easily be explained by human stupidity.”
To put it colloquially, the Democrats stepped on their crank.
“Never attribute to malice, that which can easily be explained by human stupidity.”
Roy Nathanson: That’s known as Hanlon’s Razor. neo quotes that one too. Most people agree in theory.
The tricky bit is that human malice is not exactly rare either, so where does one decide the line has been crossed from stupidity to malice? Or does one always stick with stupidity as the explanation?
One could explain, and many did before it became too onerous, Epstein’s death as suicide with a lot of coincidental stupidity on the side. Where do you stand on that one?
Plus there’s always the possibility in Iowa that the software failed and/or the caucus supervisors failed *and* malicious powers put their thumbs on the scale.
Seems the Democrats can’t count. Meanwhile, according to a flashy article over at the Atlantic, Trump is now an evil, super genius computer geek with billion dollar tech that will take over the world, bwhahaha —- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/
sdferr on February 6, 2020 at 6:15 pm said:
. . . I don’t want to learn how to spell his name.
Easily solved AesopFan, just spell it “pseudopioushomosexualeugenicistbabykillerwhoknowswhatwomenwant”. Easypeasy.
* * *
Okay, smart guy – now say it backwards!
PS just unearthed my Hardy Boys collection for the grandkids (and Nancy Drew, Dana Girls, Judy Bolton, Cherry Ames, Vicki Barr, Rick Brant, Tom Corbett, the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, and the Camp-fire Girls).
Liz on February 6, 2020 at 10:09 pm said:
I laugh at the D’s caucus operation since it relied on pre-registration of the voter, people being at the location by a certain time (closed doors), an open count of people standing around, time wasted on getting the percentages for viable candidates, then moving around, recounting the people, etc.
Yet for elections, they want the states to allow registration on the day of voting, no voter ID, long open voting times of up to a month, ballot harvesting, and so on.
* * *
Brilliant observation.
If the Democrats didn’t have double standards —
Speaking of double standards…as usual, whatever the Democrats complain about Trump doing, Obama did more and worse.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/double-standards-on-rush-limbaughs-presidential-medal-of-freedom/
“If Sanders…”
As Sanders seems to be firmly in the grip of a delusional and destructive ideology, I’m not quite sure that Sanders can really be considered an “independent”.
Definitely a Democrat, though—in the current stage of that party’s bizarre evolutionary development.
(Hmmm, maybe there should be a Zombie Party. “A smart phone in every garage? Another smart phone in every pot?”)
PowerLine linked this great post about Bernie’s real brother in Britain stumping for Sanders.
https://spectator.us/larry-sanders-show-british-left/
You might have to go through PLB to get past the pay-wall.
A lot of college
educatedindoctrinated folk stay indoctrinated the rest of their lives. Reps really lost out in the colleges, allowing Dems and socialists to take over the lower paid intellectual professorships while the Reps went for more cash in businesses. Often marrying wives who were and remain true Leftist believers, with an extra helping of unearned comfort to add even more guilt to their various privileges.America’s recovery, if it even ever comes, will be slow and hard. A long hard slog, to retake the institutions. Often the same institutions which the Dems want to “destroy”, even tho they’ve already taken them over — often making them incompetent.
Recanvas – schmecanvas (or is it reschmanvas ?), the Bernie Bros are being robbed again, like with the Des Moines poll they chose not to publish. Yet all those Dems promise to rob from the rich, which all thinking folk know means also the working folk, and even if they steal somewhat incompetently, they’re pretty sure to get a lot of tax cash from working Americans.
Their supporters support from their hearts — so good arguments won’t change their minds. Jail time might, especially for crooked cops. But even trials and indictments would be a help.
Plus laughter. Lots of mockery and laughing at the Dems, and at their silly ideas.
“Never attribute to malice, that which can easily be explained by human stupidity.”
the corolary..
never do something malicious so well you cant pretend it was stupid…
or
when planning to be malicious, anything you can explain by human stupidity is a freebie
Gringo, I think it was 2011 or so when Bernie was talking about how wonderful Chavez and Venezuela is. The guy can’t help himself from sucking up to dictators.
huxley, I read Tom Swift, Doc Savage (ha!), and various mysteries. So there’s plot on polling in the Hardy Bros. (Boys?) books. Interesting. There’s a mediocre film noir entitled “The Fearmakers” (1958) about the early days of rigged polls. Interesting plot, and a good Dana Andrews performance, but low production quality.
Liz, Good for Oklahoma. I’ve read that photo ID requirements are not particularly helpful as most illegal immigrants have fake ones. The other items you mention are definitely impressive, though I’ve thought that mail-in ballots are always corruptible. I’ll bet those measures make a big dent in the problem.
Hereogar’s Razor: Never let the evil ba*****s hide behind a claim of simple incompetence.
@Bernie: Hey bro! You won but your delegates get spread out to everyone equally. Isn’t that, like, you know, socialism?
The Accuvote machines used by most towns to count ballots can’t be hacked because they aren’t online.
This is not a lie but also not true. Anyone with an adequate skill set and unsupervised physical access can hack the machine. A proficient person might even add in a wireless access point so “upgrades” can be done the fly.
never do something malicious so well you cant pretend it was stupid…
Artfldgr: I like it!
For all those razors, we need a grindstone.
Non illegitimi carborundum.
The Grammar Maven warns us that this is not legitimate Latin, but you get the idea.
I first heard the phrase, in the format I quoted, from the president of my college’s Republican students’ association during the McGovern-Nixon election, and repeated frequently during the Watergate years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegitimi_non_carborundum
Not that he particularly liked Nixon, and I voted for McGovern (being one of the LIVs of the day; I repented not long thereafter), but it didn’t seem right to him to have the Dems pile onto a landslide winner so strongly. Turns out, the piling on really was unfair; lots of debunking stories are circling the webz.
https://politicsandprosperity.com/2019/08/09/did-nixon-get-a-bum-rap/
I had forgotten this was the FIRST election with the younger voting age; I suspect the Dems thought it would work to their advantage, or they never would have allowed it.
“Nixon received almost 18 million more votes than McGovern, and he holds the record for the widest popular vote margin in any United States presidential election. The 1972 presidential election was the first since the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.” – Wikipedia
“The Twenty-sixth Amendment (Amendment XXVI) to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from using age as a reason for denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States who are at least eighteen years old. It was proposed by Congress on March 23, 1971, and ratified on July 1, 1971, the quickest ratification of an amendment in history.
This amendment was important to the Student [activist protest anti-war] Movement because they declared that if they were old enough to be drafted into a war they were against, then they should be old enough to vote against and have a voice in their government.[1]” – Wikipedia
I actually agree with that reasoning in abstract, but would have preferred raising the draft age to 21.
huxley on February 7, 2020 at 3:41 pm said:
never do something malicious so well you cant pretend it was stupid…
Artfldgr: I like it!
* * *
Second the motion.
Plus, there are some other corollaries that follow yours:
(1) if you are trying to pretend you are stupid (rather than malicious), if helps if you aren’t actually stupid;
(2) if the malicious things you are doing look convincingly stupid, there’s a chance they won’t be very effective.
TommyJay on February 7, 2020 at 11:58 am said:
Gringo, I think it was 2011 or so when Bernie was talking about how wonderful Chavez and Venezuela is. The guy can’t help himself from sucking up to dictators.
Yes, it was 2011.,Close The Gaps: Disparities That Threaten America
Even in 2011, when Hugo was still alive and oil was still around $100/BBL, a little digging into databases would show that Chavista Venezuela’s economic growth was far below that of the rest of the world- even with the hundreds of billions of oil revenue. Similarly, even with the brouhaha about the Missions, improvements in education and healthcare were about average or less compared to other countries. Which makes Bernie a knave or a fool? I vote for fool.
Esther on February 7, 2020 at 12:41 am said:
Seems the Democrats can’t count. Meanwhile, according to a flashy article over at the Atlantic, Trump is now an evil, super genius computer geek with billion dollar tech that will take over the world, bwhahaha —- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/
* * *
I just finished reading that article, and intend to make a longer comment on the 2020 election thread, but — bwhahaha indeed.
““Enough is enough,” Perez said in a tweet.”
Agreed.
Iowa results are now to be ignored, in toto.
Perez, YOU’RE FIRED! And there WILL be an audit.
WHIFF of Impropriety. HINT of corruption, Mere association with the name “Clinton”
Well, I’d say that takes care of the “Iowa caucuses.”
Whatever the “final results” are from this one, they will never be believed, and will just be ignored.
Next time, I doubt there will be such a thing as the first, the Iowa caucuses that people will pay any attention to.
This was, I understand, among other things, a great moneymaker for Iowa, but after this clusterfunk, I don’t see how this whole thing can be redeemed, and have any credibility at all.