Missing Precinct Scrambles To Report Sanders Won
Xpost from LBN: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141334345
Source: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2016/02/02/some-democratic-precinct-results-unaccounted/79682184/
Votes from one precinct in Iowa were still missing Tuesday morning, and Democrats from that neighborhood scrambled to find party officials so that they could report their tally: Bernie Sanders won by 2 delegates over Hillary Clinton.
With Des Moines precinct No. 42's results, Clinton's excruciatingly close lead narrowed further, making the final tally for delegate equivalents in the Democratic Iowa caucuses:
Clinton: 699.57
Sanders: 697.77.
It quickly raised questions about whether Sanders had won the popular vote in Iowa. Sanders backers called for Iowa Democratic Party officials to release the raw vote totals.
“It’s important considering how close the race is. We need to be sure everyone has our accurate count,” Jill Joseph, a rank-and-file Democratic voter who backed Sanders in at No. 42 Monday night, told The Des Moines Register.
Party officials had worked into the early morning Tuesday trying to account for results from a handful of tardy precincts in the extremely close presidential caucus race between Sanders and Clinton.
But they announced that Clinton had eked out a slim victory, based on results from 1,682 of 1,683 precincts.
Team Clinton quickly embraced that news, and flatly stated that nothing could change it.
<snip>
The scene at precinct No. 42 was "chaos" Monday night, Joseph told the Register. None of the 400-plus Democrats wanted wanted to be in charge of the caucus, so a man who had shown up just to vote reluctantly stepped forward. As Joseph was leaving with the untrained caucus chairman, who is one of her neighbors, "I looked at him and said, 'Who called in the results of our caucus?' And we didn't know."
The impromptu chairman of Des Moines No. 42 told the Register when he realized his precinct had the key to the final missing votes, he took Tuesday off work and was driving home to get the paperwork. But he didn't know who was logging the tallies.The party’s caucus hotline was no longer working. The party headquarters was locked.
Sanders won seven delegates, Clinton won five, Joseph told the Register.
Later Tuesday morning, the chairman of precinct No. 42 told the Register he dropped off the head count and delegate count paperwork with Polk County Democratic Party Chairman Tom Henderson, and the state party's website has now been updated to reflect that Sanders won 58.3 percent and Clinton won 41.7 percent in precinct No. 42.
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