Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price Resigns After Iowa Fiasco
The Iowa Caucuses (IDP) dipped into chaos, prompting the resignation of its chairman (Flickr).
A series of events including delays in reporting and errors within poles marred the recent Iowa Democratic Caucuses (IDP). In the wake of this debacle, chairman of the IDP Troy Price submitted his letter of resignation on February 12, calling “for an emergency meeting of the State Central Committee on Saturday…to elect an interim chair.” Having received much criticism for his failure to implement adequate safeguards, Price’s fellow committee members supported Price’s decision to resign.
This year, caucus protocol dictated that local precinct chairs upload their polling results via a mobile application and, in the event that the application failed, precinct chairs could report their results using a secure hotline. Despite warnings regarding a lack of prior field testing from the Democartic National Committee’s (DNC) own cybersecurity chief Bob Lord, the app was nonetheless approved for use. Still, though, just hours before the caucuses began, a DNC engineer wrote in a private Slack channel that “I’ve tested this as well as I can without real data but no guarantees it . . . won’t all come crashing down.”,
As the caucus began, the app’s shortcomings soon became apparent and DNC leaders were left scrambling to manage the scale of the situation. Eventually, the amount of precinct leaders opting to report their figures via the secure hotline exceeded those using the app. Consequently, wait times exceeded 45 minutes and, combined with the accidental public release of the hotline’s number, polling tabulation virtual stopped as both the primary and backup reporting method surpassed their limitations.
Less than a day after the caucuses concluded on February 4, the IDP determined that a coding error within the app had affected the way by which votes had been recorded. Furthermore, investigative reporters found that some stations that had managed to properly record their polls had incorrectly awarded delegates to certain candidates. For example, results from Des Moines’s 55th precinct initially showed that Deval Patrick, former governor of Massachusetts, had earned the support of 218 individuals. Eventually, however, it became clear that these votes should have been recorded in favor of Senator Bernie Sanders. A similar situation transpired in Black Hawk County where again, Patrick had been awarded delegates intended for Sanders. After the IDP became aware of these mistakes, the party issued a statement on Wednesday February 5 via Twitter stating that “there will be a small correction to the last batch of results.” After this corrective action was taken, Patrick went from having 21 total state delegates to zero. Still, though, wariness as to the legitimacy of the corrected results pervades.
In the aftermath of this chaos, pressure from the campaigns of Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Bernie Sanders convinced the IDP to review the results from 92 precincts. Of these 92 precincts, 54 of them had inconsistencies between the figures actually reported to the DNC and those figures physically transcribed by local precinct officials. Even in some precincts that lacked such irregularities, however, basic math errors may have resulted in awarding an improper number of delegates to certain candidates. Nonetheless, according to DNC lawyer Shayla McCormally, these mistakes were not corrected because doing so “‘would introduce “personal opinion” into the official record of results.”’
Questions of foul play soon began swirling inside the IDP, with a New York Times article reporting that Price was confronted by two members of his central committee days after the caucus. This confrontation was apparently provoked on account of Price’s close connection to a senior Buttigieg advisor who also happens to be married to the founder of the company that developed the caucus app. Holly Brown, amongst a group of committee members uncomfortable with Price’s actions, described seeing pictures of Price with both app developers and senior Buttigieg advisors as “concerning.” Judy Downs, executive director of the Polk County Democrats, went further, stating in an interview appearance that “some of the decisions ... made it really hard to defend against accusations of … conspiracy.”
While most of the ensuing backlash has landed on Price for his role in facilitating the caucuses, Tom Perez, current chair of the DNC, has also sustained his share of condemnation, notably from former Iowa state party chairman Mike Kiernan. Kiernan went so far as to suggest that Perez should “step down” before adding that “if I were another state party chair in the country, I’d be worried about Tom Perez.” While calls for resignation essentially forced Price down from his position, Perez quickly brushed aside similar demands him, stating that he would “absolutely not” consider resigning from his current position as chair of the DNC.
On Saturday, February 15, the IDP finalized their leadership transition by replacing Price with State Representative Mark Smith of Marshalltown. Beating out three other candidates for the position, outgoing chair Price congratulated him via a statement on Twitter, affirming that “he will do a tremendous job in moving us forward and making sure we win in November.”