Iowa Democratic Party’s caucus procedures questioned

In the aftermath of the closest contest in the history of the Iowa Democratic caucuses, Hillary Clinton moved victoriously onto New Hampshire on Tuesday, while it did not appear rival Bernie Sanders' campaign was readying any challenge to the results.

Nonetheless, questions were being raised about how the 1,683 meetings across the state were run.

Tuesday morning, the state Democratic Party said that with all precincts reporting, Clinton won 49.8 percent of the state delegate equivalents, compared with 49.6 percent for Bernie Sanders, a hair's breadth margin.

A lingering precinct in Polk County was not reported until after the sun came up Tuesday.

Both Clinton and Sanders were making campaign appearances in New Hampshire, where the nation's first primary will be held in a week. And Tad Devine, a Sanders adviser, said the campaign does not have 'any plan or intention” to challenge the result, according to an Associated Press report.

Still, the campaign has raised some questions about the process in Iowa, among them whether the party had enough precinct chairs in place. Those chairs preside over the individual caucuses.

The Hill newspaper late Monday cited an unnamed Sanders aide saying that the party did not send impartial chairs to 90 precincts. An official from the Iowa Democratic Party, who also was not identified in the article, said that report was inaccurate.

In addition, there were reports of disputes in some parts of the state about whether accurate counts were taken of participants in individual caucuses.

Officials from the state party did not return calls and messages sent on Tuesday morning. But in a statement at about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, party chair Andy McGuire praised the Iowans who participated and said with the advent of a telecaucus and satellite sites, the party fulfilled 'our promise to expand participation and improve on an already incredible process.”

The Clinton campaign, in a statement sent in the early hours of Tuesday, said there was no doubt about who won the caucuses.

Matt Paul, Clinton's state director, said 'there is no uncertainty and Secretary Clinton has clearly won the most national and state delegates.”

Iowa's caucuses are regularly subject to scrutiny, and the sometimes chaotic Democratic meetings, which don't utilize a ballot but divide people into preference groups to measure support for a presidential candidate, has led people in the past to question the process, too.

Brad Anderson, who ran President Obama's general election campaign in Iowa in the 2012 election, said such a close contest like Tuesday's would inevitably invite scrutiny. He said that he thought Clinton could fairly declare victory, but added, 'I do think there's some fair questions that have been raised.”

Thom Hart, the Scott County Democratic chair, said there was one precinct where there was not a chair to call the meeting to order, so a person from Illinois did so. After that, a permanent chair was elected by the caucus. Still, he thought that, overall, things went well.

Scott County was where delegates were awarded in two precincts with the flip of a coin, an oddity of the caucuses that got noticed Monday night.

Hart said that one coin flip in the county went Clinton's way, while the other went for Sanders. In one of those precincts, there was a dispute about the number of people eligible to participate.

There was a similar dispute over the accuracy of the number of participants at a Polk County precinct, according to a video posted on the Internet.

There also were reports of slow reporting of results. Kurt Meyer, who chairs a three-county Democratic organization in northern Iowa, said there were three Mitchell County precincts were results were reported to the state but did not immediately appear to have been presented.

The party employed an app from Microsoft to report results. But in this case, Meyer, said he phoned in results. Still, he said he did not have concerns about the results being reported.

'I never, ever questioned the accuracy of the figures,” he said. The latest reporting precinct was in Des Moines.

Monday's turnout of about 171,000 people - the second highest in the party's history - also was evident at some precincts.

Anderson, who caucused at an elementary school in Des Moines, tweeted Monday night, 'Officially too full at Perkins Elementary. We're getting kicked out to parking lot. Unbelievable!”