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US Election Thread - Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa


karaddin

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1 hour ago, mormont said:

Nope. The conversation starts on p17 talking about raw vote totals being released (post from Altherion). The DMR editorial is introduced on p18. (Now having read it, I don't think much of it, frankly.) The conversation immediately returns to discussion of the raw vote totals, with asides about whether the Iowa co-chairwoman is in the tank for Hilary and whether caucuses in general are a bad idea. Nobody raises a specific concern about the accuracy of delegate allocation until Nestor does so in the post I'm responding to above.

That all being said, if the campaigns had observers on the night and the right to challenge, yeah, it seems to me all of this is water under the bridge. If you want to say how flawed the Iowa Democrat caucus is as a process, I'm right with you. If you want to talk about how it can be improved or replaced, I'm with you on that too. If you want to say this is somehow key to whether Sanders or Clinton should be the Democratic candidate in this election, I'm leaving you to fight that one alone, I'm afraid.

I was typing a reply, but I got ninja'd by Nestor again.  So, what he said.

Also, if you were talking about vote totals all along, your repeated comments that it's impossible to determine the vote totals is obviously incorrect.  It's something a third grader could figure out.  Step one: get all the voting data from each precinct.  The data from each precinct shows the final numbers of people supporting each candidate.  Step  two: add these numbers up to get the total votes for Clinton, Sanders, etc.  Congratulations, you've just done the impossible...

No one has asked to recount the individual ballots of each voter, which don't exist.  You are simply repeating a line that the Iowa Democratic Party is trying to use to justify withholding the data.  

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17 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

I was typing a reply, but I got ninja'd by Nestor again.  So, what he said.

Also, if you were talking about vote totals all along, your repeated comments that it's impossible to determine the vote totals is obviously incorrect.  It's something a third grader could figure out.  Step one: get all the voting data from each precinct.  The data from each precinct shows the final numbers of people supporting each candidate.  Step  two: add these numbers up to get the total votes for Clinton, Sanders, etc.  Congratulations, you've just done the impossible...

No one has asked to recount the individual ballots of each voter, which don't exist.  You are simply repeating a line that the Iowa Democratic Party is trying to use to justify withholding the data.  

I think Iowa Democrats are digging in here because they legit don't have that kind of data. The problem with caucuses is that they go on for a long time, its not a single vote and then you go home. And lots of people do leave before the caucus is complete. I'm sure the party has procedures for precinct captains to follow in this case, but I'm just as sure that they all did different things. For instance:

Caucuses where the recorded vote total is from what happened at the start of the caucus but the delegates were awarded based on who was still there at the end of the caucus.

Caucuses where the recorded vote total is from who was there at the end of the caucus but the delegates were awarded based on how was there at the start of the caucus.

Caucuses where the recorded vote total and awarded delegates are both based on who was there at the end of the caucus.

Caucuses where the recorded vote total and awarded delegates are both based on who was there at the start of the caucus, because the record-keeping from later on got screwed up.

Caucuses that don't have any original documentation and there's no way to tell where the numbers given to the state party came from.

And so on. The whole process was definitely a mess, so much so that I don't think it would possible to truly audit it. There could be an audit just identifying all the examples of the problems that occurred, but to provide actual vote totals would require knowing that the data was reliable, and I don't think that's possible here.

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Here's an actual example from the Des Moines Register of the things an audit will catch:

Quote

The Register, too, has received numerous reports that the results announced in its precinct Monday night don't match what the Iowa Democratic Party has posted on its official results websites.

Just one example: Grinnell precinct No. 1.

At least three caucusgoers there (including Dan McCue and Zack Stewart) and the Grinnell College newspaper reported that Sanders won 19 county delegates and Clinton 7, but party officials said the final tally was Sanders 18 and Clinton 8.

“19-7 is right,” Pablo Silva, a Grinnell College professor who was precinct secretary, told the Register Friday morning. “It is complicated, but the issue comes down to a problem with the math that can be complicated in large precincts. Short version: On Monday night, the IDP felt we had not done it right and they attempted to correct what they saw as errors. We’ve been in touch since then. They are acknowledging our results, but, as I write, will wait on the arrival of our paperwork.”

Lau confirmed those details.

So why is there a discrepancy in the delegate totals as calculated by the precinct secretary and the IDP?  Who's correct?  Were the delegate counts determined properly for all the other precincts?  The only way to answer these question is with an audit, which the IDP is refusing to allow.

 

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4 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Was the Iowa caucus any more weird or disorganized than in previous years?

The Republicans had a really bad one in 2012, although they do use a different system, so it was different issues. They setup a blue ribbon commission and from what I can tell things basically went off without a hitch this time.

I don't think the Democrats had problems like this in 2008 (there was technically a caucus in 2012, but obviously almost no one paid any attention to it), but I don't remember for sure. I think the problem is more that it's been 8 years and all the current party chairs were elected in the past year or two. I'm not even sure if their predecessors were around for '08, or if the party is 2+ generations of leadership past that. I think it just boils down to these crop of chairs being really bad at organizational skills like training and providing clear guidance. I remember reading around two weeks that the party still hadn't filled a couple key statewide oversight positions that were necessary for running the caucus.

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18 minutes ago, Fez said:

I think Iowa Democrats are digging in here because they legit don't have that kind of data. The problem with caucuses is that they go on for a long time, its not a single vote and then you go home. And lots of people do leave before the caucus is complete. I'm sure the party has procedures for precinct captains to follow in this case, but I'm just as sure that they all did different things. For instance:

Caucuses where the recorded vote total is from what happened at the start of the caucus but the delegates were awarded based on who was still there at the end of the caucus.

Caucuses where the recorded vote total is from who was there at the end of the caucus but the delegates were awarded based on how was there at the start of the caucus.

Caucuses where the recorded vote total and awarded delegates are both based on who was there at the end of the caucus.

Caucuses where the recorded vote total and awarded delegates are both based on who was there at the start of the caucus, because the record-keeping from later on got screwed up.

Caucuses that don't have any original documentation and there's no way to tell where the numbers given to the state party came from.

And so on. The whole process was definitely a mess, so much so that I don't think it would possible to truly audit it. There could be an audit just identifying all the examples of the problems that occurred, but to provide actual vote totals would require knowing that the data was reliable, and I don't think that's possible here.

My understanding is that written records exist for each precinct.  I haven't seen anything that suggests otherwise, and the IDP hasn't said that this is the case.  It would be ridiculous, and highly irresponsible, to not require that written records be created.

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4 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

My understanding is that written records exist for each precinct.  I haven't seen anything that suggests otherwise, and the IDP hasn't said that this is the case.  It would be ridiculous, and highly irresponsible, to not require that written records be created.

I'm not saying there aren't written records, I'm saying there's no telling where the information in those records came from and I gave some examples of what different precincts might have done.

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