Pete Buttigieg appears to have sealed his victory in Iowa after the state’s Democratic Party released on Sunday corrected results from its disputed caucuses.
Buttigieg now has 14 national delegates from Iowa to Bernie Sanders’ 12. Elizabeth Warren got eight, Joe Biden had six and Amy Klobuchar received, one.
But the Associated Press said it still can’t declare a winner because the results “may not be fully accurate and are still subject to potential revision.”
The race was so close that Buttigieg won by 0.09% of state delegate equivalents, the official yardstick for victory in Iowa. But Sanders has also declared victory because 6,103 more Iowans caucused for him before the process of eliminating nonviable candidates, recounting and converting to state delegates.
The party released its projected delegate tally Sunday after reviewing complaints of irregularities from the Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren campaigns. The issues included mathematical and tabulation errors and disputes over the rules for counting delegates.
The party changed results in some precincts based on the complaints but kept others intact.
In some cases, precinct officials signed inaccurate tally sheets. But Iowa Democratic Chairman Troy Price said Friday those are legal records and cannot be altered under state law.
Party officials briefing reporters Sunday provided additional explanations for some of the irregularities. For example, precincts can choose fewer delegates to the county convention than they’re allotted if supporters for a given candidate decline to serve as a county delegate.
Sunday’s results ended a chaotic, six-day counting process that was marred from the beginning by problems with a smartphone app that didn’t work and a backup telephone hotline that was jammed by calls from supporters of President Donald Trump.
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