Both Buttigieg and Sanders Formally Request Partial Recanvass in Iowa

The campaigns of both Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Pete Buttigieg formally requested the Iowa Democrat Party conduct a partial recanvass of the Iowa Democrat Caucus results on Monday.

As Breitbart News reported, Sanders won the popular vote in last Monday’s Iowa Democrat Caucuses’ first alignment by more than 6,000 votes over Buttigieg, 24.7 percent to 21.2 percent, but Buttigieg was projected to receive two more delegates out of Iowa than Sanders, 14 to 12.

Politico reported:

The recanvass requests come a day after the Iowa Democratic Party announced that it reviewed apparent mistakes in 92 precincts that were flagged by three candidates: Sanders, Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren. The mistakes addressed some minor reporting errors, but the bigger issue is that the mathematical worksheets used to convert votes into delegates at some precincts contain other apparent errors.

The party maintains that it cannot fix such mistakes on precinct worksheets without a recount, an argument Price reiterated at a Monday press conference. “A recount would be necessary to alter what those numbers were” on the math worksheets, Price said.

It wasn’t clear how long the recanvassing process would take. Price said the party will, within the next 48 hours, “return its assessment and description of next steps to each respective campaign that made a request,” but that does not mean the entire process will wrap up.

The Sanders campaign requested recanvass of results from 28 precincts that held caucus events, according to Politico. The Buttigieg campaign requested recanvass of results from 115 precincts that held caucus events that same evening. With no overlapping requests, the total number of precincts for which recanvasses have been requested is 143, less than ten percent of the 1,765 caucuses held.

Breitbart News was present at and reported from one of the 115 precincts in which the Buttigieg campaign has requested a recanvass: Waukee Precinct 5 in Dallas County. The official first alignment votes reported by the Iowa Democrat Party when those results were finally released on Thursday were the same for all candidates with the exception of Elizabeth Warren as the unofficial results reported by Breitbart News last Monday night: 95 for Buttigieg, 50 for Warren, 42 for Biden, 26 for Yang, 24 for Sanders, and 14 for Klobuchar. (The Iowa Democrat Party reported that Warren had 49 first alignment votes, while “other” had one first alignment vote.)