They said the Iowa caucus results were going to be problematic this year

And they were right.

New methods of reporting were devised that were widely believed to be begging for trouble.  Apparently, there was no need to beg.

The Iowa Democratic Party’s new system of releasing multiple vote counts grew out of a years-long effort to change party rules, one in which most caucus states simply scrapped that system in favor of primaries.

Ed Martin, the chairman of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said caucuses by their nature risked chaos.

“One of the reasons we moved to a primary is that in 2016, we saw such a huge crush of people coming out, so much energy and excitement, and the party was not equipped to handle that, to administer an election,” Martin said. “We had to recruit 15,000 volunteers that had to put on an election in two hours. It was a really negative experience.”

[...]

Sean Bagniewski, chair of the Polk County Democratic Party, said that local officials were aware of problems with the [new reporting] app since last Thursday and that they had requested state officials resolve the problems — to no avail.

[...]

“We had had so many complaints about the app that we started telling our chairs that if they were having problems with the app then you should call in the results,” Bagniewski said.

The state party did not provide any training on how to use the app, he said, adding that while the caucus trainings are done at the county level, the app itself came from the state level.

Local officials had trouble downloading the app, getting a PIN to log in, and activating it even when they had a PIN, Bagniewski said.

Then, when precinct chairmen tried to call the results in via the hotline, they were placed on hold for as long as two hours, he said.

[...]

Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Polk County Democrats, said they initially decided the county’s 177 precinct chairs would call in results to the state party after encountering “issues” with a new reporting app.

However, the state party hotline wasn’t working properly either, according to Bagniewski. Polk County Democratic officials then asked all of its precinct chairs to take pictures of their final reporting sheets.

[...]

Judy Downs, executive director of the Polk County Democrats, then compiled pictures of all the reporting sheets on her phone and drove over to the headquarters of the Iowa Democratic Party to try to submit them in person.

“They didn’t take it,” Downs said.

  WaPo

Wow.

President Trump weighed in on the delayed results in Iowa on Tuesday morning, calling the Democratic caucuses “an unmitigated disaster.”

“Nothing works, just like they ran the Country,” he said in a tweet that was critical of the cost of the launch of the website offering insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act.

“The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is ‘Trump,’ ” Trump wrote.

Ooooh, surprise. But he's right about one thing: this does not make the Democratic party look competent.

He easily prevailed in the Republican caucuses, winning about 97 percent support against former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld and former congressman Joe Walsh of Illinois.

Well, no shit.

But of course Trumpland isn't going to let it go as a mess. They're ramping up to claiming a rigged election in November should Trump lose.

Trump’s top supporters shared a series of tweets late Monday questioning the integrity of the voting process itself. Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, and Eric Trump, the president’s son, both questioned whether there had been some manipulation of the first-in-the-nation vote, without citing specific evidence for their claims.

“Quality control = rigged?” tweeted Parscale, citing Democrats’ earlier justification for the delay.

And Biden wasn't far off that story.

The Biden campaign on Monday night emailed Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price and Executive Director Kevin Geiken raising concerns about “considerable flaws” in the caucus’s reporting system tonight.

“The app that was intended to relay Caucus results to the Party failed; the Party’s back-up telephonic reporting system likewise has failed,” the campaign wrote in an email, obtained by The Washington Post. “Now, we understand that Caucus Chairs are attempting to — and, in many cases, failing to — report results telephonically to the Party. These acute failures are occurring statewide.”

Maybe not rigged - but so faulty you can't trust the final outcome.

We're going to go into 2021 in flames.

State party officials held a second call with officials from the campaigns early Tuesday. The party officials told the campaigns that they planned to release caucus results later on Tuesday and that they are hand-checking results.

[...]

The campaigns decided not to wait for official results, instead releasing some of their own. Both the Sanders and Buttigieg campaigns put out some numbers from precincts, saying that while they’re not complete, the campaigns believe they’re indicative.

[...]

According to the Sanders campaign results, Sanders performed best in the [40 percent of] precincts they had [data for], with about 29 percent of state delegate equivalents, followed by Buttigieg with 26 percent, Warren with 18 percent, Biden with 15 percent and Klobuchar with 11 percent.

[...]

Warren strategist Joe Rospars criticized the release of numbers.

He also called the race “very close” between Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg and said Biden was “a distant fourth.”

[...]

Buttigieg’s plane landed in Concord [New Hampshire] shortly before 4 a.m. Tuesday. By 7 a.m., his campaign had not only announced a fresh Granite State endorsement (Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess), but it had also issued a memo to reporters detailing its precinct-level data from Monday night in Iowa.

According to that data, Buttigieg accumulated 25 percent support overall on second alignment, numbers the campaign believes mean Buttigieg won the night.

[...]

The campaign statement said it performed stronger in rural parts of the state than expected.

[...]

A campaign aide said that with 77 percent of precinct captains having reported results from their caucuses, the campaign could say that it beat its internal projections. Prior to Monday, those projections showed the race in “a virtual tie” on stage delegates, so beating the campaign’s projections meant an outright delegate win.

[...]

Warren declared that the Iowa results are “too close to call” early Tuesday morning after arriving here on her plane from Des Moines.

[...]

When Warren left Iowa, the state party had said it planned to release results from the first-in-the-nation caucuses later Tuesday. And by the time she landed, she said she knew little new information.

[...]

Warren’s top aides indicated via posts on social media that they are upset with the disorganization in Iowa, but they were more restrained than some of the other campaigns, reflecting a push to position her as a unity candidate capable of bringing the party together.

“The process broke down; systematically and individually in many precincts, both people and technology failed,” said chief strategist Joe Rospars on Twitter.

[...]

“Any campaign saying they won or putting out incomplete numbers is contributing to the chaos and misinformation,” Rospars said.

I think it's safe to say that those who are saying it's too soon to declare victory know they are running behind those who are declaring victory.

Klobuchar expressed confidence in the ability of the Iowa Democratic Party to tabulate the results of the caucuses as she arrived in New Hampshire early Tuesday.

“I think they’ll be able to count them by hand, just like they used to,” Klobuchar told CNN. “They can get it done. I’m sure they can get it done. . . . I’m sure they’re working hard. It must have been devastating to them.”

[...]

Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said during a television interview Tuesday that her team has “real concerns about the integrity of the process” and stressed that “no official data” has been released on the caucuses’ results.

[...]

Roger Lau, Warren’s campaign manager, said their campaign believed Biden had underperformed, based on data collected from polling sites.

“What we know is that it was a tight top three. Warren, Bernie, Pete, and Biden was a distant fourth,” Lau told reporters.

Others also fueled speculation that Biden performed poorly.

Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz bemoaned how the cancellation of the Des Moines Register poll, which was rumored to show Warren ticking up, snuffed out a potentially positive news cycle.

“We all know that Biden had a terrible poll on Saturday, and it didn’t come out, so for three days he was able to skate by, with people saying he was in the lead,” Katz said. The former vice president “was told in precinct after precinct that he was not viable. Instead of that being the story, it’s about the party.”

[...]

Klobuchar’s campaign manager also indicated on Twitter that their campaign saw a poor Biden showing in the state.

So Biden gets to skate by yet again.

As the results of the Iowa caucuses hung in the balance, candidates moved on to New Hampshire -- and continued to raise money from supporters amid the confusion.

[...]

Candidates are in dire need of a quick infusion of cash after Iowa, where they invested heavily over the final months of 2019.

[...]

The early contests are costly, and the election is expected to become more expensive as it nears Super Tuesday on March 3, when 14 states have Democratic presidential nominating contests. And those who make it to Super Tuesday would face a rival with virtually unlimited funds: multibillionaire Mike Bloomberg.

What a mess.

On to New Hampshire, leaving Iowa in a huge dumpster fire.

UPDATE:

He controls the states' voting timetables now?