AP "Unable to Report Iowa Caucus 1st Place"

Neck-and-neck race with added vote-counting reliability controversy... Winner announcement declared impossible
NYT "Vote-counting process full of issues"
Sanders claims victory
Ultimately, Democratic National Committee requests re-verification

Senator Bernie Sanders is campaigning in New Hampshire, where the next primary will be held on the 6th.
[Image source=AP Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy New York=Correspondent Baek Jong-min] The results of the Iowa Democratic caucus in the United States have yet to be announced even three days after the conclusion. Despite 97% of the votes already being counted, reports have emerged about serious problems in the vote counting process, and some media outlets have even declared that they cannot announce the first-place winner.

On the 6th (local time), Sally Buzbee, editor and executive vice president of the Associated Press (AP), stated, "Because the difference between former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Bernie Sanders in this Iowa caucus is extremely small, and due to various issues that occurred during the counting process, we cannot report a confirmed winner."

This pointed out the controversy over the reliability of the vote count, with former Mayor Buttigieg currently leading Senator Sanders by only 0.1 percentage points.

On the same day, The New York Times (NYT) focused on the inaccuracies in the vote count results announced by the Iowa Democratic Party, raising the issue more actively and escalating the controversy.

NYT reported that in over 100 precincts in Iowa, inaccurate data was submitted or data was missing altogether. There were cases where vote counts did not match or delegate allocations by candidate were incorrect, and the results presented by the Iowa Democratic Party did not align with what was reported at the precinct level.

Even as the vote counting situation became increasingly tangled, former Mayor Buttigieg declared victory first, followed by Senator Sanders also claiming his win. Senator Sanders said, "What I want to do today is thank the Iowa voters who gave me this victory."

As the situation worsened, Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), stepped in. Through a tweet that day, he said, "This cannot continue," and requested the Iowa Democratic Party to conduct a recanvass of the results.

The Democratic Iowa caucus in 2016 also ended with a razor-thin margin between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Sanders, concluding with Clinton’s victory, but Sanders strongly protested at the time. Because of this, this year’s caucus prepared measures to ensure fairness, including diversifying the announcement of results, but it only ended up exacerbating the problems.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.