On Monday night, not long after the Iowa Democratic Party announced it was conducting “quality control” on ballots from the Iowa caucus, cable news’s talking heads and Twitter’s energetic touts began to suffer a breakdown. On CNN, it didn’t take long for Chris Cuomo to declare that the party had committed an “epic failure.” On Twitter, some reporters were insinuating foul play. Not to be left out, three separate presidential campaigns set about either casting doubt on the declared results or simply releasing some of their own.

Of course, what the Iowa Democrats were actually doing was counting votes. A third-party app the party had deployed to count and transmit votes, apparently without adequately training precinct chairs in its use, had failed, so election officials were adapting to changing circumstances, falling back on traditional hand counting and rechecking results. It’s a slower process than what the hoped-for technological innovation promised, but it followed best practices for an election in dispute. For the average voter, it meant waiting for the results to come in. But for politicians who want good headlines and cable news anchors who yearn to report results, it was the worst-case scenario: a slight delay in receiving coveted instant gratification.



For Democrats voting in Iowa—that is, the people whose votes are being counted—the delay will mean nothing. The votes will still be counted, the campaign will go on. But for candidates and journalists, both of whom build narratives that rely on the outcome of the first caucus of the primary season, there is no result worse than a delayed result. Leading the charge was Elizabeth Bruenig, an opinion writer from The New York Times and former staffer at The New Republic. In a since-deleted tweet, she suggested that the Democratic National Committee (which does not directly administer the caucus) had delayed the result after seeing that a leftist candidate might win. Vice reporter Laura Wagner followed suit, declaring the DNC to be “corrupt or incompetent or both.”



Meanwhile, on network television, things were reaching that level of cacophonous cross talk that’s only seen when there’s no real news to report. On CNN, anchors and panelists alike were declaring the proceedings to be an unresolvable fiasco, sure to end the Hawkeye State’s grandest tradition. It could indeed be the end of the first-in-the-nation caucus, but it was the networks themselves who were the main victim of a lack of immediate results, not Iowa voters.



Taking days, or even over a week, to report results is hardly unheard of, even in the United States.

Taking days, or even over a week, to report results is hardly unheard of, even in the United States. California regularly takes over a week to count all its votes; in one close 2018 House race, a result was not apparent until almost a month after voting. The Golden State’s late returns in the 2018 midterms sparked a hue and cry among the pundit class, who were all but prepared to declare California a failed state. But California designs its elections to be that way. In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that California’s 2020 Democratic primary, scheduled for March 3, may take just as long to count. Besides, this isn’t Iowa’s first foray into waiting for results: The 2012 Republican caucus resulted in a weeks-long delay, with Mitt Romney initially declared victor before Rick Santorum was ultimately certified as winner by 34 votes. By comparison, Iowa’s 2020 counting—likely to be wrapped up in coming days—appears absolutely brisk.