Referencing chatter on late-night TV and social media about coin flips and other oddities during Monday night’s Democratic caucuses, the Register acknowledged that “once again the world is laughing at Iowa.” While Iowans were used to answering for their “quirky process,” it said, “what we cannot stomach is even the whiff of impropriety or error.”

To resolve lingering questions about the results, the paper called on Iowa Democrats to do a “complete audit.” Furthermore, the Register pointed out that “too many” accounts of problems such as “inconsistent counts, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers, confused voters, cramped precinct locations, a lack of voter registration forms,” also require state Democrats to be more transparent about the results.

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The Register editorial comes amid early skirmishes between the state Democratic Party and the Sanders campaign over the caucus vote count.

The campaign said late Thursday that it has been rebuffed in its initial requests for paper records used to tally votes in each precinct earlier this week, The Washington Post’s Tom Hamburger reported. “We want to figure this out in the most diplomatic way possible,”said Rania Batrice, Sanders’s Iowa communications director.

That sentiment was echoed by campaign spokesman Mike Briggs who said: “We’re not contemplating a lawsuit. … We are assessing the situation.”

Unlike in the Republican caucuses, Democratic caucus-goers don’t fill out individual ballots. Instead, they split into groups based on their support for a particular candidate and then a head count is done and delegates are assigned based on the support for each candidate.

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The Democratic caucus process can be a kinetic, fluid one. “These are not contests of popular raw vote,” the chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party said in a column published on Register’s website Thursday evening. “Democrats at our caucuses align, and then often times, realign, for a different candidate in order to form a consensus and elect delegates,” Chairwoman Andy McGuire also said.

Despite the nature of the process, the Register said the Sanders campaign “seeks the math sheets or other paperwork that precinct chairs filled out and were supposed to return to the state party. They want to compare those documents to the results entered into a Microsoft app and sent to the party.”

After Iowa Democrats released the results from Monday’s caucuses giving Clinton a slim victory, McGuire told the Register the results were final and wouldn’t be open to reconsideration.

“The answer is that we had all three camps [Clinton, Sanders and O’Malley] in the tabulation room last night to address any grievances brought forward, and we went over any discrepancies,” McGuire said, according to the Register. “These are the final results.”

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But the party said Thursday that it was open to hearing from the campaigns.

While noting that the caucuses are “a unique event … that cannot be recreated or recounted,” party spokesman Sam Lau also said, “we are working with all campaigns on individual concerns they are bringing to us and addressing them on a case-by-case basis.”

Lau noted that state party officials had recently met with the Sanders campaign about “a small amount of specific concerns, and the Clinton campaign has also asked us a small amount of questions. We will look into these concerns and reach out to our county party leadership with any questions.”

For its part, the Clinton campaign suggested Thursday that Sanders’s upstart campaign couldn’t take a loss — even an incredibly slim one.

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Clinton Iowa state director Matt Paul suggested that the Sanders camp was attempting to “disparage results that don’t come out in their favor,” The Post’s Tom Hamburger reported. Paul also said the Clinton campaign had identified “a handful of instances” where it believed Clinton should have been awarded more delegates.

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While the campaign intended to continue to try to resolve those concerns with the state party, none of those instances “would alter the result of the caucus,” Paul also said.

The whole situation was cause for the Register to call for more immediate transparency from McGuire on behalf of state Democrats and to engage in a longer term project of reform.

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“Work with all the campaigns to audit results,” the influential paper implored of McGuire, “Break silly party tradition and release the raw vote totals. Provide a list of each precinct coin flip and its outcome, as well as other information sought by the Register. Be transparent.”

In her separate column also published Thursday evening on the Register’s website, McGuire explained the caucus process in some detail and the party’s efforts to ensure the integrity of results, as well as Iowa Democrats’ openness to considering questions from both campaigns and considering reform in the future.

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In response to the Register’s desire for a “complete audit” and a similar desire on the part of the Sanders camp to double check the announced results, McGuire said the unique process Iowa Democrats use to caucus doesn’t lend itself to such reconsideration in hindsight. “Asking for raw vote totals demonstrates a misunderstanding of our process,” she said, “as does asking for a recount.”

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Referencing the “fiasco” for Iowa Republicans in 2012 — when eventual nominee Mitt Romney was declared the winner on Caucus Night by just 8 votes only to have the results changed later, crowning Rick Santorum by 34 votes — the Register also asked Iowa Democrats to undertake a longer project of studying how to improve their caucuses: “Democrats should ask themselves: What do we want the Iowa caucus to be? How can we preserve its uniqueness while bringing more order? Does it become more like a straw poll or primary? How do we strike the balance between tradition and transparency?”

The paper’s editorial came as the Sanders campaign showed signs that it intends to pursue its concerns about Iowa’s process and Monday’s close results.

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In lieu of the paper records so far not provided by the state Democratic Party, Batrice told The Post the Sanders campaign is contacting every one of its precinct captains across the state, asking them to reconstruct their records of Monday night’s gatherings and results.

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Of the many issues with problems and potential irregularities, two issues stand out.

First, the Sanders campaign has always been suspicious of the the application developed by Microsoft to help local officials in precincts tabulate results and provide them to the state party on Caucus Night. The app was developed in the wake of the problems in 2012 in the Iowa Republican caucuses. There were concerns about the app expressed on social media on Monday night, according to USA Today. And, according to Politico, the Sanders campaign has suggested that 90 precincts didn’t report results properly.

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Second, concerns have been raised about Clinton’s luck with coin flips used, according to preexisting party procedures, to resolve ties in some precincts. As reported by The Post, the Register and many other outlets, coin flips were used in at least 6 precincts Monday night and, in all 6 cases, Clinton won the toss. As also reported The Post and many other outlets, those coin flips alone, were not enough to give Clinton her narrow overall victory over Sanders.

In its editorial, the Register specifically sought information from state Democrats about coin flips across the state Monday night and their outcomes. The random procedure was one of many outstanding questions the paper still has days later. “We need answers to what happened Monday night,” the Iowa paper said. “The future of the first-in-the-nation caucuses demands it.”