The Iowa Democratic Party said early Tuesday the "underlying data" collected on the smartphone app used to report Monday's caucus results reported only partial data, leading to the ongoing delay in releasing final results.

The error was caught early Monday as precinct caucus results started coming in, and the Iowa Democratic Party ran them through accuracy and quality checks, Troy Price, party chair, said in a statement.

Price added that precinct chairs have reported data accurately, but it will take time to hand count and finalize the results.

"We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed," he said. "The application’s reporting issue did not impact the ability of precinct chairs to report data accurately."

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The Iowa Democratic Party expects to have a "majority" of the results by 4 p.m. and will release the rest as they come in and are verified.

"Because of the required paper documentation, we have been able to verify that the data recorded in the app and used to calculate State Delegate Equivalents is valid and accurate," he said in the statement. "Precinct level results are still being reported to the IDP.

"While our plan is to release results as soon as possible today, our ultimate goal is to ensure that the integrity and accuracy of the process continues to be upheld."

He added that the party has "every indication" the app was secure; there was no cyber intrusion or hacking of the system.

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Elesha Gayman, chair of the Scott County Democrats, said the state Democratic Party is dispatching volunteers to pick up hard copies of results from every county in the state.

They're expected in Scott County, which includes Davenport, one of the state's largest cities, by 4 p.m.

Gayman said she was only able to report results from 39 of her county's 63 precincts Monday night because of problems.

After hearing about problems with the app — and waiting on hold with the Iowa Democratic Party for 45 minutes to report results via telephone — she asked her precinct chairs to instead drop off their results in person. She gathered what she had and called them in to the Iowa Democratic Party at 1:30 a.m.

It took about 90 minutes to make that report, Gayman said, noting that under a rule change for 2020, each precinct had to report three sets of numbers:

The number of caucusers for each candidate in the first alignment; The number for each candidate in the second alignment, after non-viable candidates were eliminated; And the number of state delegate equivalents assigned to each candidate based on those results.

In previous years, only the delegate numbers were reported.

"It's not just like you're calling in one number — it's first alignment, second alignment and the state delegates. And they're putting in a whole math formula to back that up," Gayman said. "I do think that's important for transparency to have that information, but it just makes it that much harder to report quickly."

Gayman said she is verifying Tuesday whether the remaining 24 precincts were able to report their results. She said she knows of only one precinct chair in her county who was able to use the app properly.

Al Charlson, chair of the Bremer County Democrats, said he waited on hold for an hour Monday before his phone call dropped. He then waited another hour on hold before he could get results in.

According to Charlson, the Iowa Democratic Party provided little-to-no training on how to use the app leading up to caucus night.

Precinct chairs in Butler County were able to successfully use the app in the week leading up to caucus night. But when it came to reporting that evening, the app crashed when they attempted to enter data and/or submit photos of the math worksheet, said David Mansheim, former chair of the Butler County Democrats.

"It looked like it was going to work — until it didn’t," he said. "Which things often do when you put them under stress."

He said one of his county's eight precinct chairs was able to report via the app. The rest resorted to calling in results.

"The minimum wait time was an hour. Some waited up to two hours," he said. "One went to bed and phoned it in the morning."

In rural Buchanan County, precinct chairs — many still with flip phones living "with limited WIFI and internment cell coverage" — never planned to use the app to begin with, said Dan Calahan, chair of the Buchanan County Democrats.

The Iowa Democratic Party's training on how to use the app was secondary to training on the new caucus rules for 2020, which Calahan said went really smoothly.

"Everyone who was in the room caucusing should have left with a smile on their face," he said. "It was efficient. It was fun. We built a party platform and we picked a presidential candidate."

The Iowa caucuses kicked off at 7 p.m. Monday in church basements and school gyms across the state.

At about 10:30 p.m., when no results had rolled in, the party issued a statement saying it had found inconsistencies in the three data sets — the first alignment, the second alignment and the overall delegate numbers — and that it would take longer than expected to report results.

Without a timeline in place, Democratic presidential candidates gave their planned speeches before packing off for New Hampshire for the next nominating process.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate released a statement Tuesday saying neither his office nor county auditors play any official role in the Iowa caucuses, which are run by poiltical parties.

"Although the caucuses are the kickoff of the presidential nominating process, they are not elections," Pate said in a statement.

"The accuracy of the Iowa Democratic Party’s vote totals is much more important than the timeliness of releasing the results. I am glad to hear they have a paper trail for their votes, just as we use paper ballots in all official elections in the State of Iowa. I support IDP while they take their time and conduct checks and balances to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the votes.”

Kim Norvell covers growth and development for the Register. Reach her at knorvell@dmreg.com or 515-284-8259. Follow her on Twitter @KimNorvellDMR.

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