Jennifer Jacobs

jejacobs@dmreg.com

After a whisper-thin count left doubts about which Democratic candidate actually won the Iowa caucuses, there are fresh calls for the party to mirror the simple, secret-ballot method that Iowa Republicans use.

“It’s worth discussing again, but it’s not as simple as it sounds,” said Norm Sterzenbach, a former Iowa Democratic Party executive director who, after five election cycles, is an expert on the nuts and bolts of the caucuses.

Why are Democratic insiders so reluctant to update a voting system panned this week by national political observers as archaic and nonsensical?

They blame New Hampshire, the state Iowa party leaders have worked with for decades to make sure Iowa retains the first-in-the-nation caucuses and New Hampshire the first primary.

“We can’t change our process without running the risk of endangering our relationship with New Hampshire,” said Dave Nagle, a former Democratic Party chairman whose mission for years was to ensure Iowa maintains its pole position in the nation’s presidential voting.

Would the guard dog of New Hampshire’s first-primary status, elections chief Bill Gardner, object if Iowa Democrats echo the way Iowa Republicans hold their caucuses?

In an interview with The Des Moines Register on Friday, Gardner declined to give a definitive answer.

But he didn’t shut the door on the idea.

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Gardner noted his state has an alliance with Iowa, where Republicans have been casting informal ballots into informal ballot boxes for more than 30 years.

“If I ask you, why do you think if the Republicans’ way is in conflict with New Hampshire, why do you think we wouldn’t have acted? There is a different relationship between Iowa and New Hampshire. What is a tradition in one state is respected by the tradition in another state,” he said.

Gardner said it’s a problem when other states try to turn their caucuses into primaries.

“I went through this with Nevada,” he said. Nevada also has prestigious early presidential voting status, fourth in the lineup, behind South Carolina.

Would the same objection for Nevada's caucuses apply to Iowa, too? “It would not,” he said.

Gardner said he respects Iowa’s tradition, and caucusing on slips of paper tossed into a bucket is “the way it is.” But he expressed caution about turning Iowa’s system into something too closely resembling a primary.

“The position — it’s a tricky one because the Republicans have been doing this in Iowa and it has not triggered anything with us, and it wouldn’t with me," he said. "But if the caucus becomes more and more like a primary, then it’s the same kind of question.”

On caucus night, Democrats physically divide into groups for their preferred candidate and realign if their candidate fails to meet a viability threshold, often 15 percent. The caucus winner is determined by state delegate equivalents, based on past voter turnout, a math formula and rounding.

Related: Iowans claim instances when Sanders was shorted delegates

Register editorial: Something smells in the Democratic Party

Dig deeper on the data: Maps, charts on Iowa caucus results

Iowa Democratic Party officials were noncommittal about changing their process.

"There are a number of factors we have to consider before any change of our rules," party spokesman Sam Lau said, "including Democratic National Committee delegate selection guidelines and protecting our relationship with New Hampshire."

New Hampshire Democratic Party officials told the Register they had no comment. Spokeswoman Lizzy Price said: "It’s a discussion for Iowa."

Some call for updates

Some Iowans are more than ready for updates to the Democratic system, which on Monday night led to a tormentingly tight finish between longtime Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state, and liberal challenger Bernie Sanders, a Vermont U.S. senator.

The two Democratic presidential contenders won about the same number of national delegates, the factor that decides the nomination, but the magic of Iowa is the adrenaline shot of momentum tied to bragging rights.

State party leaders have rejected calls for an audit of all precinct results, but a spokesman said Friday that they are reviewing reported discrepancies and are making adjustments when appropriate.

Suspicion that the margin of error exceeded the margin of victory was compounded by reports of loosey-goosey head counts, errors in the official results, jeering over the use of a coin toss to break ties over county delegates and raised eyebrows over the fact that neither Democrats nor Republicans asked for any identification to verify voters’ identities or proof of their residence in the precinct.

And even though turnout was nearly 70,000 voters short of the record in 2008, complaints were made about disorganization, long lines, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers and severely overcrowded gathering spaces.

If the Iowa Democratic Party would drop its refusal to allow a full audit of the results, it's possible a different winner would be declared, said Des Moines Democrat Phil Roeder, a former staffer for then-U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin and then-Gov. Chet Culver.

“I’m a Democrat, and I’m an Iowan. I love the caucuses — they’re the Olympics of politics,” Roeder said. “At the same time, they need to move into the 21st century.”

A change.org petition calling for an audit also has been launched.

Robert Calland, a 34-year-old Cambridge resident who attended his first caucus at a tiny precinct in rural Iowa, had harsher words.

“The Iowa Democratic caucus system as it stands is broken, hilariously anachronistic and absurdly undemocratic,” he told the Register.

Calland, a stay-at-home dad with a master's degree in history, said the current rules, written in 1971, allow for gamesmanship, where votes can be manipulated to prop up an underdog candidate to deprive the winner of some votes, which are translated into delegates. It leads to “completely lopsided voter representation,” he said.

Calland pointed out that Iowa Republicans, despite selecting from 12 candidates, reported their results several hours before the Democrats, who had fewer candidates and lower turnout.

“Perhaps it is time to move on from shell games and questionable mathematical formulas and rely on the voters to place a vote and award delegates based on popular vote,” he said. "I realize that the Iowa Democratic Party may take this suggestion as calling their self-acclaimed ‘properly working’ system as sloppily run and an embarrassment to the state, to be absolutely clear, it is and I am.”

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Harry William Fischer, a psychiatrist who lives in Elkader, said in his precinct, each candidate’s precinct captain counted the number of caucusgoers for that candidate. Clinton’s over-counted, he said.

“Our precinct chair handled this impeccably and insured a correct result,” Fischer said.

But he worries if the bad counts had been accepted, Clinton might have gained an unearned county delegate and Sanders may have lost one.

“One can't know who really won the Iowa caucuses,” Fischer told the Register. “The Iowa Democratic Party seems to have been unconscionably lax about a critical part of the process to select the next president.”

Review of process urged

Rick Smith, managing editor of the Iowa Daily Democrat, doesn’t think any of the problems stripped Sanders of a victory.

But he called for the state party to assemble a commission "to openly review the complaints and recommend changes” for flawed counting methods, lack of training, space issues, long lines and confusing directions, and the lack of sound systems, which left some caucusgoers unable to hear the business of the caucuses.

Some Iowans objected to rules that result in uneven delegate distribution: In some cases, a rural precinct with 20 voters was awarded four delegates, while a Des Moines site with a turnout of several hundred got seven delegates.

“The Democratic formula rewards precincts that had a good Democratic turnout in the last general election. Fine for them but awful for people who want to know who got the most votes,” said Herb Strentz, a retired Drake University journalism professor.

New Hampshire Republican Tom Rath, a former attorney general and longtime political insider, thinks Iowa Democrats could get away with a straw vote where they release the popular vote like Iowa Republicans do, as long as they keep in place the small twists that make the caucuses unique. Those include voting in a short window of time, not all day; organization by volunteers, not state government election officials; and gatherings held at places other than regular polling sites.

“It has to pass the purple face test — you can say it and not have your face turn purple,” Rath said.

Some insist: No change

But some Iowa party stalwarts argue no updates are needed.

Nagle said: “Why change? Just because it was close, we have to change?”

“Iowa Democrats have been doing it the same way for 44 years, and I think the system should not be changed,” said Richard Bender, an architect of Iowa's current Democratic caucus system.

“The system basically weighs the results of each precinct at the same weight as that precinct has in the general election," Bender told the Register. “Some groups turn out more and some less in the caucus than their general election voting patterns. For example, historically, students have higher turnout levels and minorities have lower caucus turnout levels. Doing it this way is more complicated to explain, but it better represents the views of Iowa Democrats who vote in the general election.”

Mistakes can happen with a secret-ballot process, too, Iowans noted.

In 2012, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was declared the Republican winner by eight votes on caucus night, but former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum was determined to be the official winner by 34 votes after the certified count.

In 2016, a bigger discrepancy than that occurred between the count reported on caucus night and the certified count two days later for Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who finished third. He gained 64 votes in the final count, but the change didn't affect the order of finish.

New York businessman Donald Trump, who finished second, gained 10 votes. With all other candidates, the difference was 3 votes or fewer.

Neither party required any identification or proof of address to register to vote, or to caucus.

Iowa Republicans have pushed hard for years for a voter ID law for state-run elections. Because caucuses are a private party function, the party could have mandated an ID rule without the blessing of Democrats in the Iowa Legislature.

Both GOP and Democratic state party officials defended the no-ID rule by saying a felony would be a high price to pay to vote for a candidate — any unauthorized voter is committing perjury and risks jail time and a $7,500 fine. The spokesmen for both state parties also noted there have been few reports of fraud in Iowa over the years.

Reaction from around the country last week

“Are you arm wrestling to determine who gets the last delegate?” — Larry Wilmore of “The Nightly Show,” who did a parody on the Iowa Democrats' process of picking a winner

“The Democrats picked the winner last night the same way roommates decide who has to drive to Taco Bell.” — Stephen Colbert, skewering the coin tosses on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”

“Bernie Sanders people were saying they were asking to … see the paper lists and the Democratic Party's refusing to show it to them? Where is this, Bolivia, in like the 1930s?” — Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”

“I'm skeptical of the result. Not saying that Bernie won. I'm just not sure who won. Reminded me of hanging chad, butterfly ballot days in Florida. But this will happen anytime the result is so close with both sides angling for every advantage.” — David D. Haynes, editorial page editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who attended some campaign events in the final week

“Get it together, Iowa. You're blowing it.” — Huffington Post writer Jason Linkins

“Iowa caucus results are routinely bemoaned as a quaint and overrated expression of presidential opinion from a state that shouldn’t have that much clout. There’s another reason to question those results. This year, on the Democratic side, they could be wrong.” — Joan Vennochi, an opinion columnist for the Boston Globe

“Iowa: You had one job…” Alex Burns, political correspondent with the New York Times, on Twitter

"VIDEO SHOWS DYSFUNCTIONAL COUNTING." — Drudge Report

"Last two prez elections both IA parties proved incompetent at running caucuses. Time to give another state a chance to go first." — Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida who studies the American electoral system

"Not arguing the conclusion, but it might be problems endemic to the caucus process, not Iowa incompetence." — Steven Shepard, campaigns and elections editor at Politico