“It’s easy to Monday-morning quarterback,” he said.

Gov. Terry Branstad, who was in Mason City on Thursday, told the Globe Gazette editorial board that he stood by the caucus process but there has to be a “better job of training people who are doing the reporting” for the caucuses.

“The world is watching,” he said. “We need to do it right, and we need to do it well.”

Sam Roecker, communications director for the Iowa Democratic Party, said he couldn’t speak to the problems with the Republican results or what that might mean for the future of the caucuses.

“What I can say is Iowans take this process incredibly seriously, Republicans and Democrats,” he said.

Steffen Schmidt, a political science professor at Iowa State University, said both parties need to take steps to reassure voters here and nationwide that every vote counts and every voted would get counted.

“Iowa will need to tighten up and formalize the process. There is no way to escape this,” Schmidt said. “In 2012, you cannot have a loosey-goosey election that could determine the president of the United States.”

(Ed Tibbetts and Rod Boshart contributed to this story.)

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