Iowa Democratic Chair Troy Price Has a History of “Protecting Wins” Against Bernie Sanders Veronica Persimmon Follow Feb 5 · 4 min read

We are approaching 48 hours post-Iowa Caucus and so far, only 71% of the results from Monday night’s caucuses have been released. Any reasonable person would look at these results and determine that Bernie Sanders won the first alignment, second alignment, and popular vote.

However, Iowa Democrats use State Delegate Equivalents, or SDEs, to determine that Pete Buttigieg is the winner. Basically, Sanders scored more yards and more touch downs, but he’s getting less points. Meanwhile, the media has repeatedly called Pete Buttigieg the winner with 71% of the Iowa Caucus results reported, ignoring the fact that Sanders is winning both alignments and the popular vote. Sounds like a healthy democracy, doesn’t it?

Source: DesMoines Register

In 2016, Hillary Clinton barely squeaked by in Iowa, and as you can see in the table below, the popular vote count is completely ignored and the win was based solely upon the allocation of SDEs.

Source: Wikipedia

How did Clinton manage to win Iowa by such a slim margin? No one wondered. That’s just how the Iowan Democrats do it. They use an imaginary metric that’s removed from the actual delegate count to determine who moves forward with the Democratic nominee. It’s important to note that SDEs are often determined by a coin toss. Literally a coin toss.

This is where Troy Price comes in. He is currently the Iowa Democratic Chair, and he is responsible for releasing a fraction of the results from Monday night’s debacle of an Iowa Caucus. The fraction that can be manipulated to show that Pete Buttigieg is in the “lead.” I will admit that Buttigieg out-performed the polls and did better in rural areas. This is why Price is withholding the results from more populous and diverse counties in Iowa — where Bernie Sanders blows away his competition.

The person who is responsible for elections should be impartial, which is why it is curious that on February 2, 2020, Troy Price was partying with none other than these fine people:

Tara McGowan: Co-founder of ACRONYM, the company behind the Shadow app which literally altered the entered data from the Iowa Caucuses

Greta Carnes: National Organizing Director for Pete for America

Ben Halle: Communications Director for Pete for America

Michael Halle: Strategist for Pete for America

Don’t believe me? I’ll let Tara McGowan show you for herself:

Do you recognize any of the other public figures gleefully posing with the co-founder of the Shadow app and the chair of the Iowa Democrats? Why should you care about this? Because the person who is responsible for factually reporting the results of an election should be impartial. Does Troy Price look like an impartial Democratic Chair to you?

Back to Clinton’s 2016 Iowa win. Remember how she squeaked by? I think I have an idea of how she managed that win.

Let’s recap. Here’s the definition of “protect”

Source: Merriam-Webster

Therefore, all of the times Troy Price celebrated “protecting the win” for Hillary Clinton could be viewed as Price “maintaining the status through legal guarantees for the win.” The same Troy Price who is currently releasing 71% of the Iowa Caucus results when he has 100% of the data, coincidentally focusing on the rural areas where Buttigieg outperforms Bernie Sanders.

This begs the question. Is Troy Price now “protecting the win” for Pete Buttigieg?