Donald Trump’s legion of followers flooded a vital telephone hotline used to share Iowa Democratic caucus results after the number was shared online.

The hack was reported in a phone conference Wednesday night between Iowa Democratic party staff and the state’s central committee.

“The unexplained, and at times hostile, calls contributed to the delay in the Iowa Democratic party’s collection of results, but in no way affected the integrity of information gathered or the accuracy of data sets reported,” said Mandy McClure, the communications director for the Iowa Democratic party.

In a statement, McClure added that calls to the hotline reached “an unusually high volume” and included some “supporters of President Trump”.

On Wednesday night’s call, the committee member Ken Sagar called the disruption deliberate. The incident was first reported to Bloomberg News.

Iowa Democrats continue to tally results in several districts statewide. So far, the race remains too close to call, with the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg battling for the top spot, and the state’s delegates.

Officials say the hotline’s phone number went public after photos of caucus paperwork were posted online. Users on the popular fringe internet message board, 4chan, then shared the phone number along with instructions on how to disrupt the caucus process.

Volunteers tasked with answering the hotline during Monday night’s caucus were first to report callers relaying their support for President Trump. But it was not clear how seriously the prank calls were in causing the night’s many hiccups.

An anonymous volunteer told NBC that while they were aware of the prank calls but that they were not the source for results being delayed.

But the main culprit for the chaos appears to be the state’s new election counting app, which was designed to send caucus results to the state party in real time. It malfunctioned and some users found it difficult to operate and download.



Some party leaders, including the DNC chair, Tom Perez, are calling on the state party to recount the votes altogether.

Enough is enough. In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass. — Tom Perez (@TomPerez) February 6, 2020

Rick Hasen, a professor of election law at the University of California at Irvine, said any evidence of a coordinated attempt to thwart the hotline’s election reporting “could well be a crime”.

Still he said the onus is on Democrats to ensure the integrity of an antiquated caucus system already vulnerable to interference.



“If an entity running an election makes a mistake, own up to it, be transparent,” he wrote in his election law blog. His simple solution: “Don’t let political parties run caucuses anymore”.