America's Democratic Party has said that cybersecurity issues are not responsible for the unprecedented delay in calculating the results of the 2020 Iowa caucuses.

Members of the Democratic and Republican parties gathered in precincts across the state yesterday to vote for their preferred candidates in the first major contest of the United States' presidential primary season.

While the Republican Party returned results last night naming President Donald Trump as their preferred presidential candidate, the results of the votes cast by Democratic Party members had still not been released as of 9:45 a.m. this morning Eastern Time (ET).

Technological failures of the Democratic Party's phone system and of an app introduced to aid the voting process are being blamed for the delay, which Iowa Democratic Party Communications Director Mandy McClure has said was definitely not caused by a cyber-attack.

McClure issued the following statement: "We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results. In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate all results match and ensure we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report.

"This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down, and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is found and will simply take time to further report the results."

Precinct chairs reportedly experienced difficulties when trying to download the app and when logging in to report voting results. Phone lines designed to act as a back-up were subsequently overrun, with some precinct chairs reporting waiting on hold for over an hour to report results.

The app was built by Shadow Inc., a small company based in Washington, DC, at a cost of $63,000. According to a report in the New York Times, the app had not been tested by end-users and precinct chairs had not received training on how to use it.

This morning, Biden campaign general counsel Dana Remus sent a letter to top Iowa Democratic Party officials demanding "full explanations and relevant information" for the "failed" systems the IDP deployed for the caucuses.

Remus wrote: "The app that was intended to relay Caucus results to the Party failed; the Party's back-up telephonic reporting system likewise failed. Now, we understand that Caucus Chairs are attempting to—and in many cases, failing to—report results telephonically to the Party. These acute failures are occurring statewide."