Iowa Democratic Party officials say their call center was inundated with outside calls on caucus night that contributed to the delay in results.

"On Caucus Day, the Iowa Democratic Party experienced an unusually high volume of inbound phone calls to its caucus hotline, including supporters of President Trump," Mandy McClure, communications director for the party, said in a statement to the Des Moines Register. "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.”

Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand separately told the Register that he was one of dozens of people answering phones in the so-called “boiler room” where volunteers with the Iowa Democratic Party were processing caucus results.

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Sand said it became apparent that people other than Iowa precinct leaders were using the results lines.

“It just became very clear that members of the public in general had started calling,” he said. Some were demanding caucus results, he said.

► Iowa Caucus results: ​​​County-by-county breakdown

► Iowa Caucus results: ​Democratic results and alignment tallies

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His recollection matches what Iowa Democratic Party leaders told some Iowa Democrats on a conference call Wednesday night, according to two people on the line and other media's reporting. The state party officials told members of the state central committee that the call center was inundated with calls from people who were not tasked with reporting results.

NBC News reported on Thursday that the party hotline number used for reporting caucus results was posted on 4chan, a fringe internet message board, with instructions to "clog the lines."

Sand said he did not talk to the outsiders long enough to know whether they were affiliated with anyone, since his focus was on collecting precinct results.

“I mean, there was a string where like three calls in a row were people who clearly were not in the state of Iowa," Sand said.

Sand said the pace of calls at the height of activity was non-stop. As quickly as he would hang up the phone, another call came in.

“I don’t think that the term ‘flood’ is unrealistic,” he said in describing the night.

An Iowa Democratic Party official said from the outset, there was an unusually high volume of calls compared to previous caucus years. It included callers who would hang up immediately, who expressed displeasure with the Democratic Party, and people seeking to confirm caucus results.

According to the IDP official, repeat callers were blocked.

Sand said he had people try to report false precinct results to him, but that additional fail-safes, such as specific codes for precincts, made the attempt "laughable," he said.

The hotline was never supposed to be public, he said, so there wasn't a code people needed to enter to get through to the operator.

"Until, at some point obviously in the night, it became public," Sand said. The Democratic state auditor did not have a favorite in the presidential race, so he did not caucus.

He described the hotline room as a series of phonebanks, not dissimilar to a TV charity fundraiser. About 40 or 50 people worked the hotline, with more joining through the night.

The Iowa Democrats in 2016 used an automated phone system that precinct chairs could call results into if they didn't want to or couldn't use the software application developed by Microsoft specifically for that cycle, said Andy McGuire, who was the 2016 Iowa Democratic Party chair.

In 2016, precinct chairs only needed to report one number — the number of delegates awarded at the precinct. This year, the Democratic Party public reported the number of delegates earned as well as the number of supporters each candidate had in two preference tallies. That means the two reporting systems aren't necessarily directly comparable, McGuire said.

Still, the automated phone system made for relatively smooth reporting in 2016. About half the chairs called in results via the automated phone system, and the rest used the Microsoft app, she said.

The year, the different app failed to transmit results. And the party did not use an automated phone system this time, Sand said.

Barbara Rodriguez covers health care and politics for the Register. She can be reached by email at bcrodriguez@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8011. Follow her on Twitter @bcrodriguez.

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