Doubts Emerge in Some Corners About Integrity of the Iowa Democratic Caucuses

Several sources are alleging improprieties.

By Kali Holloway / AlterNet

February 2, 2016

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/did-clinton-camp-rig-iowa-vote

Photo Credit: via YouTube/Fox News

Though Hillary Clinton declared victory over Democratic rival Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucuses early Tuesday morning, there were audible grumblings from multiple corners about the integrity of the vote tallies. As of now, the official count stands at 49.9 percent for Clinton, and 49.6 for Sanders – a difference that the Iowa Democratic Party has stated is “the closest in Iowa Democratic caucus history.” But there were lingering questions raised by numerous caucus watchers about how vote counters arrived at those numbers.
An anonymous person who posted to C-SPAN alleged charges of voter fraud in Polk County, Iowa, and released a video purportedly showing that Clinton caucus chair Drew Gentsch and precinct captain Liz Buck did “not conduct actual count of Clinton supporters and deliberately [misled the] caucus.” Speaking to the Burlington Free Press about the issue, Sanders expressed hope that things were on the up-and-up.
“You're guess is as good as mine as to what happened,” the candidate told the paper. “I can only hope and expect the count will be honest.”

The Free Press quotes one unnamed journalist as stating, “Iowa just became Florida.”
There were also questions about staffing at 90 precincts throughout the state. Bloomberg reporting early Tuesday that Sanders’ camp had suggested the “state party’s failure to adequately staff caucus sites” had led to delays in arriving at a final vote count. Rania Batrice, a Sanders campaign representative in Iowa, told the New York Times, “It’s just offensive that they dropped the ball like this. It’s ridiculous.”
The state party contested those allegations, and as of this reporting, those precinct votes appear to have been slowly added to the totals.
In six counties, winning votes for Clinton were determined by coin toss, leading some spectators to question the probability of those results. The Blaze looked at the math behind the numbers using an online “Coin Toss Probability Predictor,” and wondered aloud about Clinton’s luck at beating the odds:
In all six instances, the coin toss was won by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
There may have been more coin tosses, but those are the ones we know about for now.
Now, get ready to do some math.
In a single coin toss, the probability of calling the toss correctly is 50 percent, or one in two. Heads or tails.
But the probably of winning every flip out of six flips is one in 64, or 1.56 percent.”