Iowa Democrat describes a night of caucus chaos and confusion

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One of the Democrats charged with sending in Iowa Caucuses results says he languished for hours on hold and got a surprising call in the middle of the night after an app meant to streamline the process failed miserably.     

The first results of Monday night's Democratic caucuses weren't made public until 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday, and the party is blaming the delay on reporting issues and glitches with the mobile counting app. 

After much anticipation, the Iowa Democratic Party released partial results showing former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders leading the opening contest in the party's 2020 primary season. It's not clear when the full results will be available. 

In an interview with As It Happens host Carol Off, Zach Simonson, the Democratic Party chair in Wapello County, Iowa, described a Monday night of confusion and chaos. Here is part of their conversation. 

Was there any particular moment yesterday that told you, well, that things weren't going to go as planned in Iowa?

I would say that the moment where I started to get worried was when I called in to report my very first result.

I chaired a meeting at one of our smallest precincts last night, Highland Township. At the end of the night, I called in the very first result ... and immediately had issues.

They weren't prepared for receiving results. And once they were prepared for receiving results, they didn't know what to do with precincts that only elected one delegate, the really small ones. They decided they were going to have to take that down with pen and paper and come back to it, which was a little worrying.

What was going through your mind when you were getting this reaction to your attempts?

I was really surprised because, first of all, you would expect that the smallest ones would call in first, so you would think that they would be prepared for that — and it looks like they hadn't considered that at all. 

After we'd reported four of our precincts, we were put on a really long hold and ... we never got someone on the phone until around midnight.

After 90 minutes on hold, what happened?

While we were on hold, we did get a call from [the Iowa Democratic Party.] So I answered that on another line, and I talked to somebody who had had issues with one of my other precincts that reported their own results. 

And by the time I sorted that out with him, I came back to the other line and my call had finally been answered while I was away, and they had hung up, so I had to start all over. 

But we eventually got through around midnight and reported five more sets of results. The volunteer that took that call was excellent. She did a really good job taking those. She said, "It looks like you're probably about done. You might be able to get some sleep."

And just as soon as I was getting ready to sleep, I got another call where I was told that I would need to report all of my precincts all over again.

Do you know why?

This was around 1:00 a.m. when Troy Price, the chair of the party, had given a statement that they were going to be verifying results.

I think they might have been calling to verify, but they didn't tell the volunteer that. He phrased it to say, "Why are all of Wapello County's results missing?" Which wasn't the case, obviously. We'd been trying all night to get the results in.

I didn't get any more contact that night. But I have heard from a couple of my chairs that they were also woken up in the middle of the night with even more calls. And that's obviously frustrating.

None of these phone calls was supposed to happen at all, right? Because it was supposed to be some app. Some application was created for this reporting that people immediately found wasn't exactly as advertised. What happened with that app?

I would say that the app wasn't so much rolled out, as just kind of dumped on the doorstep. And all of our chairs were sort of expected to download and use the app, but they weren't given instructions on how to do that.

It was actually kind of complicated to install, for good reason. They wanted to have an added level of security.

And then on caucus day it was too late to download the app, and people didn't know that. So I had a lot of people calling throughout the day on caucus day asking, "How do I get the app?" And unfortunately it was too late.

I know that people in Iowa are really attached to this, but some are saying it might be time to scrap the caucus system. What do you think?

I think there's some pretty fair criticisms of the caucus process.

I think that right now, if we focus so much on this returns question, we're not really looking at those kind of broader questions, which either we're going to have to fix them to make the caucus more accessible, we're going to have to move to a more accessible way of voting that isn't a caucus, or maybe we don't go first anymore. I think that's a fair conversation to have.

And that's what people are suggesting that maybe you just don't go first anymore. Is that something you'd be you'd be willing to entertain, even though it's sort of in the fibre of Iowans, isn't it?

It's really something that we have a strong emotional attachment to. We're really proud of getting to go first. But we're also really proud that we're Democrats, and that our party is the party of voting rights. And I know that for me, and for a lot of other people, I would always put that voting rights bit ahead of anything else. And we'll have to see how it shakes out.

Written by Sheena Goodyear with files from The Associated Press. Interview produced by Kate Swoger. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.