Iowa Caucuses 2020: Democratic Party accused of 'rigged' polls post delay, some call it Trump's rumormongering
With mounting scrutiny over the delay in Iowa caucus results, social media users are accusing the Iowa Democratic Party of "rigging" the process. There has been a significant delay in the recording of the results as the state Democratic Party initially cited "quality checks" as the reason behind the unprecedented delay.
In a fresh statement, the Iowa Democratic Party Communications Director Mandy McClure said that "inconsistencies in the reporting" and technical glitches are the reasons behind the delay.
"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 that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report," McClure said.
"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 sound and will simply take time to further report the results," he added.
Despite multiple explanations and assurances from the party, multiple Twitter users took to the popular micro-blogging site to accuse the party of attempting to "rig" the election.
One Twitter user wrote: "Please, please, please, please, please... Don't make me use the word 'rigged'."
While another said: "It's not just Sanders people who're claiming the delay means the Iowa caucus is rigged; it's also Republicans and Yang supporters (more or less the same thing, actually). I still assume Sanders is going to win. If that happens will we have to hear that he *actually* won by more?"
"The #IowaCaucuses are rigged. #Bernie is being screwed. Again. And the Iowans are working themselves out of being the nation’s first decision-maker," tweeted another user.
While there were other users who defended the system, stating it is not rigged and the accusations are just rumors stirred by Trump supporters.
"As someone who was actually at the #IowaCaucuses, you should know everything is written down and signed off on by witnesses from each campaign. Nothing is rigged. The app was hard to access in areas without WiFi or with low cell reception. The end," a Twitter user wrote.
"Trump campaign folks are tweeting veiled suggestions Iowa is 'rigged', despite not having any evidence, testing Twitter rules around suppression and content that misleads people about the nature of voting. No comment from company rn," Washington Post reporter tweeted accusing the Trump campaign of rumormongering.