The Iowa caucuses are the beginning to the Presidential Primary season. They, and the New Hampshire primary, set the tone for the Democratic campaign.
After the Florida recount debacle in November 2000 which handed the election to the disastrous warmonger George H.W. Bush, who was a proximate cause of the Great Recession, you woulda thunk that Democrats would be highly conscientious of avoiding even the slightest appearance of electoral misdoings.
Not so. I realize that a Caucus involves three tabulations and is a bit harder to count than a ballot. However, a caucus also has superb photographic evidence as the caucus-goers go to the groups that support their candidate, and if a candidate is under 15% support, walk across the room to another candidate's group in the second round of the caucus. An election, especially, if paper ballots are not used, has no such evidence beyond the bits and bytes in the voting machine tally.
I happened to be in Las Vegas on the night of the 2000 election (Bush v. Gore). I was astonished as results came in and a winner could not be determined.
That was also the night that I started to lose my faith in the whole (fake) concept of an "exceptional American democracy."
The following weeks contained much discussion of hanging chads and butterfly ballots, as well as possible intimidation of Florida election officials, especially by Bush supporters.
The reality is: There are countries in South America that report election results in a transparent manner within a couple hours of the polls having been closed. This includes nationwide elections. Because these countries have some remote areas, results are usually reported after 85-95% of the votes have come in. Some of these countries have international observers present, partly because of past or ongoing low-grade conflicts. Importantly, these countries use paper ballots. Paper ballots are recommended by computer scientists who are well-aware of the possible ways to commit electoral fraud using electronic voting machines. Verified Voting recommends paper ballots.
The null results, after eighteen hours, of the Iowa Democratic caucuses serve to increase my skepticism and disdain of the idiotic concept of "US American exceptionalism." The rarely-admitted fact is that the countries founded by Simón Bolívar in South America have a governmental structure very similar to that of the United States. Although Venezuela and Bolivia are certainly not known for free or fair elections, Colombian and Peruvian elections are highly transparent compared to those in the United States.
Eighteen hours is a lot of time in which malfeasant actors can rig an election!
In this case, I suspect rigging by the Democratic National Committee in an effort to prevent Bernie Sanders and possibly also Elizabeth Warren from taking leading positions in the caucus. Joe Biden attempted to file an injunction against release of partial results, but a 62% result was released anyway on Tuesday night around 20 hours after the caucus. It's known that neither Joe Biden nor Amy Klobuchar got much support in the caucus. They wouldn't try to rig in favor of them, because of their thin support. The possibility of electoral rigging would be in favor of a "centrist" with strong support in Iowa, such as Pete Buttigeig. There were many pictures circulating on Twitter showing large crowds in favor of Bernie Sanders and in some cases, in favor of Pete Buttigeig. Several pictures showed tiny groups of two or three people for Biden or Andrew Yang.
Reality Check: While up until now, Republicans have been at the heart of most electoral dirty deeds in the US, this year the Democrats have created a terrible start to their primary season, all because of some "shiny new software." The utter opaqueness of the Iowa caucus results tabulation causes further distrust in the US electoral process.
It is time for a large contingent of international observers to come to the United States to observe at least the November General Election in all fifty states plus Puerto Rico.
