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Iowa Democrats Give Buttigieg the Most Delegates as Sanders Team Seeks Recanvass

Errors in the results have led The Times and others to refrain from calling the race, and the Sanders campaign manager said a partial recanvass of precincts could change the outcome.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., visited a campaign phone bank in Somersworth, N.H., on Sunday.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

DES MOINES — Nearly a full week after the Iowa caucuses, the state Democratic Party on Sunday released results indicating that Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., was the winner after it updated data from 55 precincts. But errors in the result tabulations have led several news organizations, including The New York Times, to refrain from calling the race.

And shortly after the party’s announcement, Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, said the campaign would be calling for a partial recanvass of the results. The deadline for a campaign to make such a request is noon Central time on Monday.

The party’s re-examination did not change earlier projections that Mr. Buttigieg led in the count of national delegates, but it moved one more into his column. The party said that Mr. Buttigieg had received 14 delegates, Senator Bernie Sanders took 12, Senator Elizabeth Warren earned eight, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. received six and Senator Amy Klobuchar got one.

The Associated Press, which historically verifies election results and makes calls on the outcome of races, has not allotted the final delegate to Mr. Buttigieg because of the errors in the caucus results-counting, nor has The A.P. declared a winner in the Iowa race. The Times, which has followed The A.P.’s calls in the past, has not assigned the final delegate to Mr. Buttigieg.

In an interview with CNN, Mr. Shakir expressed confidence that Mr. Sanders would have the same number of national delegates as Mr. Buttigieg “after it’s all said and done,” suggesting that the Sanders campaign believed a recanvass could result in a delegate being reassigned from Mr. Buttigieg to Mr. Sanders.

A Sanders aide confirmed that the campaign would be seeking a partial recanvass of results. The Iowa Democratic Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In recent days Mr. Buttigieg has claimed to have won Iowa because he leads the delegate count by a thin margin, while Mr. Sanders claimed victory because he had the most total supporters in both rounds of voting on caucus night. A tally of another metric, “state delegate equivalents,” showed an even tighter race: By the party’s count, Mr. Buttigieg earned 564.302 and Mr. Sanders had 561.528 — a difference of one-tenth of one percent of the total awarded.

The party’s re-examination of the results — after it failed to report results on Monday night, throwing the Democrats’ nominating race into an uproar — is unlikely to assure the candidates and voters. Internal Iowa Democratic Party emails over the weekend revealed that although the party was taking a second look at some problematic precincts, close to 5 percent of the total, it would not fix errors that occurred on the official handwritten tally sheets from precincts.

Those records are known as “caucus math worksheets.” The party only corrected discrepancies between the data as recorded on the worksheets and what was officially reported in public releases of the results.

The party could not change even blatant miscalculations on the worksheets, according to a lawyer for the party, because they were a legal record and altering them would be a crime.

“The incorrect math on the Caucus Math Worksheets must not be changed to ensure the integrity of the process,” wrote the party lawyer, Shayla McCormally, according to an email sent by Troy Price, the chairman of the party, to its central committee members. The lawyer said correcting the math would introduce “personal opinion” into the official record of results.

Thanks to greater transparency in reporting the caucus results this year, outsiders were able to identify internal inconsistencies. The New York Times reported last week that some precincts, for example, had awarded more delegates to candidates than they were allotted.

In addition, caucus “captains” for individual candidates photographed the worksheets in their precincts and shared them internally with their campaigns. Those photographs provided further examples of problems. The most blatant were errors in adding up votes for candidates, which take place in two rounds, and miscalculations when using a formula that translates raw votes to “state delegate equivalents.”

But because the caucus chair and secretary of each precinct had certified the results on the worksheets, along with representatives of candidates, the documents could not be readjusted without violating election law, the state party lawyer said.

“It is the legal voting record of the caucus, like a ballot,” Ms. McCormally wrote in her opinion. “The seriousness of the record is made clear by the language at the bottom stating that any misrepresentation of the information is a crime. Therefore, any changes or tampering with the sheet could result in a claim of election interference or misconduct.”

“The I.D.P.’s role is to facilitate the caucus and tabulate the results,” Ms. McCormally continued. “Any judgment of math miscalculations would insert personal opinion into the process by individuals not at the caucus and could change the agreed upon results. That action would be interfering with the caucus’ expression of their preferences. There are various reasons that the worksheets have errors and may appear to not be accurate, however changing the math would change the information agreed upon and certified by the caucusgoers.”

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Officials counting caucus results at a precinct at Johnston Middle School in Iowa.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Mr. Sanders said in an interview with CNN on Sunday that the Iowa contest had been “an embarrassment” and “a disgrace.”

“They screwed it up badly, is what the Iowa Democratic Party did,” Mr. Sanders said.

In response to pressure by candidates and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, the Iowa state party permitted campaigns to flag precincts that had problems. On Saturday, it said 95 had been identified by three campaigns, those of Mr. Sanders, Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Warren. Only 55 required updating, it said.

The party had notified campaigns that it would re-examine reported results if presented with “documentary evidence” of “inconsistencies” between the data on the worksheets and the reported results. “The inconsistencies must show a discrepancy between the Caucus Math Worksheet and the publicly reported results,” the party told campaigns.

In the party lawyer’s opinion, the only recourse a campaign has if it wants to challenge the worksheets themselves is to seek a recount, which would require examining “presidential preference cards” filled out by everyone who attended the caucuses. These cards were collected at the end of the evening, and were included in a packet that was sent to state party headquarters by the caucus chairs.

But even a full recount may not be definitive. Several caucus chairs said in interviews that not all caucusgoers had turned in their preference cards. They left into the Iowa evening after performing a proud civic duty, with no hint of the mess to come.

Sydney Ember and Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from Manchester, N.H.

Trip Gabriel is a national correspondent. He covered the past two presidential campaigns and has served as the Mid-Atlantic bureau chief and a national education reporter. He formerly edited the Styles sections. He joined The Times in 1994. More about Trip Gabriel

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Iowa Democrats Give Buttigieg the Most Delegates; Sanders Seeks Recanvass. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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