Santorum Won in Iowa (sort of): Results missing from eight Precincts?!

Des Moines Register:

Rick Santorum – Final total: 29,839 Change: -168
Mitt Romney – Final total: 29,805 Change: -210

.... There are too many holes in the certified totals from the Iowa caucuses to know for certain who won, but Rick Santorum wound up with a 34-vote advantage.

Results from eight precincts are missing — any of which could hold an advantage for Mitt Romney — and will never be recovered and certified, Republican Party of Iowa officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday.

GOP officials discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts, although not all the changes affected the two leaders. Changes in one precinct alone shifted the vote by 50 — a margin greater than the certified tally.

The certified numbers: 29,839 for Santorum and 29,805 for Romney. The turnout: 121,503.

It’s not a surprise that the ultra-thin gap of eight votes on caucus night didn’t hold up, but it’s tough to swallow the fact that there will always be a question mark hanging over this race, politics insiders said.

The news comes at a pivotal point ...

 

And here I was looking forward to the General Election. If there's this much of a mess in Iowa, with a turnout of only 121,000, just think what it will be like when the whole country votes. I'm sure we spend a great deal of American resources monitoring elections in other countries, and that would be fine... except for the fact that we don't seem able to manage our own quite properly. 

I'm hoping to hear Tom Glennon's perspective on this.

Comments

[Michael Pierone]

So we will NEVER know who actually won. AND it makes me wonder which 8 precincts didn't report, and would this have changed Ron Paul's totals. Is it possible that serious cheating took place? There was a LOT of pressure on Iowa NOT to have a Ron Paul victory. Human nature being what it is I think it is quite possible.

[Tom Glennon]

I was a volunteer at my precinct Republican Caucus. I ran the desk where new voters, or those changing their registration from Democrat or Independent to Republican for the Caucus voting could do the paperwork. Of importance is that the Caucus system is not at all like an official primary. All of the work is done by volunteers, and the system is more like a town hall meeting than an official polling system. What I would say is that the majority of those changing party affiliation, or registering for the first time, were either Romney or Paul supporters. Had the voting been restricted to only those registered voters who were registered as Republican, the outcome would have been significantly different. At least in my precinct, the number of people who came to my desk outnumbered the total who went to the registered Republican sign in desk. As to Michael's comment, it is not cheating in an open system like the Iowa Caucus. It is, however, a valid argument against an open system, where results can be skewed by those who have no intention of actually voting for the person they write on their caucus sheet, but rather want to distort what the real electorate want in a candidate. As a side note, attendance at the Republican caucus locations far outnumbered that of the Democratic locations, yet Democrats outnumber Republicans in Iowa voter registrations.