The leaders of Iowa’s two major political parties will soon announce a plan for releasing timely, accurate electronic results of the 2016 Iowa Caucuses.
The precinct caucuses are not elections, but are run by the two major parties. The 2012 results from Iowa Republicans were jumbled. Mitt Romney was declared the winner on Caucus Night, by a margin of eight votes, then a few days later when official results were tallied, Rick Santorum was declared the victor by 34 votes. Jeff Kaufmann was elected chairman of the Iowa G-O-P this past June and he’s in charge of organizing for the 2016 Caucuses.

Kaufmann says it’s “exciting news” about the envisioned electronic system for collecting and reporting Caucus results, but he’s not ready to reveal it yet.
The Iowa Caucuses are scheduled for February 1st, 2016 and the two parties will each hold neighborhood gatherings for each of Iowa’s 16-hundred-84 precincts. While some precincts may consolidate meeting places, democratic Chair Andi McGuire says there will still be hundreds of sites from which results must be collected.

Democrats engage in far more math on Caucus Night than do Republicans, who merely take a straw poll to measure support for the candidates. At each caucus site, Democrats have a “viability test” that calculates which candidates have at least 15 percent support in the room. If a candidate is “non-viable” then his or her supporters must join another candidate’s group. The ultimate calculation determines how many delegates each candidate has secured on Caucus Night.