Iowa fires starter's gun in White House race

DES MOINES, Iowa－Iowa on Monday kicked off the first vote of the 2020 US presidential race as the state opened its caucuses, the closely watched first step in deciding which Democrat faces incumbent Donald Trump in November.

The two front-runners, left-wing senator Bernie Sanders and moderate former vice-president Joe Biden, face a key test in the sparsely populated state, with a handful of others looking to make their mark and gain momentum.

Five hours after the caucuses opened across Iowa, Sanders claimed a slim lead in the Democratic caucus, citing partial unofficial results. Figures released by his campaign showed Pete Buttigieg in second spot, a strong showing for the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who was unknown nationally just one year ago.

Iowa is a closely watched test in the monthslong process to determine who will face the Republican president in November.

In a unique process held across nearly 1,700 sites－schools, libraries, churches and meeting halls－the Iowa vote offers a critical early look at the viability of the 11 Democrats still in the race－even though just 41 delegates are up for grabs, a fraction of the 1,991 needed to secure the nomination in July.

Luke Elzinga, a volunteer for Sanders, appeared early at Des Moines' Lincoln High School, which was converted into a caucus location.

"I think he really inspires a lot of young people, a lot of disaffected voters who might not otherwise turn out," said Elzinga, 28. "And so I think he's the best candidate to beat Trump."

According to previous polls, Sanders and Biden lead in Iowa, followed by Buttigieg and progressive senator Elizabeth Warren.

Caucusing at the same Des Moines location, Rosalie Gallagher－the 74-year-old owner of an interior design business－came to support Biden, and to bar the road to the likes of Sanders and Warren.

"We are never going to win with a leftist candidate," she said. "If they win, the Democrats will lose. Period."

Caucus crashed

But problems with a mobile app appeared to force a delay in reporting the results of the Iowa caucuses on Monday, leaving the campaigns, voters and the media in election limbo and pressing for an explanation.

An Iowa Democratic Party official pointed to "inconsistencies in the reporting" of the results and said "quality control" efforts were holding up the results. The official stressed that the delay was not caused by a "hack or an intrusion".

But other caucus organizers put the blame squarely on a new technology used to report results from some 1,700 caucus meetings across the state. Glitches with a new mobile app caused confusion, they said, and some caucus organizers were forced to call in results for the state party to record manually, introducing human error and delays.

Des Moines County Democratic Chair Tom Courtney said he heard that in precincts across his county, including his own, the mobile app was "a mess".

Precinct leaders were instead phoning in their results to the Democratic Party headquarters, and "they weren't answering the phones", Courtney said.

The problems were an embarrassment for a state that has long sought to protect its prized status as the first contest in presidential primaries and the nation's first vetter of candidates. The delay was certain to become fodder for critics who argued that the caucuses－party meetings that can be chaotic, crowded and messy－are antiquated and exclusionary.

Agencies - Xinhua