UNI-Dome Caucus Originally Overcounted Santorum's Vote, Party Leader Says

With missing precincts and a swap of first- and second-place finishers as the Iowa Republican this morning, local GOP organizers said the state's largest Caucus site wasn't immune to problems.

Black Hawk County Republican chairman Mac McDonald said one precinct reported 11 votes instead of two votes for former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a mistake that was caught as county leaders reviewed vote tallies after the election night results were released.

The mistake came because a volunteer precinct secretary marked two ticks next to Santorum's name instead of the numeral "2." The two ticks were reported as eleven when the results were sent into state GOP headquarters.

McDonald said the problem was caught when county leaders realized there were less than 11 people in the entire precinct, so the results as reported did not make sense. The revised results were reported to Republican Party of Iowa headquarters and are reflected in certified election results announced this morning.

In most election cycles, such a small vote mix-up might not matter, as nine votes would be unlikely to effect the final outcome. But on election night, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was declared the winner by only eight votes, and with the newly released certified results, Santorum is now ahead by 34 votes. In other words, every vote counts.

The final tally gives former Santorum a win with 29,839 ballots over 29,805 for Romney.

Certified vote totals were unavailable for eight of Iowa’s 1,774 precincts. Full, certified vote totals per precinct are available on-line at www.iowagop.org.

McDonald said he feels local Black Hawk County Caucus organizers, which in Cedar Falls on Caucus night, did their due diligence making sure the results were accurate.

"It stuck out like a sore thumb for us," he said of the mistake. "We probably put 10 hours in going through the paperwork (after the first results were reported). It’s a volunteer position, but it’s an important one. We tried to plan for every contingency."

He said, overall, he wished the state could have presented a more organized face to the rest of the country.

"I can see how mistakes happen," he said. "I can't see how you can’t certify something. All the county chairs have phones. You call and say, 'Hey can you explain this.' And then you certify it. I think it doesn’t shed a very good light on the Republican Party of Iowa."

Local Tea Party organizer Judd Saul, who also helped organize the Black Hawk County Caucus at the UNI-Dome, said he was pleased, overall, with how the local voting went.

"I’m very confident in the Black Hawk County results and very proud of what we did," he said.

On a state level he's not so pleased.

“How can you certify with eight precincts missing? I’m really mad at the process and that people don’t have their crap together,” he said. “But considering it’s a Caucus, not a full ballot with a machine counting system and it's all done by human hand, you’re going to have human error.”

What all this means for the candidates and for the state as a whole isn't clear. Santorum got a big bump in standing, nationally, after his virtual tie with Romney, and that doesn't change with the new results. If nothing else, the muddled results could affect how Iowa's first-in-the-nation voting status is seen.

"A lot of outsiders already viewed the Caucus as kind of this goofy process. To have even more questions about the process isn't good for Iowa. Before it was, 'Should Iowa be first because of the demographics?' and now it's, 'Should Iowa be first because of the process?' political science professor Christopher Larimer said.

Greg Tagtow, Black Hawk County Republican outreach chairman, said he didn't think Iowa's status should change.

"There’s always complaining from other states on why we shouldn’t be first," he said. "We’re not supposed to pick the candidate, we’re supposed to eliminate the stragglers. I think we did that pretty well."