Bernie Sanders has asked the Democratic Party to release a raw vote count from the Iowa caucuses due to concerns of voter fraud and missing votes.
Concerns were raised about voter fraud after C-Span released a video showing that a caucus chairperson from Polk County, the state's most populous county, and a Hillary Clinton precinct captain failed to conduct a count of the caucusgoers.
The Sanders campaign said that the Iowa Democratic Party also failed to properly staff 90 Iowa precincts and, therefore, did not collect results, which accounted for about 5 percent of all votes cast in the state, reported the New York Times. The party reportedly asked the campaigns to self-report totals, which could result in disagreements over precincts that could make up the margin between Sanders and Clinton, according to the Hill.
"They are asking the campaigns to sort it out," said Sanders' campaign spokeswoman Symone Sander, to which one reporter responded, "Iowa just became Florida," according to Newsmax.
As of early Tuesday morning, Clinton was declared the winner with 49.9 percent of Iowa delegates, while Sanders took 49.6 percent, with 1,682 precincts reporting out of a total of 1,683. Clinton was awarded 699.57 state delegate equivalents and Sanders was given 695.49 delegate equivalents.
At the time of announcing the final tallies, the party had accounted for all but 1 percent of the precincts, which is worth 2.28 state delegate equivalents, according to the Iowa Democratic Party.
"I honestly don't know what happened. I know there are some precincts that have still not reported. I can only hope and expect that the count will be honest," said Sanders, according to the Guardian. "I have no idea. Did we win the popular vote? I don't know, but as much information as possible should be made available."
An Iowa Democratic Party official disputed the claims made by Sanders' camp, telling the Hill that "the reports of precincts without chairs are inaccurate."
"We have reached out to the campaigns for help in contacting the chairs for our outstanding precincts," said the official in a statement. "We are not taking results from the campaigns. We are taking them from the chairs who are in these precincts."
