Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) Chairman Troy Price announced his resignation on Wednesday over the state's disastrous handling of its 2020 caucuses.
In a letter to the IDP's State Central Committee, Price said he will "resign as chair of the Iowa Democratic Party effective upon the election of my replacement." His resignation comes one week after the IDP finally released the Iowa caucus results last week following days of delays due to disastrous meltdowns with the body's reporting system. Both leading Democratic candidates in Iowa later submitted requests for a revancassing due to alleged discrepancies in the results.
"While it is my desire to stay in this role and see this process through to completion, I do believe it is time for the Iowa Democratic Party to begin looking forward, and my presence in my current role makes that more difficult," Price said.
The Iowa caucuses on February 3 ended in a chaotic mess. After the event concluded, news emerged that the results had been severely delayed due to technical difficulties related to user-error problems with a new mobile app. More than two days later, the IDP finally released the results from the state that showed former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg narrowly leading the Democratic field in terms of delegates to the state convention.
Buttigieg led Sanders in that metric by one-tenth-of-one-percentage-point with 26.2 percent of the state's delegate equivalent count, while Sanders came first in the popular vote by 2,500.
After both declaring themselves victorious, Sanders called for a partial recanvassing of 28 precincts. Buttigieg later joined the senator and requested 66 precincts be checked. The IDP is also reviewing 95 precincts independent of any candidate's requests. The recanvassing efforts come after it was discovered that even with days of "quality control," the results that were eventually presented were still riddled with errors.
Amid growing backlash, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez indicated his support for a recanvass of the vote, which would include an audit of the paper records. "Enough is enough," he tweeted Thursday. "In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass."
Price on Friday apologized for the chaotic events that unfolded in Iowa. "The challenges of reporting data and delays of publicizing the results were categorically unacceptable," he said in a news conference. "Iowa Democrats demand better of us. Quite frankly, we demand better of ourselves."
Price previously served as a political director for Barack Obama's Iowa campaign in 2012, and later for Hillary Clinton's Iowa campaign in 2016.
