DNC chair dodges responsibility, throws Iowa Dems under the bus for caucus disaster

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez declined to take responsibility for the electoral fiasco that was this week's Iowa Democratic caucuses, instead laying the blame squarely at the feet of the state party.

During a Friday morning appearance on CNN, Perez was asked by CNN's John Berman, "How much of this is on you, chairman?"

"Well again, the Iowa Democratic Party runs the caucus. Okay?" Perez responded. "And they, what happened was unacceptable.

"At the same time, we came in there, we want to make sure that everything is right, and we at the Democratic National Committee — you know, this was unacceptable," the chairman continued. "And that's why we had people, we still have people on the ground there. We completed the counting last night."

Perez said that the national party would work to keep other primary contests in other states from turning out badly.

"And we're going to continue not only to work in Iowa, but also to learn the lessons of Iowa. So moving forward we are, we have caucuses in the remaining states that are, that run smoothly," Perez said.

The day before his comments Perez stepped in to call for a total recanvass of the vote in the state "in order to assure public confidence in the results."

The Iowa Democratic caucuses became a point of national mockery this week after purported technical problems with a vote-counting app meant that no winner could be declared on Monday night. After days of chaos and confusion, the final numbers finally came in on Thursday evening, but even those were plagued by accuracy concerns.

On Thursday, the Associated Press said that it couldn't declare a winner in the contest, citing the "tight margin between Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders and irregularities in this year's caucus process."

A New York Times analysis also found that "more than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, that were missing data or that were not possible under the complex rules of the Iowa caucuses."

In response to the concerns about those inconsistencies, the state party has extended the deadline for campaigns to request a recanvass of the results until noon Monday.