Trump supporters, 4chan trolls added to Iowa caucus hotline chaos, Democrats say

The Iowa caucus hotline number is posted publicly (and prominently) on the state Democratic party website. It’s also easy to find with a quick Google search.

But after that phone number spread more widely online — including on the messaging board 4chan, according to NBC News — calls from internet trolls and supporters of President Trump reportedly started overwhelming workers answering the hotline.

“The Iowa Democratic Party experienced an unusually high volume of inbound phone calls to its caucus hotline, including supporters of President Trump,” party spokesperson Mandy McClure said in a statement to McClatchy News on Thursday. “The unexplained, and at times hostile, calls contributed to the delay in the Iowa Democratic Party’s collection of results, but in no way affected the integrity of information gathered or the accuracy of data sets reported.”

Staff and volunteers started flagging and blocking repeat callers suspected of purposefully clogging the lines, according to the party. Party officials said veterans of caucus operations “described the volume of calls as highly irregular compared to previous caucuses.”

The disruptive hotline calls were first reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday.

Results from the Iowa caucuses — the first voting in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race — were delayed on Monday because of problems with an app designed to report the outcome. As of Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, were vying for the lead in state delegate equivalents, while Sanders claimed victory in the popular vote tally.

One 4chan poster was quoted by NBC as writing “they have to call in the results now. Very long hold times being reported. Phone line being clogged” — to which another poster responded: “Uh oh how unfortunate it would be for a bunch of mischief makers to start clogging the lines.”

NBC reported that 4chan users “repeatedly posted the phone number for the Iowa Democratic Party ... both as screenshots and in plain text, alongside instructions.”

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“A lot of calls came in at a certain point where it was clear somebody had published the hotline number somewhere,” said Iowa State Auditor Ron Sand, who noticed calls spurred by an internet post, according to NBC. “If I picked up the phone and it was clear after the first handful of words that someone was not calling to report the results, I just hung up.”

NBC reports that Sand “said he did not get any calls that said they were from Trump supporters.”

Trump campaign officials said they were unaware of supporters apparently inundating the hotline, Bloomberg reported.

“Don’t know anything about that but maybe Democrats should consider using an app of some kind next time,” campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said in a text, according to the outlet. “Democrats are engulfed in the worst election embarrassment in modern history and they’re looking for someone to blame. It’s pathetic.”

There were 77 phones used on caucus night, including 45 for answering calls and 32 landlines that could call to collect various precincts’ results, according to the party.

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Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price said Tuesday that “while I fully acknowledge that the reporting circumstances on Monday night were unacceptable, we owe it to the thousands of Iowa Democratic volunteers and caucusgoers to remain focused on collecting and reviewing incoming results.”

On Thursday, Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez called for Iowa Democrats to recanvass, which he said would amount to “a review of the worksheets from each caucus site to ensure accuracy.”

“Enough is enough,” Perez said on Twitter. “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.”