Did Rick Santorum win the Iowa caucus? That’s what it looks like if numbers from a caucus in the town of Moulton, Appanoose County, are correctly counted when the official certification begins Wednesday night. This not only would rewrite the election history of 2012 to date—it would invalidate the oft-repeated line that Mitt Romney is the only candidate to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. It would stop the inevitability narrative in its tracks. This possibility has the Iowa state GOP under new scrutiny as they begin the official certification process, which they have promised to complete by the end of the week. The national media to date has largely dismissed this story—which was first reported by local Des Moines station KCCI—apparently choosing to trust the state GOP’s initial off-the-record assurances that the story had zero credibility.
Romney’s electability narrative is centered on the argument that he is the only candidate to have ever won both Iowa and New Hampshire.
But multiple sources—including local county GOP officials—have now confirmed that the initial precinct numbers from Moulton were incorrect. And even the state party is no longer contesting the fact that at least 20 votes were misallocated to Mitt Romney, casting his eight-vote margin in question unless an even larger number of errors breaks his way.
Here’s what we know happened. On the night of Jan. 3, 53 people gathered at the Washington Wells Precinct in the town of Moulton, population 658, to caucus and cast their first-in-the-nation vote for the Republican nominee. Among them was the fortuitously named Edward L. True, a 28-year-old independent contractor and a Ron Paul supporter. It was his first caucus, and he recorded the precinct results on a scrap of manila envelope paper—Bachmann 3, Perry 13, Paul 7, Huntsman 1, Santorum 21, Romney 2, and Gingrich 6—which he then posted on his Facebook page and the election watchdog website WatchTheVote2012.com. “Transparency is what we need in our electoral system to ensure that every vote does count,” True explains.
The local voting trend recorded by True roughly matched the other 12 precincts in Appanoose County, which all had either no votes for Romney or low-single-digit totals, except Vermillion Douglas Sharon, which tallied an outlier 20 votes. In general, the rural southeast corner of Iowa was not Mitt Romney country. Given Romney’s alleged eight-vote victory, declared at 2:30 a.m., every vote mattered. But not every vote was counted accurately.
Full Article: Did Rick Santorum Win the Iowa Caucuses, Not Mitt Romney? – The Daily Beast.