monday, february 24 , 2020. the washington post eZ su A
LOUisiANAMan is fatally struck by
Mardi Gras parade floatA man was s truck and k illed by
a Mardi G ras float d uring a
raucous w eekend street p arade in
New Orleans, becoming the
second p erson in days k illed
along a parade r oute during this
year’s C arnival season,
authorities s aid.
The man was killed Saturday
evening as the p opular Krewe of
Endymion was r olling, New
Orleans police said i n a
statement. He was pronounced
dead at t he s cene, a nd t he Orleans
Parish C oroner’s O ffice did not
immediately release his name
and c ause of d eath.
The fatality came as New
Orleans was m ourning the d eath
of a 58-year-old w oman who —
witnesses said — was run over b y
a parade f loat Wednesday night.
— A ssociated PressJewish centers receive threats:
The Albany Jewish Community
Center was evacuated and
searched Sunday morning after it
and m any other centers
nationwide received a nonymous
emails with vague threats t hat
mentioned a bomb, New York
Gov. A ndrew M. Cuomo said.
Similar vague threats wereemailed to about 1 8 other Jewish
community c enters a cross the
country, C uomo’s o ffice said.Calif. man dies in rocket crash: A
California m an w ho said h e
wanted to fly to the e dge of space
to prove his theory t hat the world
is flat d ied after h is home-built
rocket blasted o ff i nto the desert
sky and plunged back to Earth.
“Mad” Mike Hughes, 64, was
killed Saturday after his rocket
crashed on p rivate property n ear
Barstow. Hughes a lso w as a
limousine d river, w ho held t he
Guinness world record for
“longest l imousine ramp jump”
after j umping 1 03 feet i n a
Lincoln To wn Car stretch limo at
a speedway in 2002.Calif. man drives Jeep off g arage
roof: A man drove h is Jeep off the
sixth floor of a Los Angeles-area
parking garage e arly S unday and
was t aken to a hospital in critical
condition, authorities said. When
officers arrived shortly after
midnight, they found t he
destroyed v ehicle up against a
McDonald’s r estaurant across the
street f rom the g arage in S anta
Monica, police said. They s aid the
20-year-old driver, who was not
immediately identified, was
conscious and s peaking with
officers when they arrived.
— F rom news servicesDigestrobert F. bukaty/associated Press
Rime ice covers an antenna on Mount Washington’s summit i n New
Hampshire, as Douglas Ciampi of Westminster, Mass., takes in the
view. Rime ice forms when supercooled moisture hits a solid surface.Politics & the Nation
BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKERLAS VEGAS — Nevada Democrats
are rebuffing a request from Pete
Buttigieg’s p residential campaign
to hold off on releasing final
numbers from Saturday’s caucus-
es until the party rectifies a series
of errors the campaign says i t has
discovered.
At issue is the way the state
party combined preferences from
four days of early voting with
caucus-day support — an intri-
cate process that caused tensions
between the state party and the
presidential campaigns in the
days leading up to the caucuses.
Even as officials brushed off
the campaign’s request, it re-
mained uncertain how quickly
Nevada Democrats would be able
verify and publish results and
whether they can avoid the pro-
tracted uncertainty that plagued
their counterparts in Iowa after a
software glitch snarled the first-
in-the-nation contest, causing a
prolonged delay in the release of
error-laced figures, which are still
in question.
In a Saturday night letter, Mi-
chael Gaffney, the Buttigieg cam-
paign’s national ballot access and
delegates director, asked the state
party to release separate early-
vote and in-person totals for each
precinct; to correct any errors
arising from the integration of
early votes; and to “explain anom-
alies in the data.”
“Given how close the race is
between second and third place,
we ask that you take these steps
before releasing any final data,”
Gaffney wrote to the party’s c hair-
man, William McCurdy II.
Molly Forgey, a spokeswoman
for the state party, said Democrat-
ic officials would continue to veri-
fy a nd report results, about half of
which had been published on the
state party’s website by Sunday
morning, almost 24 hours after
the caucuses got underway.
“We never indicated we would
release a separate breakdown of
early vote and in-person attend-
ees by precinct and will not
change our reporting process
now,” Forgey said in a statement,
adding that any campaign wish-
ing to query the results would
have to do so through a formal
method laid out in the party’s
“recount guidance.”
The letter from Gaffney alleged
a slew of problems, including
“200 incident reports” from
across the state. By his account,
the issues included early-vote
data not being delivered or being
delayed; the data figuring im-
properly in caucus-day calcula-
tions; and the data being allocat-
ed to the wrong candidate. “In at
least one location, early vote data
from the wrong precinct was
used,” he wrote.
Forgey declined to say whether
the campaign’s claims had merit,
affirming only that “we are con-
tinuing to verify and to report
results.”
The state party had released
figures from just under half of the
approximately 2,000 precincts
late Saturday when the letter
arrived from G affney, asking for a
response by 6 a.m. Pacific time on
Sunday.
The release of additional num-
bers was sluggish, with data from
1,266 precincts reported by Sun-
day morning. Meanwhile, ques-
tions were e merging about why
numbers for some precincts were
initially revealed and then re-
moved from the state party’s w eb-
site.
Preliminary results showed
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with a
thumping victory — enough for
the Associated Press to name him
the winner on Saturday evening
— followed by former vice presi-
dent Joe Biden.
Buttigieg, the former mayor of
South Bend, Ind., was in third
place, right at the 15 percent
threshold required to take dele-
gates to the national convention
from the state.
But Hari Sevugan, Buttigieg’s
deputy campaign manager, sug-
gested that portrait of support in
the Silver State was incomplete.
The campaign’s internal num-
bers, he said in a statement,
showed a “razor-thin margin for
second place in Nevada.”
Even before the caucuses be-
gan, the state party had moved to
preempt questions about possi-
ble mathematical irregularities in
the results, which were rampant
in Iowa.
In a memo released on Friday,
the state party’s executive direc-
tor, Alana Mounce, said numbers
released by the party would re-
flect the information on report-
ing sheets completed at precincts
across the state.
“If there are any math ques-
tions or other issues on caucus
reporting sheets, they will be
addressed subsequent to caucus
day according to our established
results review procedures,” she
wrote.
The memo arrived as cam-
paigns were still waiting on data
from the final day of early voting.
Though the Nevada caucuses
avoided the widespread chaos of
Iowa, there were challenges dur-
ing early voting and on Saturday.
The quest to match ranked-
choice preferences completedahead of time with the precincts
where those preferences would
ultimately count on caucus day
had proved to be arduous. And it
brought the state party into con-
flict with the campaigns.
Especially vexing was the pro-
cess of voiding ballots, mostly
because they lacked signatures,
in a review process conducted by
three people appointed by the
state party. Campaign represen-
tatives were invited to observe
what was dubbed “caucus court,”
according to people familiar with
the procedure.
The campaigns had been
promised data from early voting,
in which nearly 75,000 Nevadans
participated at about 80 sites
across the state, but they didn’t
receive names from the final dayuntil Saturday morning. That left
little time to coax Democrats
whose ballots had been voided —
about 2.3 percent of the total who
voted early — to turn out to
caucus.
The uncertainty on the eve of
the caucuses followed days of
escalating tensions, which flared
as the Nevada Democrats re-
vamped their system for trans-
mitting and verifying results fol-
lowing the debacle in Iowa.
Campaign operatives, who
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity to avoid crossing the par-
ty, described hastily arranged
conference calls and last-minute
notices about voting procedures,
including the requirement of sig-
natures on early ballots.
As Nevadans headed to caucus
on Saturday, at least one cam-
paign was still raising concerns
about how the early vote would
be integrated into the in-person
caucuses. One adviser said that
several campaigns had pressed
the state party to issue written
guidance more clearly outlining
how the early count would be
characterized to in-person cau-
cus-goers, but that the party de-
clined.
The aide raised the issue of
optics, pointing to how some
Democrats were known to make
last-minute decisions inside the
room based on the size of a crowd
behind a particular candidate.
The fear was realized in certain
precincts on Saturday, as caucus-
goers stuck in their corner hoping
more support from early voters
would materialize, only to find
out after the fact that they would
come up short. One group of
Buttigieg supporters inside Thur-
man White Academy in Hender-
son took a gamble, hoping the
iPad would spit out better num-
bers for them on the final align-
ment. It did not.
“They are still assembling theplane as it is trying to take off,” t he
campaign aide warned.
Privately, people close to the
state party groused that cam-
paigns were endeavoring to sow
doubt about the results ahead of
time to explain a poor showing.
About 8 in 10 caucus-goers said
they were confident that prefer-
ences in Saturday’s caucuses
would be counted correctly, ac-
cording to preliminary entrance
poll results, while just under 2 in
10 said they were not confident.
“I think the party here is doing
everything it can to try to make
sure this is a totally legitimate
count, but caucuses are hard —
it’s r eally hard,” Biden told the Las
Vegas Review-Journal.
Asked whether caucuses
should be abandoned, he said,
“That’s the judgment the Ameri-
can people are going to make.”
[email protected]holly bailey contributed to this
report.Buttigieg questions Nevada results
Melina Mara/the Washington Post
Hotel workers in Las Vegas caucus on Saturday. Pete Buttigieg’s campaign wants the Nevada
Democratic Party to release separate early-vote and in-person totals for each precinct.Campaign says it has
found data errors, wants
delay in final vote release“In at least one
location, early vote data
from the wrong precinct
was used.”
Michael gaffney, buttigieg staffer15
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