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President Joe Biden wins Iowa Democrats' mail-in presidential contest • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]

['Robin Opsahl', 'More From Author', '- March']

Date: 2024-03-05

President Joe Biden won Iowa Democrats’ first mail-in presidential preference contest in unofficial results announced Tuesday.

The Iowa Democratic Party released the preliminary results showing Biden receiving 11,083 of the votes tabulated. More Democrats, 480, voted uncommitted than supported other candidates — former Rep. Dean Phillips earned 362 votes and Marianne Williamson, who ended her campaign in February, received 268 votes.

Biden will get all 40 of Iowa’s delegates determined by the results of the contest, set to support him at the August Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

This is the first year Iowa Democrats did not declare their presidential preferences during first-in-the-nation caucuses.

The Iowa Republican caucuses kicked off the 2024 presidential nominating process for the GOP candidate on Jan. 15. The Democrats’ process officially began in South Carolina, Feb. 3 — although New Hampshire Democrats voted in their primary Jan. 23, out of compliance with the national party’s calendar. Both Iowa and New Hampshire were booted from their positions as the first caucus and first primary of the Democratic presidential nominating calendar in 2023.

Though Iowa Democrats held in-person caucuses Jan. 15 alongside the Iowa Republicans, there was no expression of presidential preference. The release of results on Super Tuesday was a compromise reached with the Democratic National Committee in October following a a lengthy calendar restructuring between the 2020 and 2024 presidential election cycles.

Iowa Democrats were given assurances that the DNC’s nominating cycle for 2028 would be up for debate, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said, and would not follow the 2024 plan for South Carolina to start the process followed by New Hampshire, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan.

While the schedule can change, Hart has repeatedly said the switch from in-person caucuses to a mail-in system is here to stay. Speaking with reporters Tuesday, Hart said the process went smoothly in its first year of implementation.

“It is a cycle where we have an incumbent president, so the results are, you know, fairly obvious and I think it’s going to be clear that President Biden is going to be our nominee,” Hart said. “But the fact that … this is the first time that in Iowa when you’ve worked third shift, or when you have small children and you don’t have day care, don’t have child care in the evenings, when you are somebody who lives with a disability and it’s hard to find care so that you can go out in the evening, when you have a winter day like we had this year where it was just too darn cold for people to go out — you still got to have your voice heard.”

To participate, Iowa Democrats had to request a presidential preference card from the state party. Voters had four choices on their presidential preference cards: the three candidates running, or voting uncommitted. After marking their preferred candidate, the card was sent back for tabulation by the state party. Cards had to be returned to the state party or postmarked by March 5 to be eligible to count.

A total of 19,609 ballots were requested for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, party officials reported.

Though Hart said the first year of the new system went well, there was room for improvement. She said Democrats are looking at ways to better participation in the mail-in system using means like automatically mailing presidential preference card requests to all registered Democrats in the state, or increasing communications and information available to people who don’t use the internet.

“We’ll be looking forward to those conversations as to what this is going to look like in 2028,” Hart said. “Knowing that in 2028, it’s going to be a much different experience, right? We’re going to have a competitive situation, where you’re going to have more people who are interested in reaching out to voters and getting more participation.”

This year, Iowa Democrats released their results on “Super Tuesday,” when 15 states and one U.S. territory were holding nominating contests. Biden, the incumbent president, is expected to easily win in Democratic contests, while former President Donald Trump is the clear frontrunner in his bid to become the Republican presidential nominee.

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[1] Url: https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/05/president-joe-biden-wins-iowa-democrats-mail-in-presidential-contest/

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