Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders call for recounts in certain Iowa precincts

Representatives for the presidential campaigns of Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders have requested that the Iowa Democratic Party begin a recount of select caucus sites that they had previously asked the party recanvassed, a party aide tells CNN.

Campaigns that participated in the recanvass — those of Buttigieg, Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — had until 6:45 p.m. CT Wednesday to inform the Iowa Democratic Party that they would like all or some of the sites they requested be recanvassed to be recounted. The aide said that the party had not received a request from Warren’s campaign.

While Elizabeth Warren’s campaign did observe the recanvass process, they did not submit a formal request for either a recanvass or a recount, the party aide said.

The rules of a recount in Iowa stipulate that a campaign’s request may only be within the scope of the original recanvass. It cannot expand further than that, and it can include all the precincts recanvassed or look at a smaller amount of precincts.

The Sanders campaign originally filed recanvass requests in 28 precincts, while the Buttigieg campaign filed recanvass requests for 66 precincts and all in-state satellite precincts. The total requests were 143 precincts after duplicates were removed.

Once a recount request is submitted, the state Recount/Recanvass Committee will meet in consultation with their legal advisers and the DNC Voter Protection Team to adjudicate the request within 48 hours of receipt. The state party will provide the campaigns with the cost of the recount, which they must pay.

The Iowa Democratic Party will provide the campaigns with a schedule of the recount and allow up to two observers per campaign in the recount room, but they are not allowed to raise questions or engage with the staff conducting the procedure. The recount is not open to press or the public.

The Iowa Democratic Party ended the recanvass of more than 100 caucus precincts on Tuesday. The changes made through the process resulted in Buttigieg’s lead over Sanders tightening to a fraction of a standard delegate equivalent, with Buttigieg now holding 26.188% and Sanders at 26.184%.

The tightening does not, however, impact the national delegate count, which awarded Buttigieg 14 national delegates out of Iowa, compared to Sanders’ 12 delegates, according to the state party.

The recanvass led the Iowa Democratic Party to correct the counts for 26 precincts where “misapplication of the rules affected delegate allocation” and three precincts where “the reported final alignment did not match what was on the math worksheet,” according to the state party. The party also announced that representative from the campaigns of Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren were on site during the recanvass.

The Iowa caucus results still remain outstanding because the caucus process descended into chaos two weeks ago. A faulty app that was supposed to streamline the caucus process, an overwhelmed call-center meant to act as a backup to the app and poor communication between the party and the campaigns marred the caucus process and left Democrats with no results the night of voting.

The chaos in Iowa has hung over Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, with the state party there getting rid of the same app they planned to use and increasing the number of training sessions ahead of caucus day.