Iowa caucus results remained deep in the bowels of glitchy technology 18 hours after the country expected they would be released, and Iowa’s status as the first to report presidential preferences was freshly questioned by national media and others.

It didn’t have to be this way.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Iowa Democratic Party had still not released the full results the nation expected 10 p.m. Monday. Partial results were released at 4 p.m. Tuesday.

The preliminary reports blamed the app the party was using to report results. It didn’t bring in results accurately, according to Democratic officials. And when the precinct captains went to the backup plan of phoning in the results, there were long waits.

While party leaders explained the app didn’t perform as expected, they did not detail, for example, if the app was tested in real-life, real-time situations for volume and distance. Some Democratic precinct captains reported not being able to download the app until a few hours before the caucuses started.

There was also little information on how many people were staffing a “call center” that was to serve as a backup.

That another backup plan called for captains to take pictures of their paper results and email them in, suggests the planning and strategy fell short.

By many accounts, the caucuses had strong turnout and were run smoothly. The reporting of the results was the main problem.

The national media seemed much more incensed about the reporting problems than did regular Iowans. Of course, national media audiences were disappearing when news of no results came and big advertising money likely went away with the audience.

Now some are calling on Iowa to be dethroned from status as the first presidential preference political event, and that the state is not up to reporting in the big time.

That would be a decision for the parties to make. But as the only early state presidential event that has people meet face to face and discuss issues, the Iowa caucuses remain unique, but maybe not practical in the modern political world.

Doing away with the caucuses and going to a primary would shift more power to the national parties in selecting candidates.

While the Iowa caucuses make politicians show up and face people, however limited a number, a primary would make the nomination process more accessible to more people.

Certainly, if Iowa political parties want to be first, they have to conduct the voting with professionalism and integrity. The Democrats missed that mark on Monday.

— The Free Press of Mankato, Feb. 5