I'm also going to add that, in the great scheme of things, one delegate in a caucus, a messy system that luckily is used by a clear minority of states, is not going to change the outcome. I know,
I know that many Bernie Sanders suporters are just
dying to scream conspiracy and, certainly, they are delighted by the evidence that he got the short end of the stick from the problems in the caucus. But wait until he sweeps NH and NV and goes into SuperTuesday as the leading candidate before claiming that there's a massive DNC conspiracy to defeat him, please.
A very good rule of thumb is "don't assume evil is behind things that can be explained by human stupidity". I honestly doubt the Iowa DP set out to specifically rig the caucus against Sanders in particular, it's more likely the whole thing was a massive mess (just ask Santorum in 2012) and Sanders was in the wrong place. Again, wait to see if there are ballot boxes disappearing mysteriously in NH or something before assuming the Evil Washington Elites are just rigging everything.
And let me ask: let's say that the real caucus result had been Sanders 26%, Buttigieg 24%. Other than the one delegate (out of over one thousand needed to win the nomination) changing hands, what would have changed? Sanders has got a bounce in the polls. Pete would have got a bounce anyway because he was the winner of the "moderate" lane while Biden was in free-fall, and if you think ex-Biden voters would have flocked to Sanders just because he had narrowly won instead of narrowly lost, well, think again. So yeah, if suddenly mysterious muk starts happening in the upcoming three states, then I can buy it's a conspiracy. But if everything goes smoothly in the following days and the actual effect is... that Sanders lost one delegate, then what is the problem...?
PD: Sanders lost 2016 because more people just happened to cast their votes for Clinton.
PD2: I donated money to Sanders in 2016 and would love to see him win the general if he wins the primary.
I can assure you that nobody is "delighted" to find evidence of the democratic process being compromised. C'mon, give us more credit than that. Having a secure process is something we should all be serious about, and only a crazy person would be "dying" to tell you some bad news.
It's also worth noting while you are characterizing Bernie Sanders supporters as screaming conspiracists, not everybody who expresses skepticism about the fairness of the process we saw in Iowa is necessarily even a Sanders supporter. There are people who have shared concern about the integrity of the process who have not identified themselves as Bernie Sanders supporters and made no comment about who they support, or may have even indicated support for another candidate entirely in previous comments. Some people who have expressed skepticism have even said specifically that they are not democrats, therefore won't be casting a vote for Sanders or otherwise. There are also people who are not United States citizens viewing this thread that can't be voting for Bernie and won't be directly affected by who wins this primary, yet even so they registered concern about what has been reported. Preserving a free and fair election is something that should have bipartisan support larger than Bernie. While yes, I personally am going to vote for Bernie Sanders, I have also posted my dismay to learn of inconsistencies that occurred affecting candidates that I don't necessarily support such as Andrew Yang and Elizabeth Warren. Even if I disagree with a candidate I still want the process of challenging them to be done properly, based on whose ideas won the most voters and not failings in the procedure. Any candidate being negatively impacted by irregularities or suppression is of interest to me.
While you dismissed the idea that there is corruption in Iowa, and that instead these are all honest mistakes that happened to Bernie Sanders. However, bear in mind that data from 90 precincts also went missing in the 2016 Iowa caucus, a controversial caucus which Clinton was declared the winner of by a fraction of a point after a number of precincts reportedly being tied and decided by coin tosses. When Bernie Sanders asked to look at what data the party had to verify the accuracy of these results in such a close race the Iowa Democratic chairwoman refused to turn over anything for a review. You say that we should learn not to "assume evil is behind things that can be explained by human stupidity," but how do you explain trying to prevent anyone from seeing the results as just human stupidity? There would be no reason for the Iowa democratic chair to do this unless there was something to hide.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_9550670
Bernie Sanders may have won the New Hampshire, but I wouldn't celebrate just yet that there is no bias in this process against us, because there are some red flags coming out of the Nevada Caucus already that this process may not be above aboard entirely. This is Nevada's first time doing early voting, and the Nevada Democrats are getting a brand new piece of software to help them count the data again just like the present we got in Iowa. We've been told by the party that it's not the same shadow app, but we don't know anything about this tool, other than that it was recommended by a "group of tech and security folks whose names and affiliations were not provided." This app is still being knocked together, and has not been live tested. The press has received no response so far to questions about how early votes will be tabulated. Voting starts in 2 days, yet people running the caucus sites have said there has been no training on how to use this new gadget.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/nevada-democrats-caucus-new-software-despite-iowa-app-problems/264777/
The DNC would have to be more than stupid to do exactly what they just did in Iowa again in Nevada and expect no problems might occur. It would be Einstein's definition of insanity, "doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result."
I think it's more likely that the DNC wants the dodgy results they will probably receive, than they are crazy.
It's also surfaced that Buttigieg's staff was hired by the Nevada state party to be the "Voter Protection Director of the caucus." This is an unsubtle conflict of interest, just as it should have been a conflict of interest that Buttigieg's campaign paid over 40,000 dollars to Shadow Inc whose app did the faulty counting, and a potential conflict of interest that the founder of the corporation that launched Shadow is tied to the senior strategist in Buttigieg's campaign.
https://news3lv.com/news/local/voters-concerned-after-nevada-democratic-party-hires-buttigieg-staffer
I think it's frankly dangerous to brush away the irregularities we saw in Iowa just because there are more states out there and more delegates to be won, and not that much changed. Iowa alone may not change the winner of the caucus, but if there's not a public outcry it will enable more "careless" mistakes like that or outright cheating in the margins because there's no accountability or pressure to be as accurate as possible. The Iowa Democratic party has acknowledgd that the results are mathematically wrong, but that they won't be corrected even if they are wrong. Delegates skimmed off the top here and there from state to state will indeed affect the outcome of the primary. Fight for every delegate that you think is yours, because you are going to need it at the convention.