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It's still early: Democrats fear caucus chaos in Nevada as early returns show Sanders win
By Ebony Bowden and Mary Kay Linge February 22, 2020 | 6:22pm |

Democrats braced for chaos at the Nevada presidential caucuses — even as entrance polls and early returns pointed to a big win for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Nearly 75,000 people cast early ballots ahead of Saturday’s vote, the first contest in a state where whites make up less than half of the population.

Nevada’s caucus process is similar to the one used in Iowa Feb. 3, which dissolved into turmoil when a glitchy new app developed to help count the vote failed to function.

Nevada abandoned plans to use the Iowa app and cobbled together a system that uses iPads pre-loaded with a new tool to count the vote and incorporate the early-vote totals. Party officials insisted that precinct volunteers had been thoroughly trained — but warned that final results might not be tallied Saturday.

That wasn’t preventing early calls. By 6 pm, with only 3 percent of precincts reporting, Fox News was projecting Sanders the winner.

The caucus in the Bellagio ballroom on the Vegas Strip was packed with housekeepers, union members and voters of color. Many sported T-shirts reading “Unidos con Bernie” — united with Bernie in Spanish.

“He’s the most authentic candidate to actually support workers,” Bellagio bartender David Montenegro, 32, told The Post. “The more people I talked to, it’s either Bernie or Trump, to be honest.”

The initial head count at that precinct showed strong support for both Sanders and Biden, with African-American voters sticking with the former veep and Spanish speakers in the senator’s camp.
(Are the Spanish speakers totally oblivious to the plight of their brethren in the socialist south of the border countries? Or are they just looking for freebies? Wonder how many of them are actually eligible to vote.)

Only a few voters stood in Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s corner – and Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend, Ind. mayor Pete Buttigieg didn’t rate at all, despite their strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“Bernie’s way too far to the left,” argued Douglas, 61, a voter at the Bellagio caucus who threw his support to Biden after Warren was deemed non-viable.

The Democrats’ contests in Iowa and New Hampshire both ended in near-ties between Buttigieg and Sanders.

But both those states are overwhelmingly white – making Nevada, whose electorate is about 40 percent black and Hispanic, a major test for Buttigieg’s viability as the nomination battle moves on to similarly diverse states.

South Carolina is next in line with a Feb. 29 primary, and Super Tuesday – the 14-state sweepstakes on March 3 – follows just three days later. Those contests, many of them in states whose demographics mirror Nevada’s, will choose more than a third of the total delegates needed to select a presidential nominee.

Super Tuesday will also mark the maiden voyage of Mike Bloomberg’s campaign. Gotham’s former mayor skipped the first four nominating states after making a late entry into the fray. But Sanders could build up a formidable delegate lead before then, narrowing Bloomberg’s potential path to victory.

https://nypost.com/2020/02/22/democrats-fear-caucus-chaos-in-nevada-as-early-returns-show-sanders-win/