Perez expresses confidence in Nevada after Iowa fiasco

The DNC chair faced scrutiny amid the fallout from Iowa for the national party's role in the embarrassing episode.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez on Wednesday expressed optimism that the 2020 Nevada Democratic caucuses would go off without a hitch this weekend, insisting that the party had learned its lesson from the botched first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.

"I have a lot of confidence in Nevada. A really, really strong party," Perez told CNN. "We have gone to school on the lessons of Iowa. We're as low-tech as humanly possible while still preserving efficiency."

The reassurance from the national party chief ahead of Nevada's caucuses on Saturday comes two weeks after the debacle in Iowa, where caucus results were significantly delayed and marred by mathematical, reporting and technological errors.

Following the controversy, Nevada Democratic officials scrapped plans to use a pair of apps similar to the one employed by the Iowa Democratic Party that contributed to the caucus fiasco — settling instead on a system of Google forms referred to as the "caucus calculator" to tally and relay vote totals. Perez defended the new technology on Wednesday.

"One of the problems in Iowa was we had a lot of volunteers who had to do back-of-the-envelope math. The caucus calculator is a simple tool. It's an off-the-shelf tool that enables them to do that math," he said, adding that the party is working to ensure "that the story Saturday night is the candidates, not the process."

Perez also pushed back against reports of precinct captains and other volunteers in Nevada complaining about a lack of preparation in the days before the caucuses, asserting that the party has "literally been providing over a thousand training sessions" to facilitate a smooth reporting operation.

"I used to be, you know, an amateur carpenter in my spare time. There's an old adage: Measure twice, cut once," he said. "Well, we're measuring four and five times, making sure people are trained, trained again, trained again. And anyone who is not comfortable, we'll train you until you are."

Perez faced scrutiny amid the fallout from Iowa for the national party's role in the embarrassing episode and response to the disaster, with some Democrats charging that he should have shouldered more of the blame. Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price resigned last week.

Public polling shows Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders leading the Democratic presidential field in Nevada, and six candidates will face off on Wednesday night during a televised primary debate in Las Vegas.