Can Iowa hold a real caucus for once?

America’s most-watched early presidential election has been a mess for more than a decade.

My first caucus night in Iowa was in 2012. The Republican Party of Iowa declared Mitt Romney the winner by just eight votes over Rick Santorum, giving Romney a boost that ultimately carried him to the nomination.

The next morning, Santorum’s underdog campaign heard from county chairmen about miscounts. The state party eventually withdrew its call: Santorum had actually won by 34 votes – but not longer than two weeks.

“I performed a miracle, but they said Romney was the winner,” Santorum said when I called him this week. “It wasn’t that: ‘Santorum came out of nowhere.’ It was ‘Romney has won, the race is over.’ What do you think the outcome would have been if they had said I won?

The 2012 debacle was the first of three consecutive failed caucus nights in Iowa. On Monday, the state’s Republican caucuses will again be led by party volunteers at 1,657 caucus locations.

Local officials have repeatedly failed to meet the basic accounting standards that Americans have come to expect on election nights. And the kickoff contest for a 2024 election cycle that both major parties agree will decide the fate of American democracy is being hosted by a state with a history of ineptness with the basic task of Democracy 101: accurately counting the to vote.

Unlike primaries and general elections that are regularly run by professionals, Iowa’s way is to let ordinary people do the counting. And it didn’t go well.

In 2016, the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton was so close that both said they won, and that they both had a legitimate case. The Sanders campaign said he earned the most voteswhile Clinton won the most delegates. The Iowa Democratic Party’s reporting process could not verify how many people voted for each candidate.

Then came 2020 and the mother of all meltdowns in Iowa. The caucus reporting mechanism failed, the phones at Democratic headquarters in Iowa were overloaded, and by the end of the night and the next day, no one knew who had won.

It took until the end of the week before it became clear that Pete Buttigieg had won the most delegates in Iowa. Instead of news cycles about his victory, the stories were about the logistical disaster.

“Iowa does not have a great track record of getting timely and accurate results and probably no one has been more affected by that than Pete Buttigieg in 2020,” said Lis Smith, a senior aide for the Buttigieg campaign.

In the aftermath, the Democratic Party under Joe Biden revoked the state’s first-in-line status. As I reported this morning, Democrats in Iowa have meekly accepted their fate as the preseason also continues.

Now I’m back inside cold and snowy Des Moines for a caucus where the biggest question is who will finish in second place behind former President Donald J. Trump. But what I’m most curious about is whether we’ll even know Monday night if there will be accurate – or any – results.

Iowa Republicans are confident in their ability to count and report results in a timely manner. In a video conference with reporters last week, party officials said they had tested their reporting system and were confident there would not be a repeat of the Democrats’ 2020 collapse.

“Barring a complete collapse of the global internet, we shouldn’t have a problem with the data feed,” said Patrick Stewart, a veteran Iowa Republican who helped the party set up its reporting system for the 2024 caucus results.

And whatever the results on Monday, Iowa Republican Party officials said they won’t declare a winner — leaving that to the news media.

Our boy without a bus

My Times colleague Michael Gold was assigned to follow Donald Trump and his 2024 campaign across the country. And the era of campaign buses is over: candidates often use private planes and reporters drive rental cars. Michael has driven more than 1,000 miles in the past week, surviving a flat tire and spending many hours looking out the window at barren corn fields.

I called Michael this morning to ask what his travels have taught him.

What did you learn about Iowa driving through it so many times?

The towns and cities have character and the people are good-natured and helpful, especially if you get a flat tire. But it’s vast: If you drive across the state and there’s nothing growing in the fields, the landscape can be incredibly bleak.

Is that a metaphor for what it’s like to cover this year’s Republican primaries?

I’m not going to say that.

In all your travels here, what have you learned about Trump and his supporters in Iowa?

His followers are devoted to him. They are willing to wait for him for hours in all kinds of bad weather. On Saturday he was three and a half hours late.

Three and a half hours!

He had plane problems. People waited. The gym was still full and there were still people in the overflow area. That’s the kind of dedication he inspires in people. They are there to see him. They drive across the state to see him. There is simply no other candidate who has that commitment.

Watch this tonight

It’s a split-screen moment for Republicans in Iowa.

A Fox News town hall with Donald Trump will go up against a debate on CNN between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. Trump, the race’s frontrunner, qualified for the debate but has once again chosen to engage in counterprogramming in the hope of derailing his rivals’ appearances.

Deposition: Republicans initiated formal hearings against the Secretary of Homeland Security without any evidence of high crimes.

REST IN PEACE: Amalija Knavs, the mother of former first lady Melania Trump, died at the age of 78.

The scan

• Representative Elise Stefanikthe New York Republican who used a congressional hearing to attack college presidents over anti-Semitism announced her best-ever fundraising quarter.

• Bosses in the Biden administration are being pressured over the anonymous letters from young staffers, Political reports.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign was questioned by the Federal Election Commission about payments to his daughter-in-law, CNBC reports.

• The Oregon Supreme Court could be the next to rule on Trump’s eligibility to vote under the 14th Amendment. CNN reports.