playing dirty

Trump supporters clogged Iowa caucus phone line with prank calls to try and hack results

Pete Buttigieg likely won the Iowa caucus on Monday night, though the jury is technically still out. Unfortunately, he was robbed of the opportunity to fully celebrate his historic achievement because of a delay in the official results.

Initially, it was believed the delay was due to a malfunction in the mobile app being used track results malfunctioning. But it turns out, that’s not the only reason.

Now, the chaos is also being attributed to Trump supporters intentionally flooding the phone hotline used by Democratic precinct chairs with prank calls in an effort to hack the results.

The hotline number was posted on the right-wing message board 4chan along with a call to “clog the lines.”

“Uh oh how unfortunate it would be for a bunch of mischief makers to start clogging the lines,” one anonymous user said.

Shortly after that is when the trouble began.

Yesterday, the Iowa Democratic Party confirmed it had “experienced an unusually high volume of inbound phone calls to its caucus hotline,” which included “supporters of President Trump who called to express their displeasure with the Democratic Party.”

“The unexplained, and at times hostile, calls contributed to the delay in the Iowa Democratic Party’s collection of results,” the party said in a statement, “but in no way affected the integrity of information gathered or the accuracy of data sets reported.”

The Trump campaign says it had no knowledge of supporters prank calling the hotline.

As of now, 97% of the Iowa vote is in. The results show Pete Buttigieg in an ever-so-slight lead of 0.1% over Bernie Sanders.

Related: This tweet from Chasten Buttigieg will make you ugly cry

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