Volunteer shortages reported at some Nevada caucus precincts

People fill out paper ballots during early voting at the Culinary Workers union Monday, Feb. 17, 2020, in Las Vegas.

John Locher | AP

Some caucus precincts in Nevada are facing a shortage of volunteers, prompting the state's Democratic Party to reach out to campaigns for help on the day of the primary contest, multiple outlets reported Saturday.

As results trickled in, reports emerged from a handful of locations that confusion about the vote-counting rules — and how early voting factored into the final tallies — was also delaying the process.

Earlier Saturday, The New York Times, Politico and others reported that results from some of the hundreds of caucus sites around the state could be delayed because of volunteer shortages. Early entrance polls indicated Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had a significant lead in initial voting preference as caucusing started at 3 p.m. ET.

Nevada Democratic Party spokeswoman Molly Forgey said in a statement to NBC News that the caucuses were “running smoothly” and that the party is “working diligently to accommodate and continue processing the high volume of incoming results from precinct chairs.”

The Nevada Democratic Party has asked the presidential campaigns to send staffers to different locations to expedite the check-in process or even act as precinct chairs, according to the Times.

But Forgey downplayed the apparent volunteer shortage, telling NBC earlier Saturday that “we are confident in having the necessary volunteer numbers to cover caucus sites today.”

“We have thousands of volunteers working hard across the state today and this is not occurring at the vast majority of sites and precincts,” Forgey said, adding that campaign volunteers also helped to run precincts in 2016 and 2008.

A state party official told NBC that their own reports indicate an average of eight volunteers per caucus site, adding up to roughly 2,000 volunteers or more across Nevada.

On-site volunteers have also told CNBC that the deliberate pace of the caucus process is by design.

But results were coming in later than in prior years. Vote counters for the National Election Pool, a consortium of news organizations, reported confusion about vote counting rules or how to incorporate the early vote in at least six of the 63 locations where they are collecting data.

As data streamed in Saturday afternoon, there were few indications that the Nevada contest would experience a system failure on the level of the Iowa caucuses.

Still, the reports conjured fears of a repeat of that disaster — an association that Democratic party officials were desperate to avoid in the second caucuses of the 2020 primary season.

The first-in-the-nation Iowa contest suffered from a massive tech failure traced to the use of a new app in the voting process. The final outcome in Iowa, in which former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg edged out Sen. Bernie Sanders for the state delegate equivalent lead, weren't known until days later.

After that debacle, Nevada ditched its plans to use an app from the same vendor that Iowa used. Instead, it rolled out a “calculator tool” that officials said would be much easier to use. The party has also boosted training and contracted with a professional call center to handle results as they come in.

But the added variable of early voting — a first for Nevada primary voters — and the expectation of high turnout still threatened to crash through the party's added guardrails.

— CNBC's Tucker Higgins contributed reporting from Las Vegas, Nev. Kevin Breuninger reported from Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

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