It happens every caucus cycle. A campaign worried about a disappointing showing near the end of the race starts to raise questions about the legitimacy of the caucus process. In 2008 Hillary Clinton backers famously spun bizarre theories about how Barack Obama’s campaign bused in thousands of supporters from Chicago to swamp eastern Iowa precincts. That, of course, was untrue, and would have required the greatest secretive operation in political history, in which none of thousands of caucus interlopers told anyone of their trick. The Clinton folks were rightly pilloried for pushing such nonsense.

This time it appears Bernie Sanders’ campaign may be the one prepping a blame-the-process argument. With the most recent Des Moines Register poll showing Sanders still three points back from Clinton, and the possibility that Sanders’ support is too heavily concentrated in certain precincts (problematic since each has a set number of delegates), there seems to be growing concern among Sanders supporters that he’ll come up short in his upset bid in Iowa. That seems to have brought forward a series of Sanders-pushed stories that suggest a trend in which the campaign may try to undermine the legitimacy of the results.

The most recent attempt came last night when Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver spun a sinister-sounding story to Yahoo News about Clinton staffers possibly serving as precinct captains or volunteer leaders, based on a letter a Sanders supporter received. Weaver suggested it could mean that Clinton is “infiltrating the caucuses with out-of-state paid staffers,” and possibly even try to get counted in the caucus.

That argument, however, is utterly ridiculous. Weaver’s so-called proof was a letter telling a voter the precinct leader for their caucus was a paid staffer from Clinton’s campaign. This is actually a regular practice by all campaigns. In certain precincts where they may not have identified a precinct captain, they’ll send a staffer there to organize the room or, at the very least, greet supporters, but not to caucus themselves. And in this situation the Clinton staffer was simply a placeholder when the mailer went out – they later identified a local precinct captain.