Can someone explain how Biden's vote total went down on realignment? I thought voters were locked in if their first choice was viable.Thanks!
1
I don't understand. What's the big deal. You expect perfection from a unabashedly quaint system based on popularity contests in school gyms during hours of the day that most working people can't get to? So its 24hrs late, history has shown that the front runners in Iowa, don't always get to be the candidate. Its like worrying about who goes to the Rose Bowl game, of interest and 100% American, but really...seldom earth shattering.
The new process is a lazy man's Rube Goldberg machine.
Personal mobile apps are great for ordering pizza, not transmitting votes.
OK, hold the results until all other primaries are over. Then move to place yourself last the next time around. You performance has made you irrelevant. We’re not waiting for you to get your act together, we’ve moved on. Thanks, you did us all a great service. Bye, bye.
1
Frontline! Paging Frontline!
It is utterly surprising to me that the format of this undemocratic Iowa caucus has not been questioned throughout the years by the Democratic party. The criteria of viability hinder the chances of smaller candidates who may not be representative to Iowan people but to people in other states. Sadly, the caucus bears a great importance for the upcoming primaries and the process of the candidate selection.
1
This was a fascinating article to which I would add that expected wins can count for more than the bare facts explain.
Barack Obama winning almost all-white, rural Iowa produced a larger effect than a win somewhere else. It made many people willing to support him.
In 1960, that is, before the changes produced by 1968, JFK's win in West Virginia was critical to his success.
The party and the people of Iowa have lost their reputation for competence. However, a totally rational system may produce fewer surprises.
With all of the tweeting by the President about the Iowa caucus, I haven't seen any mention of the integrity of the Federal election scheduled for this November. Does the President have faith in the upcoming election? Why doesn't he say so? Without any evidence; so yes, a conspiracy theory; this appears to be a Russian attack on the integrity of the American electoral process and a preview of their attacks in November. The American people need reassurance that all efforts are being made to have free and fair and accountable elections this fall. So far, we have not received those assurances from the President.
1
The winners in Iowa? Bloomberg and Trump. The caucuses turned into a nightlong joke without a punchline.
7
2 precincts in my town. Mine went 3 for Buttigieg, 2 for Bernie and 1 for Biden after realignment. The other went 3 for Buttigieg, 2 for Warren and 1 for Biden. Biden was not viable in either until after alignment when he picked up the stragglers from the fringes.
A good time was had by all in an orderly and friendly fashion, until our precinct captain couldn’t get through to report results. God help us all.
9
Scrap the Iowa caucus
Scrap all the primaries
Do it just like the general election. Everyone in the country votes on the same day.
National Nomination Day
Problem solved.
33
@John
The nomination process is different from the general election process by design. Focusing on 1 or 2 smaller states allows a larger pool of candidates to be competitive, whereas many of them would not have the funds to compete in 50 states simultaneously. So they focus all their energy on a small area, meet a bunch of people in person, and if they do well, they get a media & fundraising boost and keep going -- in theory, anyway.
A single day nomination would greatly favor the candidates with the highest name recognition at the outset and disadvantage any newcomers, outsiders, people without the backing of big donors -- basically, lesser-known folks would have virtually no chance.
So, I'm very glad that we do our nominating in stages. What I do think, though, is that we need a more representative state going first -- and preferably a swing state, so all that energy (and money!!) spent going door-to-door, educating voters, and getting out the vote is invested where it counts the most. Think Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania...
4
Maybe a sign from the universe? We've already got a state that is not demographically representative of the country tasked with making the first formal step toward deciding who our representative should be. Add to that the caucus format, which excludes anyone who might have to work or who has family obligations they simply can't abandon on a Monday night. I can see how back in 1840 this might have been a swell idea, but no more. It's inherently undemocratic.
65
Totally agree, not to mention the exclusion of people with disabilities that was supposed to be corrected...
4
@Diane What? Not demographically representative? What State perfectly represents the nation's demographics? Demographics, that are over 10 years old I might add. This is like a selfish little kid, who wants to change the rules of the game, when it goes against him. The world and life is not fair, and you never can make it fair because of one thing...who decides what is fair?
Embarrassing, to be sure. But let’s be careful about overreacting. Between now and November hundreds of things will happen and hundreds of days pass to make this irrelevant to the election. Plus, it provides additional support for changing the future role of the Iowa caucus in the Democratic selection process. Focus on the big picture: Engage, organize, contribute, vote!
I hope this is the end of the Iowa Caucuses. Still first in the nation though so out of line demographically with the US in 2020. A ridiculous system that we kept being told shows how seriously Iowans take their responsibility. Really. It's way past time to bring this charade to an end.
1
Now it’s a coding issue. What’s this, the second different explanation they’ve issued? Third? Fourth?
Does NOT excuse the lack of telephone backup system, the lack of a test run, the COMPLETE lack of transparency, the embarrassing challenges with basic addition, subtraction, and division, and the brain dead communications from last night. Then Troy Smith tweets something to the effect that “this needs to be accurate, and not follow the whims of the news cycle.” You’re not wrong, but you’re missing the point. This amateurish display has really harmed the Democratic Party as a whole. Troy Smith and all leadership roles in IDP should resign immediately. And I hope they forever quit election politics, or change parties.
4
Counting votes is not new technology. What has happened in Iowa is inexcusable.
2
Who can benefit from this error, if not the responsible of it: Trump and company. Nothing new.
1
Paper trail, paper trail, paper trail.
It would be a sad commentary if Iowa is an indication of where the Democrats are head in 2020. They’re giving Trump so much material to look like fools. It would be no surprise that he could win it with a few good jokes.
Bloomberg was wise to stay out of this early farce. He came out a winner.
There is only one name for this: INCOMPETENCE. Welcome to XXI Century information management. Unbelievable. This is so damaging for the Democratic Party. Let's fixed it, and to other Sates: learn the lesson and prepare well, we need to beat dirty Donald.
1
Why in the world did they need a new app?
Encrypted emails would have sufficed.
App broken? Ok fine, just call in and enter in a spreadsheet. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours for 600 percints.
Can we please stop blowing the Iowa results (or non-results at this point) out of all proportion? It's abundantly clear that the Democratic nomination is a four- or five-way race and small delegate differences from Iowa's arcane caucus process won't change that. Let's wait for more states to weigh in before we start anointing winners and losers.
This is not good. The Democrats don't have anything resembling a front-runner candidate and already they're handing the Trump campaign ammunition --- chaos, confusion and a seeming inability to count. In a campaign where the Republicans are already far outstripping the Democrats in their ability to use digital tools, social media and the internet, this fiasco makes the Dems look like a bunch of technology dolts trying to program their VCR.
1
Biden's campaign just damaged itself, possibly beyond any repair, by publicly questioning the Iowa results. This is a bad sign of poor campaign management. They've got TROUBLE in River City!
1
The Iowa Democratic Party apportions delegates with coin flips and musical chairs. All this fuss over a little delay reporting the results is ridiculous.
Nothing that some pencils, a few scraps of paper and a telephone or three couldn’t fix. Now, about November 3rd...
The most hilarious thing about what happened last night in Iowa was seeing the candidates hint around that they were the chosen one in the state, without the complete results at hand. Nothing exemplifies the devious mind of the politician better than that!
How much abuse are Democratic voters/caucusers/party members willing to take from their party's leadership?
In 2008 the Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign threatened the use of "super-delegates" to counter voters supporting Obama.
In 2016 the Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign conspired to counter voters supporting Bernie Sanders, including leveraging the power of party leaders and supplying Clinton with debate questions in advance.
In 2020, it's hard to know what the Party did yet but reporting indicates that the DNC contributed to the Iowa caucus system selection and it's clear that party leadership favors certain candidates (Biden, Warren, Klobuchar) over others (Sanders, Buttigieg, Yang).
To the extent that parties have any value, it is in the way that they reflect the interests of their members. Yet the Democratic party seems to wish to mute or reverse the interests of party members. This is isn't good for democracy, voters or the party. Members of the Democratic party should be demanding change, yet the blindly follow party leadership with little protest.
You have to grant at least one thing to the Republican party. In 2016, the last thing party leadership wanted was to select Donald Trump to run for President. But, as the primaries continued the party was willing to get out of the way of voters.
3
The Democratic Party is a sorry mess. They have nobody but themselves to blame if they fail to defeat Trump in November. The election will again be decided in a small number of states by a very narrow margin. Starting the primary season with this disaster is a bad omen.
1
Just look who stands to benefit from this mess: Joe Biden. And look who stands to suffer: Bernie Sanders. Coincidence? I think not. Hope this little stunt was worth losing your first-in-the-nation status, Iowa. The rest of us have thought it was absurd for a long time.
4
The Democrats demonstrated two things last night. The party is hopelessly split between older moderate voters and socialist leaning younger voters. And that the Democrat Party leadership is incompetent.
It's Bernie and Elizabeth vs. Pete and Joe for the soul of the Democrat party. A self immolation perpetrated by Democratic Leadership for allowing the Socialist wing to become a major voice of the party nationally. And, not pushing back on the fanciful ideas pushed by Warren and Sanders that are impossible financially, as well as politically in or current two party system of government.
Divide and conquer is the oldest political gambit and Democrats are doing it to themselves. While they stumble around trying to please everyone Republicans coalesce around Trumpism in a single voice.
Obama won because he was a left center moderate and Warren, Sanders and Democrat leadership don't get it. Add in the incompetence from Iowa and it's now time for new Democrat leadership. Obama what do you have on your plate at the moment? The DNC should have an opening after last night.
4
There is an insistent note of gloating in this article, which isn’t appropriate to a description of malfunction in the election process
2
These are not brain surgeons. They are just hard working community activists working with outdated processes, that they only get a chance to practice on every four or eight years.
4
@The Buddy
Maybe true, but that's not good enough given the stakes.
Sadly, technology is 2020. I agree with the paper ballot back-up, but when we have people that refuse to advance with the times, and running elections that need to be addressing today’s challenges, we give way to the type election result we saw in 2016.
Pretty depressing lack of results from Iowa, and it's just another indication that the caucus system is obsolete and should be done away with. Back when there were only 5,000 people in Iowa allowed to vote (white, male landowners), it was reasonable for them to gather in groups of 30 or so and argue over their candidates.
But in a democracy, people are supposed to be able to choose their candidate, then vote, and have their vote count the same as anyone else's, without being forced to argue about it or choose a secondary candidate.
And this is also a reminder about how the first two states to hold primaries should not be Iowa and New Hampshire, two overwhelmingly white, small-population, rural states. If we had a rational system, we could have the top five population states, CA, TX, NY, FL, and IL, go first. Or we could have states go in groups of five that rotated, with a different order each cycle.
As it is, our elections are skewed by these small-state shenanigans, and of course the electoral college holdover from when the founding fathers didn't want the average voter to have a real say in who got elected. If we want a real democracy, we're going to have to change our rules around considerably.
@Dan Stackhouse
Seems like a confusion of a number of issues here. First of all, the problems in Iowa do not seem to be inherent to the fact that it is a caucus. The issues seem related to reporting and calculating results. That could happen under any voting method.
As for getting groups of people together to argue and deliberate? Hard to say this is a bad thing. I don't understand your point about how that process works when the caucusers are "white male landowners" but doesn't with a more diverse group. I'd say it's even more important for a diverse group to have opportunities to interact. I'd also point out that there is a lot of talk about "deliberative democracy" as a component of some of the political reforms we could benefit from.
Similarly, the concept of having to select a secondary candidate is also frequently discussed as an option for political reform through concepts like "instant runoff elections" and "ranked choice voting."
So I wouldn't be so fast to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I would be happy to see Iowa loose its outsized influence in Presidential elections, but there may be some value in the caucus concept.
The mess up with electronic voting, and the counters' insistence on a hand count of paper ballots is to be applauded. Accuracy of results is far more important than speed. Adapting to media schedules is desireable, but reliable results are crucial to confidence in democracy. Electronic voting and calculation is inherently vulnerable, whether through hacking, or the kinds of flaws that all apps may succumb to from time to time. Public confidence in electronic voting is weak. Paper hand counting can restore confidence in democracy.
1
They are using an ‘app’ in Iowa to determine the results of the caucus?! As a software engineer, I see a closed source, non-peer reviewed, accident waiting to happen. This is a dream come true for hackers, both internal to the app’s company and to outside actors like Russia. What are they thinking?
Electronic communications CAN BE intercepted and manipulated. It’s not easy, but very possible for bad actors who want to determine an election. And when other countries have office buildings of hackers designated to modify our elections, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Folks have to get it through their heads that electronic voting and reporting will not work. No one has ever produced non hackable software or hardware. A handheld paper trail is the closest thing we will ever have to thwarting bad actors. If it takes several days to tally the votes, then so be it. Let that be our expectation, lest we lose our valuable vote to outside forces.
1
@Brent: Excellent comments. All hardware and software and communications are hackable (or usable to hack others). Let's ensure secure, reliable voting. Secret voting is the foundation stone of our political democracy, even as so much else conspires to rig elections in favor of the rich and powerful.
No big deal, we just have to wait a little longer to unwrap our Christmas presents. Any astute campaign adviser will help each candidate to make the most of this vacuum. While we're all frustrated with Iowa, I think we know that several candidates are going to be able to claim momentum, without one single overwhelming victor.
1
This article will not tell readers what it was like to watch the caucus goers and organizers in action. Individuals, couples. small and large groups were generally congenial, earnestly and passionately lobbying each other, with some horse trading, lots of smiles and a good deal of patience. The decency with which the people conversed and their intense interest in making the might decision to defeat Trump were the outstanding observations. The colossal failure of Iowa's Democratic party will change the states' processes and its position in the nominating calendar, but please do not lose sight of the very admirable and likable Iowans that participated in this caucus. A lot of money and time was wasted here, and it was a shame that the hardworking candidates and their organizations were punished by this shabbily organized disaster. Think, however, of the good Americans going about their civic duty. Their citizenship provided a refreshing and positive view of the USA against the noxious behavior of the current president of the USA. Thank you caucus goers. Please don't stop engaging in the democratic process.
What was available in the night.... an audio clip from Bernie headuarters. There sounded to be a giant crowd and Senator Sanders was there with his wife Jane and several family members. When he spoke, he sounded delighted, and everyone roared with excitement. He said something funny/ironic...to paraphrase..."I suspect that when the glitch is fixed, we'll be pretty happy with the results."
1
I’m sure glad that, starting this year, Kansas Democrats chose to switch from caucuses to a primary!
1
Can we now, once and for all, abandon this stupid, needlessly complicated caucus idea and just have a straight up primary?? There is absolutely no value to caucusing vs. a primary and introducing yet another complication in the form of a clearly untested app to report even more byzantine results is insane. And it plays into what might be justifiable fears of election insecurity. I realize the IDP is claiming there was no hacking, but a system that relies on a cell phone app to report results is simply asking to be hacked. It's probably the least secure form of digital communication. Iowa should stop pretending it's some quaint horse-and-buggy-just-plain-folks fantasy land out of a Norman Rockwell painting. It's the 21st century and it's time to start running elections in a manner that recognizes that.
Mayor Pete (whatever his last name is) once again shows his true conniving nature by declaring victory amidst this new DNC debacle of incompetence and corruption. Like school in the summer, no class.
"Iowa Should Never Go First Again." Hear, hear!
Guess they had to 3 stooges testing the app beforehand.
It must be voter tampering and a conspiracy.
Oh wait, that's only when it suites the Dems.
1
Unfortunate black eye for the Iowa Democratic Party. Hopefully the next time they adjust their system there will be a few dress rehearsals before opening night.
2
Paper ballots all across the country please.
Next time you need an app, hire women to write it.
Women programmers are always under scrutiny and we test stuff before rolling it out.
10
@Chickpea The company literally pointed out that they were worried that it wouldn't be able to handle bandwidth. We don't know who wrote it, but they said this would be an issue and the dems still decided to move forward with it.
How about just not deciding to change your entire process 2 months before the vote. This has nothing to do with the SWEs and everything to do with the establishment dems.
2
HEY, IOWA!
Time to grow up and hold an ELECTION.
Not a pot luck. Not a covered dish. Not a Mystery-Date party.
It's 2020 and we don't have time for this caucus foolishness.
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@Julian Fernandez
And if you're in such a twist to be different from the rest, institute Ranked Voting.
Imagine! The first contest in a presidential nominating process that gave us the verifiable, ranked preferences of the voters!
4
“Totals May Be Reported Later Today”
May? May??!!
Yikes.
5
It is easy to blame 'technology' for the appalling mess up that has delayed the caucus' results.
But technology is inanimate. The real cause of this hash up is the overpaid and under trained idiots who manage and run the systems - chaos by design!
3
Epic incompetence. And these are the people we hope can defeat the Trump/McConnell dirty tricks gang? Watch for Trump's ridicule tonight in the SOTU.
2
@Pat
The third president to be impeached and tried by Congress is going to ridicule the Democrats for slow returns in a caucus? In a SOTU speech delivered while the Impeachment Trial continues?
How will we ever recover?
1
Something’s rotten in Denmark.
3
@Zareen
Hmmm.....maybe Senator Sanders did really well?
2
Note to Democrats: You’re going to have a hard enough time dethroning king Trump without writing the Republican talking points for them. Way to start!
10
Anything to get the media into an uproar is good...I say let the delay continue.
2
I'm a lifelong democratic but it is particularly unsettling that the D party cannot get something as simple as "counting" when it faces the most ruthless, yet effective, con man in American history.
I also have my suspicions that the republican party did its best to contribute to this dysfunction. Given their dismemberment of Justice, FBI, the Supreme Court and the senate, why not disrupt the opposition long before Nov?
I predict this is the first of many, pathetic mistakes that will hand the "liar in chief" another term.
2
It is beyond comprehension that a country that managed to put a man on the moon has such bizarre and arcane voting systems.
11
@Carl We haven't put anyone on the moon in a long time. That was a whole different bunch of Americans.
1
Computers are great ...
when they work!
2
As Iowa goes, so goes Iowa.
3
Aw, forget it. Let's just skip New Hampshire too and skip ahead to the significant states that should be choosing our nominee, like California.
10
Until California becomes a swing state it is really not all that significant.
1
@Jeff yes, let’s try that one on for size.
Hopefully this is not a portent of things to come in November. But it’s really not good at all for Democrats.
2
Caucuses are both antiquated and undemocratic. Get rid of them.
4
This NEEDS to be the last time we care so much about caucus results in Iowa. Actually, the last time needed to be decades ago, but we can't change the past. Seriously this is ridiculous, though. Yes, Iowan Democrats deserve their chance to give their opinion on the nominee. That's why they get some delegates at the convention. They don't deserve for their opinion to be worth 30 or 40 times as much as the opinions of similar Democrats in states with later primaries. And let's not even get into the nonsense of some unlucky states having primaries after Super Tuesday, which just don't matter at all.
4
The candidates' reactions to this unmitigated disaster couldn't be any more indicative. Sanders and Buttigieg bluster with arrogance, privilege, and unwarranted self assurance. Biden blunders along with vague, useless tidbits, also completely certain he is untouchable. Warren urges calm and caution, wanting to do the process right and rely on empirical, factual information. And Klobuchar is there as well.
1
Amazing how the Democratic elites in Iowa decided to use an app two months ago and decided to build it from scratch and use it in an extremely competitive and important election. Given that their is a consensus that this SHOULDN'T be done, they look worse than incompetent.
I bet if an establishment candidate had a strong lead they wouldn't have decided to do this. To me it seems like they needed a diversion and came up with this idea two months ago.
6
@Morgan
Meanwhile, people with disabiities - all over the state - were in chaos trying to find accessible places to vote.
Unforgiveable.
1
I've seen the "Caucus Math Worksheet" people had to fill out, and no wonder many volunteers are struggling, specially older ones. It seems the Democratic Party is making the usual mistake: thinking that everyone is young and college educated.
The losers in Iowa. The citizens who came out to caucus, the staff and volunteers who threw their hearts into their candidates campaigns.
Then there’s the Democratic Party which needed to show that it could be a competent and honest referee for its contentious primary campaign.
The real winner in Iowa? Of course the one and only Donald Trump.
4
What a tremendous amount of confusion around a simple, small, vote count in Iowa. How can anyone in their right mind vote for any candidate that belongs to the Democrat party for the foreseeable future?
1
@RCS
If that is your criteria then no Republican should be in office right now. During the Republican primaries of 2012 a very similar glitch occurred.
I’m finally tired of winning. Trump’s winning that is.
3
Take an archaic election format, wrap it with untested technology developed by digital natives without regard for digital immigrants, and garnish it with the impatience of pundit panels that now have absolutely nothing to talk about for at least 4 hours, and you got the story of the 2020 Iowa Caucuses...
5
Iowa out here making the Electoral College look effective...
1
Since Dershowitz & the Senate gave trump total freedom from all laws for his re-election in the national interest & all else, I believe trump people have caused the confusion at the caucuses. He has always claimed the system is rigged only this time it is rigged against the Democrats. Whoever developed the mobile app must be under the control of team trump. How is this for a conspiracy theory? Bet trump doesn't tweet this one out. LOL
With many questions concerning the fairness in the process that gives such overweight importance to a state that doesn’t represent the country demographically, is seems this would be a good time for the Democrats to completely rethink the entire method. That the party incompetently handles a primary makes me very concerned they can remove Captain Chaos next November. The country is depending on you!
1
Totals "MAY" be reported later today?
For the love of GOD, MAY?
Come on Iowa get it together.
1
Looks like it’s conspiracy theory time.
This process is a total joke. For anyone to think Democrats are less corrupt than Republicans is laughable
1
The depressing thing with US politics is that when you think you hit a bottom low, you can always dig further down...
Electoral college, voter suppression, punching holes in cardboards, voting on a Tuesday, using stupid machines, etc. and now this? I had never hear about the caucus voting organization before, and suddenly it turns out this is another joke in the system. Great job.
Seriously, US citizens, who among you still believes this country is up to any standards, be it of developped or developping countries, when it comes to voting? Wouldn't it be time for a little bit of changes? Any piece of paper would do a better job that these insanely weak and outdated systems, no?
1
Get it together, DNC. I hope this app is just for Iowa.
Time to end this ridiculous caucus exercise in a state that is completely unrepresentative of our nation as a whole...
2
One thing that is obvious is that Tom Perez should resign as head of the DNC and a non-Clintonista should be appointed who could be neutral should replace him. This should never be tolerated. Democrats should not be as corrupt as republicans.
4
I am not a member of an organized political party.... I am a democrat.....
3
Hanlon’s Razor:
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
15
No more Iowa “going first.” No more caucuses. Enough already to this farce. Let us have a state with diversity, larger, and not so dang Red. Certainly we can do better than this.
2
Imagine how discouraging this must be for the the very many low paid staffers and volunteers who labored in Iowa for months on behalf of their candidates (and democracy!).
5
Iowa made a costly and perhaps fatal mistake for their standing as first in the nation vote.Their caucuses are Byzantine and not representative since they are held at a specific time when not everyone is available to vote.It is unthinkable that they experimented with a new system.All Iowa had going for it was same evening reporting in about a two hour window-it could provide answers.They instead provided confusion and did immeasurable damage to the trust in voting.Now every state is under the gun to prove that they have a trusted and transparent system to count votes.
10
"The system is in place to make sure we can report results with full confidence."
Well that sure didn't work out! Instead, they've managed to shake the confidence of every voter in America.
Make no mistake: this is a crisis. Since finding out that the Russians successfully hacked our election system - and we STILL don't know the extent of that, and whether that included altering ballot machine results - Americans have been rightfully wary of what will happen next time. And this means we are now questioning the most fundamental aspect of our democracy: free and fair elections. No matter what answer those in charge of the caucus voting offer, most Americans - not just Iowans and the candidates - will be skeptical. This is a Humpty Dumpty-like crisis: no amount of effort will be able to restore the broken confidence of voters.
Those in charge of this caucus ballot system had a sacrosanct duty to make sure whatever method they used to determine the outcome was transparent and secure, instead we got muddled and unreliable. The Democratic "leaders" just seem to keep handing Trump gifts! If the voters can't trust the voting systems, and if Trump loses, he's just been given permission to ignore the results and stay in office until all investigations are completed, which you can bet will take at least four years.
Just when we thought it couldn't get worse.
11
Will Rogers made an appropriate comment about this situation:
"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."
1
Iowa is not a big state, how long could it take for each precinct to send a representative to Des Moines to report their results? Embarrassing and self-defeating for the Democrats...
4
Counting votes is not a scientific process...we don’t need apps for that. Just tally the vote- and report the results. And if you want to eliminate hacking just go back to the old school way of doing things. It would solve so many issues.
8
Vote by mail, like they do in OR and WA, is also a good option. More states should move in that direction.
Can we all now just admit that VP Biden, while a decent man with long service to the country, is just not fit to be the president. Despite the whitewash in the media over the last nine months, actual voters who have seen the man face-to-face are not fooled. This race is wide open.
3
Are we going to get a reason why they decided to use this app without properly testing it when the race is this competitive?
4
With all the time they had to get their quality control right, it boggles the mind to see things could go so poorly. No excuses, just a complete lack of competent leadership. This is exactly why state government should run elections.
It is the opposite of reassuring when the people who put a new unvetted app to use quickly claim that it wasn't hacked. How would they even know? And the President is certainly in no position to reassure the American people that our system is safe from foreign influence. I'm sure we will have more info later but that was my first thought. Unnerving times.
2
Primary season hasn't even begun and democrats are already trying to lose. Who on earth thought it would be a good idea, in this age of extreme political mistrust, to hire a company named Shadow Inc to develop a secretive app to report votes? It's like they're intentionally feeding conservative conspiracy theories.
5
While I hope this debacle marks the end of Iowa's lock on first primary/caucus status, I still would rather have a messy democracy than a Soviet-style ballot with one name on it. Those are a little too easy to count.
14
While the media is, as usual, spinning this no burger issue as a major meltdown, exactly what is the big deal.
It is going to take a day longer to get results.
Oh no. The world is ending and this can be spun as some sort of horrible disaster, when it is nothing more than new technology being broken in for all the world to see.
17
They App’d themselves. The question is why computerize something when the analog system worked.
Whoever decided that it would be a good idea to bet on a app that was developed in the prior two months should be removed from their position. They obviously have know clue as to how the software development process works.
The DNC needs to out the company who developed the app so that others will not get bamboozled by them. No matter how good they are at software development they were completely incompetent to think they could develop a bullet proof app in 2 months.
The joke of this all is that the DNC has been harping on election fraud, election meddling and every vote counting yet they have an election that will forever have a dark cloud over it. If Bernie loses or does poorly in Iowa the he will forever be able to blame the DNC for pulling the rug out from underneath him again.
2
A voting app for people‘s phones? Clearly this was a hack of some kind. We should know by know that good old fashioned paper ballots are the only option if we are to preserve democracy. And with Trump about to be acquitted for trying to rig the next election, the White House is going to become ground zero for operations just like this one that wrecked Iowa.
2