The glitch is fixed and the voting results are coming forth -- just a little later than usual. Let's take our lessons learned and move on.
5
In Switzerland, skiers vote on their app on the chairlift with results available immediately. America can do better.
2
Trump will be talking about how the Democrats cannot even run a caucus. How can you trust them to run the government, even to get Social Security checks out on time?
No connection, but that's what he'll be saying.
1
Here in Quebec the Nuclear Family is no longer the norm. We are optimistic our economic growth with an emphasis on Green. Our fertility rate is going up after falling for forty years. Conservatism is killing us in an age where technology is revolutionary. Here in Quebec everybody is given the opportunity to succeed and change is not only good it is compulsory. Our citizenry are guaranteed 1200 USD a month as a floor and health, education and strong safety net is a priority even for our right of center government. Our wealthy are wealthier our middle class is empowered and our working class are secure and upwardly mobile and our farmers work with our government and are thriving.
4
Idiocy?
There’s an app for that?
4
The Democrats need to study Bill Clinton's first election. Stay on point, no matter what, and don't blow it! A few campaign officials with killer instincts couldn't hurt, either. What a mess already.
4
Maybe Russian Hacking again !
Better Call Mueller !
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a DNC fix.
1
@M...
I would be much less surprised if it came from our current White House resident's mentor Vladimir Putin... who obviously just wants to help his puppet make America great again.
3
Did any of the Democratic Party leaders in Iowa even think to check if their new counting system- app- even worked? Obviously they did not.
Idiots.
1
"You ought to give Iowa a try," the musical Music Man days.
We did. Terrible mistake!
You want instant gratification? Iowa is probably not the best place to find that. Historically and culturally-- stubborn, as Meridith Willson hymned. Eventually, though, we'll get it right, and maybe even get rid of King, Grassley, and Joni (The Wig) Ernst!
4
Well, this debacle points up the stupidity of the Democratic primary process. Especially Iowa's caucus process.
The only good thing that can come out of this embarrassment is if all voting procedures in all states are scrutinized and tested more closely. , and beefed-up as a result.
1
It's done. Let's move on already.
4
Right now, I'm liling parliamentary democracies better and better....
Hey Iowa: there's an app for that. Oh, wait.
Iowa, you’ve lost your position as first to decide. The DNC should take fast and firm action to stop this nonsense. And no, we don’t need a silly study group to figure this out, Mr. Perez. The caucus approach prevents too many from participating in the process. It is byzantine and should be replaced with a modern approach.
As for DJT, he has no right to discuss competence. His administration has been the least competent of all. He’s had myriad bankruptcies and lawsuits to show for his incompetence. Don’t let the fool, fool ya! We will not be beaten down by Parscale, Trump, and company’s nonsensical and illogical tweets.
Onward to battle! The crooks must be defeated!
5
When the stakes are high you need to prepared
“They can’t even run a caucus and they want to run the government ,lush-faced emoji, “No thank you.”
Brad Parscale, Campaign Manager (R)
The Democrats were not.
They blame falls on the DNC, not the volunteers in Iowa
1
After all the contention of 2016"s Nevada caucus, you'd think the caucus states would be on the ball. Bad form democrats!
People whipping up hysteria over an app fail likely have some agenda in mind - usually it's money.
No Iowa, no Obama. Think about that.
3
A few things:
a) No matter what the results are in Iowa, the media
has moved on to New Hampshire.
b) By Thursday, we will hear little of Iowa again until
2023/2024.
c) We better have a paper ballot for every vote cast in
November so the tallies can be justified.
d) If the Democrats should happen to win the White House,
the Senate and retain the House, will they know what to do
with near absolute power or will the bickering begin and the
political stalemate resemble what we now have.
e) I am sorry, but Mayor Pete's declaring victory is a
shady move by a man who far more of a politician and how
has a much bigger ego than Mr. Bruni realizes.
f) Stop picking on Iowa, it is a great state.
2
@John Brown...
Buttigieg didn't declare "Victory."
He said that his campaign had been "Victorious."
Which they were.
When you are the first Gay male candidate for President and you come form behind and outlast many other much more well known candidates only to finish the Caucus among the top four... that is being "Victorious."
He never said that he "Won the Caucus."
I find your willingness to negate him so seriously over something so minor... to be quite psychologically and politically suspicious.
2
Democracy, just like making sausages. Messy.
In 2008 and 2012 Barack Obama's campaigns were the picture of a well run, well oiled apparatus. What happened along the way? Is Wasserman/Schultz still running things?
Caucuses might work for small countries but it just doesn't seem like the way to pick a candidate in the U.S.
And if Iowa wants to be first with something let them hold the first republican vote. A state that gives lip service to democracy and then marches lock step with the American fascist party is not the place to begin our take back of our Nation.
1
It seems too strange to be believed. HRC making those unnecessary comments about Bernie in the last week do not help make this look better.
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-04/clinton-campaign-vets-behind-2020-iowa-caucus-app-snafu
2
The Democratic Party is a mess. It’s embarrassing. All these unelectable candidates, they look ridiculous all standing there.
How did this happen? And now, the Democrats can’t even run a primary!
1
We don't pick winners. We pick survivors of humiliation, insults, and technical disasters. Go back to a smoke filled room of party bosses, let them pick someone, and move on from there. All this caucus and primary nonsense is costing millions of dollars, and accomplishing doubt, division, and confusion. Dump the Iowa caucus? Dump all of them!
1
Aside from trump lies about his total exoneration after the sham impeachment trial the real winner in my view is Bloomberg with his humongous fortune he has 1200 volunteers that he employs in all important states, very savvy digital campaign and besides he is a real billionaire, with no need for Russian organized crime money...
"Some analysts claim Putin may be the richest man in the world. Bill Browder, a British-American financier who previously did business in Russia, has estimated that the Russian President is worth about $200 billion.
Others have given a more modest estimate of about $70 billion. But Putin's personal wealth is notoriously difficult to calculate, because Putin's money is believed to be dispersed among his close allies and Russia's vast network of oligarchs."
I don't think Putin is prepare to put big chunk of money on the line for his useful idiot.
So, it might be Bloomberg who wins this whole thing.
1
The Democrat party is so corrupt that they can't get anything right.
Not even cheating Bernie without everybody noticing.
3
if we can't even run a caucus at the state level... can we run the federal government?
what's up with the DNC?
pathetic
1
“there’s no question anymore that the greatest threat to US Elections is in fact Democrat incompetence.”
No, Donald; the greatest threat to US Elections is RT, Fox News, you, and Vladimir Putin. Amongst you, you’ve managed to convince 40%+ of the citizenry that the CIA, FBI, and the NSA provide fake news. I’m sad that it seems our republic is doomed.
This is like that bad eighties movie “Red Dawn”, except not a shot has been fired and there were no Russian paratroops necessary; only an ill-informed populace.
2
a bad omen, forget apps and smartphones and all this hi tech nonsense, go back to paper ballots under lock and key
2
Glitch in the app? How about the glitch sitting in the Oval Office.
1
hat is the big deal. For weeks everyone has been saying IOWA should not be first and now the results can be thrown out. This is good. Caucusing is a moronic way of getting a candidate in the first place.
Whyowa?
Is it not bizarre that this small white state that is ignored 99% of the time has all this melodrama, so hyped by the media?
What a waste of time, breath, and attention.
Here's the good thing that came out of Iowa. It has become COMPLETELY irrelevant! The complete (?) results will be very old news on Wed. It also gives the lower tier candidates time to re-group & start over. At least New Hapmshire VOTES!
Frank: How does Tom Perez have a job this morning?
Have caucus leaders across the country go out and buy pencils, legal pads, calculators and a telephone. Drop the electronics entirely. If the media has to wait until the next morning then they wait. This is too important to justify "it's quicker" as a reason. Would a major retailer put in a new cash register system and then test it out on Black Friday? Idiots. Sometimes old school works the best because it's idiot proof and it works.
2
Correction: The Democrats would have been screaming foul. I want to thank Phyliss Dalmatian for pointing out this error in my comment.
Or, of course, Pete Buttigieg might have just been lying....
President Access Hollywood wins again
What is it with some Republicans calling it the "Democrat party"? What happened to the "ic"? I assume this is supposed to be a slam of some sort, or just trolling the libs, but it is ticking me off! (so, I guess that means it's working?)
Oh-oh, voter suppression! No?
app has to count and store data...sounds complicated
Yes definitely ONE citizen, ONE vote!
BUT let's get back to reality, this will not happen unless we make it happen.
Let's get down to the streets all over the country to let the establishment of the democratic party know that ENOUGH corruption IS ENOUGH !
After this caucus bomb, maybe the Iowans should hold a caucus about holding a caucus to look into what went wrong with the caucus. Then they could caucus about the results to make the 2024 caucus a caucus that has the caucus results on the same day as the caucus. Maybe that's a caucus too far.
"This wasn’t a political contest; it was a kidney stone."
Is a kidney stone
And how much did it help to have reporters and cameras broadcasting live from caucus sites, bumping into each other, shoving microphones in voters’ faces, racing manically from group to group, and in general just getting in the way and being a distraction to the business at hand? My guess is, not much, and it made everyone look ridiculous.
The Democrats are our only hope against the horror of Trump, but this mess is just another indicator that they just can't play the game well enough or tough enough or smart enough to defeat the Republicans.
The Democrats are being bested by a bunch of third-rate grifters. And they are losing!
This insane American idea for letting every state decide their very own electoral system has to stop. We are repeating the mistakes of the past because we cannot get beyond this out of date states rights system for everything. On top of that this insistence on total transparency never really brought the results we waited for. Caucuses are inherently undemocratic and confusing - just get rid of them. This newer twist in Iowa is totally incomprehensible.
We have an over 200 years old political system that needs rejuvenation - but I am not holding my breath.
While Frank Bruni's efforts to make this a symbol or harbinger of how things will sort out for 2020, the reality is this:
1) A bad choice was made for an unproven app. How that app was chosen should now be a matter of further investigation.
2) Iowa should no longer be the state that defines the beginning of the campaign season--too small, too rural, too white. Not at all "representative" of the rest of the country.
3) Use private, paper ballots for all races so that no one is excluded. These caucuses are phony theatrics of a "democracy" that doesn't exist. One person, one vote. And time to do away with the electoral college system, too.
4) The press needs to spend less time on this kind of "infotainment."
5) Someone should tell Buttigieg that it is bad form to declare victory before the votes are announced. Or he'll keep sounding like a Manchurian Candidate (and is he???).
This little debacle illustrates well the hubris and stupidity of blindly throwing the latest technology at a well established process and thinking it will be seamlessly adapted and accepted. And then there are the unanticipated consequences.
Many similar debacles await us. Such as the hubris and stupidity of shutting down fossil fuel use and production in the next few years while alternative energy production and development dittles around in the fantasy zone.
Where will all of the electricity for your Teslas come from and how much will it cost? It will be very much higher. As will the price of oil and gas in Woke World.
Oops!
The word is feckless. I may just have to vote for Bloomberg.
"Maybe there’s just a terrifying repeat of the party’s awful luck in 2016."
There's no luck involved in such flagrant incompetence. While I tend to vote Democrat, large-scale spectacles like the Iowa caucus is pretty much what I've come to expect from that party, whose leadership apparently doesn't take anything seriously.
Worst of all, this is likely to depress turnout in my own state of Nevada. Mission accomplished, DNC.
Bernie Sanders is getting robbed in plain sight. Again. The Iowa State Democratic Party wanted to rob Bernie of a victory lap. Pete's only purpose in this campaign is to stop Sanders as far as perception. The Des Moines Register cancels their poll after 76 years because of a Mayor Pete complaint, State Dem Party have nothing to offer as to why there was no final count, Pete claims victory with no results, media pushing Bloomberg. This was all orchestrated to dismiss a Bernie win, so everyone can say it doesn't matter. Sander's campaign supporters are not engaging in "conspiracy Theories". Leaked DNC internal memos and rule changes designed to help anyone but Bernie is right out in the open. Now this. Of course, the media that propped up Pete won't look into it. That the people in their culture continue to fail up is the problem. At the end of the day, the effect has been achieved, Iowa is now a wash and no one will look back. If the "Bernie Bros" complain, they'll be called divisive, sexist communists.
2
Are the candidates and America ever going to truly trust the results?
Like Bloomberg says--it is the old way.
From the people who believe they can run everything centrally better than you can.
OK, the whole Iowa thing was bad. And unfortunate. And wrong to begin with anyway -- why would Dems proud of a "large tent" begin the election process in a state so white? But if Republicans, or anyone else for that matter, think this is proof that Dems are hapless and incompetent, they haven't been watching the Impeachment "Trial" and Adam Schiff.
1
What a debacle. But by next week’s New Hampshire contest, Iowa will be a distant memory. Not to worry: Trump, emboldened by his near-certain acquittal on Wednesday by his Senate sycophants, is already hard at work soliciting help from a foreign power to ensure his election in 2020. We just don’t know it yet. Abject woe is us.
Mr. Bruni, you could have shortened your word count considerably: "THE SKY IS FALLING, WE MUST RUN AND TELL THE KING!"
Paper ballots. Backup photos of ballots. Hand count. Take the time it needs. Get an accurate count. That's all going to happen, but we have to wait--gasp--another day or so.
It's not "devastating" or a "betrayal." What is devastating is the gasoline you and other Dem commentators have been throwing on a simple error which results in a 24-hr longer period of counting paper ballots with photo backups. How does it feel to be joining Trump, Hannity, and Cruz in keeping the trash fire going? And spreading this childish hysteria? Stop it.
If anyone had any doubts that the inhuman in the White House is going to win again, here’s the proof.
The younger are so right about the need for new leadership. Had we not been down the rabbit hole of an impeachment process that was doomed from the start, perhaps attention could have paid to what really matters- getting him out of office. It appears all my pleas to VOTE as a means to a real “impeachment “ are all for nought.
If we want to restore integrity to our election systems and secure our votes from tampering, we must break our addiction to speed and leave the super-vulnerabilities of the electronic system behind. Kevin Roose's article posted in the NYT today is worth reading on this topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/technology/election-tech.html. Roose writes that there is a "silver lining" in what so many are mistakenly calling a "Democratic debacle" in Iowa: "When it comes to the actual business of registering and counting people’s votes, many of the smartest tech experts I know fiercely oppose high-tech solutions, like “paperless” digital voting machines and mobile voting apps. After all, every piece of technology involved in the voting process is a possible point of failure. And the larger and more interconnected the technical system, the more vulnerable it is to an attack." We need to keep this in mind during the primary process and as we prepare our nation for the critical November voting. Let's make sure that in every state there is, at minimum, a real paper ballot and tallying process--whether it's the main process or a validation check on fallible electronic systems now in place and too late to change. See also an article in The Atlantic on the drive to secure the integrity of our votes by sticking with paper ballots and tallies: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/guardian-of-the-vote/544155/
Excellent writing and analysis Frank, including the “kidney stone” metaphor. Priceless!
Iowa should be removed from it's oversized role in kingmaking due to it's repeated failure in picking winning general election candidates. Since 1972, McGovern, Mondale, Gephart, Harkin, Gore, Kerry, and Hillary all won Iowa, and lost the general election or the nomination. Only Carter in 80 and Obama in 08 won the white house, that's it. What good is it to pick that many losers by a state that has doesn't represent America? History says the Iowa winner will not see the white house. Move Iowa to Super Tuesday.
$64,000 and two months to build an app that needs to be bullet proof and reliable shows how clueless and amateur these folks are. Really hope this is the end of the Iowa caucus and their first in line position.
We learn from our mistakes.
Some vague mythos of "Iowa" is now the false scapegoat for everything wrong with the nominating process. The comment box doesn't have space for all the examples, so I'll just drop one from here in the NYT
David Leonhardt proclaims Iowa "has already helped doom two black candidates (Cory Booker and Kamala Harris)." That's just totally false. They dropped out because they couldn't raise money, and if opinion polls played into that, they were either national polls or polls of SC where neither Booker or Harris could make even a little dent in black support for Joe Biden – the old, white, male, old-school, purplish regular guy candidate. You know, the one who fits the Iowa demographics all those pundits are saying should disqualify it from having a caucus. The one the who nevertheless seems to have finished no better than fourth in the state that established, yes, that barrack Obama was a viable alternative to Hilary Clinton in 2008.
Anyway, the real problem here is that all the people complaining about Iowa are the same people who created this mythical Iowa in the first place, the people obsessed with who "wins" a process that doesn't even claim to have winners and losers, the people who commission opinion poll after opinion poll to generate "hot" news copy, the people who turn a modest process of apportioning a few delegates into a massive hype. If you think that would be any different if/when another state goes first, you're sadly mistaken.
All of the candidates knew who won by the time Pete had given his speech because they all had their precinct captains at each precinct and they all had the same information. I have seen screen shots of many of the counties results.. Each campaign would have gotten shots of them all.
The only person motivated to publish that information is the winner. The rest hope we all forget about it so they can start over and hope for a New Hampshire win!
Pete's name should be all over the papers today. The campaign has invested everything in that state for a historic night that was robbed from them. Instead Iowa Democrats plan to put 'some' information out by 5:00 pm tonight? Tonight is Trumps state of the union..
Pete's historic night, that of a 38 year old, veteran, gay, Christian, mayor of a mid size, mid west town, will be like a tree that fell in the forest but nobody heard it.
This absolute mess involves a company called Shadow, which apparently created this worthless app, and was paid handsomely by the DNC to do so. Well it turns out that Shadow was founded by and currently operated by ex-Clinton campaign people. And of course all of this was kept secret under the guise of "security". Could this get any stranger? Shadow?
Several of the comments in this chain as well as today's NYT opinion piece by David Leonhardt and yesterday's contribution by Michael Tomasky state that Iowa should not be the first state in the primary process because its demographic is whiter than the rest of the nation. Ignored in this bit of identity politics is that every state has the authority to hold primary elections in the matter it wishes Perhaps the Democratic National Committee should order these states to reschedule their primaries because they are not demographically typical of the nation and then watch for the reaction on November 4, 2020.
1. Like it or hate it, the GOP has 150% gotten its stuff together. A leader. A message. A robust communications machine. A relentless focus on winning, winning, winning and oh by the way crushing the other side at every chance down to the pettiest, rinse, repeat.
2. Brinksmanship is out. Brute force, basically, is in. Impeachment is exhibit A (through about Q).
3. Unite, focus, put up a candidate who (a) can win and (b) will be absolutely relentless in so doing. Forget the happy bromides and get real. The GOP has set the rules of play.
That's it. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight. And apparently all we have is a slightly stuck switchblade comb.
Its very obvious that the DNC is composed of staff that is ignorant and incompetent when it comes to technology. They need to be replaced with people who have a background in implementation.
In addition to your list of what the Democratic Party needs, add the ability to run computers more than a half century into the Computer Age. As a Democrat, I was gobsmacked. Remember how George H. W. Bush took a big PR hit with his 1992 grocery store scanner technology kerfuffle? That was nothing compared with the hit the Democratic Party is taking. Bush was criticized for being "out of touch." The Democrats are being seen as computer age incompetents.
Why is it that Trump treats Democrats unmitigated disaster and it's reported but no one reports the rely which was the real unmitigated disaster currently sits in the white house?
The Democratic Party is a failure which needs to declare bankruptcy and incompetence and self-implode. Then former Democrats need to form a new party called Winners and run new younger candidates in every state in every local, state, and national election.
Democrats can't win. I'm sick of them and embarrassed for them. They are terrible, incompetent, and clueless!
Fire Tom Perez just for starters.
1
I live in Florida so I'll provide my comment with restraint. It's 2020 folks ! Why the heck are these very public, inflexible, and outdated caucuses still a process ?
Check the stock market it's flying high, if that doesn't clarify for ordinary rural people, who probably never invested in stocks who is running our country, I honestly don't know what will.
Wake up from slumber battleground states start connecting the dots, don't watch FOX they're the biggest and loudest propaganda that Putin manage to unleashed on you while you were sleeping.
3
If they declare the winner of the caucus is Donald Trump that will be kind of a red flag that it was the Russians.
Iowa, the new Florida, but colder.
Mr. Bruni, you may be wowed by Iowans, but I'm sure not.
Yeah - I guess the Iowa caucus results were a little confusing. Maybe some insights from Rashida Tlaib might be encouraging.
Whatever..... the impeachment process seems to be making great strides. I think we've finally got the Republicans worried.
Please, Mr.Bloomberg - save us.
If this doesn't tell us we need paper ballots and a paper trail nothing will.
Time to bring in the United Nations to help ensure the integrity of our elections. Maybe Jimmy Carter could help.
I'm not sure that releasing results of only 62% of the precincts will help anything. 38% missing is a lot!
This might be a change election, but not in the way we expected. The frustration with the Democratic primary system is not new, but it seemed as though everyone felt powerless to change it, even the candidates. The computer problems with Iowa caucus voting may finally push the DNC to change the primary schedule, develop standards for software used to vote in the primaries, and even drop caucuses. After the hack of the DNC server in 2016, I would have expected the DNC to get better IT resources, and require the state organizations to do the same. If we keep making the same mistakes, we are going to keep on losing.
2
Over fifty years ago when I studied the Democrats attempt to democratize their presidential nominating process after the disaster of the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Caucus seemed at the time an acceptable alternate democratic process to primaries. Their shelf life seems up. Beside the latest problems in Iowa, there are also states where both caucuses and primaries are held with the more democratic primary being only a 'beauty pageant" and the delegates actually come out of the caucus. Primaries with extended voting allow much greater participation with few of the problems we see in Iowa, and it also less likely that a dedicated army of a candidate's partisans can cancel the popular vote pick by overwhelming a caucus. This happened in two states in the 2016 campaign. Its times to replace the " democratish"' Caucus with the more democratic primary.
1
Bloomberg skipped Iowa and it will not hurt him. Maybe next time more candidates will do the same.
3
For the future:
What if we scrap the Iowa caucus? Let New Hampshire have their "First in the Nation" primary, but they have to share it with another, more diverse state from another region of the country, say, North Carolina. The following week Iowa and another more diverse state from another region, say, California, have their primaries on the same day.
I am up for a "National Primary Day". I am up for a series of Super-Tuesdays. I am up for anything that gets rid of the "caucus" system and organizes voters who are actual Democrats to choose who their standard-bearer will be. It needs to be fairness all around. Diverse and Non-diverse together. Urban, exurban and rural. Everything. Make the process simple, easy & democratic: one person, one vote.
At this critical moment the most important thing is to get rid of Trump and McConnell and the corrupt republican senate. Don't let a tof like Brad Parscale make you a cynic. Sorry, Iowa. You need to let the caucus system go for the good of the country.
3
Everybody makes mistake and this was just one of them. However what is inexcusable is to not have tested the software, corrected the problems, and taught the people who were supposed to use it on how to use and have the reps from the software company on the ground to do tech support.
What still escapes me is why the democratic Party cannot have a one day national primary a couple of months ahead of the general election. Compress the heck out of the process, save money and anxiety.
If ever we wanted to have good candidates to run for election the American system is quite possibly the worst example of how to keep the good people out of it. A two plus year campaign effort will test even the most determined candidate.
4
@Gary Valan
It is a youthful mistake to assume so many things about the way this would work.
The system only failed because for reasons we don;t know they decided just calling the totals in and then sending in the cards and tally sheets to the precinct wasn't good enough any longer. Literally the only thing they changed is using the app instead of the phone! Why?! Even if it worked it changed nothing important enough to have spent the money.
Hopefully this will be enough to finally end this insane tradition of a tiny, white farm state going first. And maybe even end the caucus all together. What every state needs is an all mail open primary. Works great in Colorado. No having to stand in line or leave your house (so the disabled, working, or parents can actually take part), paper trail for each ballot, you can vote early...
59
@Andrew Agreed. We have vote by mail here in Oregon and it works wonderfully. We get our ballots well in advance and then have the time to go over everything. Then we fill our ballots in, put it in the envelope provided, and drop it in the mail. If on waits too long one can always go to one of the numerous ballot drop off locations.
This way everyone who wishes to can participate and we have paper ballots instead of some black box electronic voting machine.
5
@Dormouse42 How can you be sure your ballot gets to its destination? Do you get a confirmation letter?
We need to remember the key sentence in Mr. Bruni's column: "They made clear that they saw Trump as an existential threat." A malfunctioning app will not change this fact. Come November, those Iowans will be at the polls casting their ballots for anyone but Trump, and one hopes Iowa will by then have something in place--paper ballots would be a good start--to insure the results come in promptly and accurately. Remember too that Brad Parscale, Trump and "the rest of his wretched gang" are bums and are grasping at straws to cover up any examination of the destruction they've done to our Republic. In time they will only get more desperate and mean, and Lord knows to what degree the incompetent clown at the top of the ticket will melt down in public and on Twitter between now and then. Take heart, Dems; this Iowa debacle shall pass and pass quickly.
2
How to slow down the momentum of the Bernie Sanders campaign by denying him his Iowa victory lap?
Guess what ? There's an app for that!
3
There is one thing that not many have cottoned on to. Democrats are having trouble picking a leader, in some ways, because we were completely spoiled by our last leader, Barack Obama. He stood a long way above the rest (and I do not mean to insult the other candidates here). I think we are pining for such a leader now to lift us up after the last 3 plus years of a president who has rolled the United States and, yes, other countries too, in the muck for all of those days. We shower every day but still do not feel clean of the nastiness, the illegality, and the sheer depth of never ending stink. Cometh the hour, cometh the man (or woman). The hour has come but we have not yet found our leader.
4
Just when you think what's happening in Washington is most surreal -- Iowa happens!! Seriously, the nation needs to get its act together. Let's take pride in doing things right!!
Caucus, shmawcus... the folks in Iowa are Mid-West friendly, but hardly representative of the US electorate. While some CNN moderators seem pretzel-bent, making a megillah out of a molehill, the sky is not falling.
Most importantly, concerned citizens realize that this is a process that only time will unfold. It might even be better for the electorate, if not for some candidates, that we not be informed as to the "leader of the pack" at this early juncture. The leader will emerge sooner or later, and the erstwhile we ought compose ourselves for the fight to come.
2
The entire Iowa Democratic leadership should resign in tears over this appalling situation.
3
The Dems are giving away Bernie's delegates like he wants to give away my tax dollars.
2
Short attention span theater. Everyone does not need to know everything right now - it might actually be cool not to have tweets be the norm of discourse.
1
Calm down. Breathe. #NotTheEndOfTheWorld
This happens in a great percentage of technology go-lives, apps and applications. No malice is necessary, just under-funded, understaffed and cheap managers.
If it makes Iowa's primary position disappear, all the better.
4
The 2020 election is shaping up according to the plot of David Pepper's novel "The People's House". Thank you Iowa for demonstrating that we need to be more concerned about domestic interference than foreign interference. And, all that money spent campaigning for a handful of delegates raises serious questions about the Democrats competence to lead.
1
Re the demographics of Iowa: Obviously, a national political party cannot dictate when a state holds its primary election.
But, considering the Electoral College, Iowa may be indicate how the South and Midwest could vote. (Note: Bloomberg is playing "Moneyball" politics by going to Michigan)
Ideally, the presidential candidate should be determined at the national convention. But, I'm not holding my breath.
1
There is a saying about bureaucratic snafus: they are caused by incompetence not conspiracy. But in a world of disinformation from official and unofficial sources, from known and unknown parties, how can we be sure?
1
A tried and true nugget of political wisdom is that when your opponents are determined to destroy themselves, just get out of their way. All Trump has to do tonight is ask if the American people are willing to let Democrats eliminate every private insurance plan in the country when they cannot run an election in a small state — after a solid year of campaigning. For Trump that will be only a half lie, as that is exactly what the Sanders/Warren wing wants. Given the bitter infighting that Democrats have now assured for themselves, the smartest thing Trump could do would be to high tail it to Margo Largo, play golf for the next nine months, throw away his cell phone, and cruise to a crushing victory in November.
1
I've said it before; I'll say it again: We should have a NATIONAL primary. One citizen, one vote, one primary.
1335
@Dash I guess the problem is, what if you have 10 people running and the winner only gets 25%? Do you think getting 1 in 4 voters to support a candidate is sufficient proof of viability to hand that person the nomination?
31
@Dash
But that’s very expensive for both state party apparatuses and candidates, especially less well known ones. I’m not disagreeing with those who every primary complain about Iowa and New Hampshire, but there are lots of factors that Parties try to accommodate when planning elections. It’s not easy or always self-evident.
10
I agree about the simultaneity; the results though should still be by state like it is in the general election (until that changes for the better to highest total number of votes nationwide wins).
8
Democrats need to wake up to the fact that technology is not going to win this election. In fact, technology is very likely to confuse and mislead and prove to be the tool of the ruthless, the Russians, the unethical and sadly the not so patriotic Republican Party. It will be a hurricane of misinformation. It will be distracting and you'll have to turn off twitter.
Winning will take old style get out the vote determination, talking about "what is right" in your community with a dedication to changing course toward voting for Democrats. Every Democrat Presidential Candidate is an A or B+ compared to the D- or F in the Presidency today. It is your Patriotic duty to change the direction of this country with a statement victory for Democrats. Then put your idealism to work with rational and thoughtful leaders. It is that simple.
I think these events were actually a great, salutary chance for the country. In providing a little preview of what a world run by the Democrats would look like, the Iowa caucuses went over and beyond in their mission to guide the country towards greater political wisdom.
2
Uh we know what that world looks,like, or have you forgotten the Republican Great Recession and the two idiotic wars still persisting. Get real.
As a technologist, I’m wary of relying on technology. And an app that hasn’t been tested is criminal. Assuming he’s not the nominee let’s get Andrew Wang to lead the party and replace their total incompetence.
1
Every single election in this country needs to be backed up with paper ballots. This is just one example why. I'm not worried about the democrats stealing the election, at least they admit when they're wrong unlike the other side who deny and lie. Actually this is a wake up call for future elections.
8
Australian elections are run by the federal Electoral Commission.
Paper ballots. Not even machines that punch holes: handwritten check. Or x in boxes.
We totally trust this system. To be sure, It takes a longer longer to tally, but it’s trusted.
I mean- totally.
No hacking, no glitches possible with plain paper and pencils.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Try it, America!
3
Voter turnout in Des Moines was less than hoped for. It was similar to 2016 levels but far below 2008 level. In other words, Obama created excitement and voters turnout out. The candidates this year are producing a yawn. Democrats were banking on high turnout given the theory that Trump, so unpopular, will galvanize Democrats. That didn't happen in Des Moines.
4
What is REALLY pathetic is that the Republicans have a corrupt criminal, liar, racist, traitor and ignoramus for a candidate, everyone knows all this, they barely deny any of it, and yet there is no challenger in the other party. Yeah, using an app in this day and age of software insecurity and just common everyday software bugs is totally idiotic, but not nearly as idiotic as the state of the Republicans.
3
Thanks, Iowa, for making the case so strongly for the GOP to retain their stranglehold on political power.
Someone needs to be held responsible for this debacle, obviously.
The damage done is beyond extreme.
4
The caucuses are exclusive. They exclude people who work nights. They exclude parents who cannot afford childcare. They exclude the disabled and others people who simply are not able to take a few hours out of their lives. I propose that the Democratic Party replace the caucuses with a system of ranked choice selection (we could avoid calling it "voting" so as not to ruffle New Hampshire). Citizens would select their first, second and third choices, and the selections would be tallied, dropping off candidates who don't reach the 15% threshold. This would be also be a great way to exhibit the power and benefits of ranked voting.
I'm a software developer, and and I'm opposed to any sort of voting that depends on software. (Let that sink in.) I am also a resident of Oregon, where we have only paper ballots and vote-by-mail for everyone. Fill out your ballot at home, and send it in any time in the couple of weeks before Election Day. Easy. If we combine paper ballots, vote-by-mail, and ranked voting, we could conceivably end up with the best election system in the world.
9
With all of the hand-wringing, I am glad that the Iowa Caucus reporting was a dismal failure.
The practical effects for this and future elections are positive:
• Iowa is less of "gatekeeper" in this election, as every hour of delay and confusion reduces the positive bounce for the eventual winner, and keeps other candidates going.
• Iowa will inevitably lose its place as the first and most important test for presidential elections.
We desperately need the early winnowing states to better reflect the diversity of America in our presidential election process, and this will hasten - if not guarantee - that result.
4
I'm just not sure why a 24 delay in the results is such a federal case. Some cheap unvetted software was used by untrained precinct chiefs to tabulate results from a rather byzantine system in Iowa. Nobody got cheated out of having their say. We'll know in a few hours what the few Democrats in Iowa had to say about the candidates and we will move on.
4
@HowieBsd "Nobody got cheated out of having their say. " There's absolutely no way to make that statement unless and until all the paper evidence is checked and rechecked.
Ha! The Trump campaign framing someone else's debacle as "They can't even run . . . " How many things has the Trump abomination screwed up, just today? Like, twelve things? Brad should quiet down and get back to the work of stealing the 2020 election. Can you do that, Brad? Your boss is counting on you.
3
I concur with everything Mr. Bruni says.
Still, despite everything, at least they are trying to get it right. If only the Senate took its Constitutional duties this seriously.
6
I know Iowa will not send any Democrats to the Electoral College. I know the Democrats could have sent their contenders to places that might even bear fruit in November. I know Iowa I like Iowans but the same angry working class aging demographic that cannot compete in our post industrial world are alive and well in Russia, Poland, Hungary and Turkey.
The world is a better place than it has ever been and I live in a place that 50 years ago decided to escape its ultra conservative superstitious and isolated society and prepare for the 21st century.
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and our species has evolved a culture that requires literacy, mathematics and scientific knowledge and blue America is number one with bullet in developing the tools to cope with a global economy and instant communication.
The last four years have not been kind to either Britain's or America's working class. Even as the necessities are readily available the future is not looking good. Even as for most the state of the Union is strong for America's Midwest and South the ability to compete in our breakneck speed technological revolution diminishes with each passing day.
My grandchildren started school at two and started learning languages and math as soon as they were weaned. Our family of educators understood the time to learn sciences, math and language is zero to two. Britain and America are richer than they have ever been but the working class falls ever further behind in it ability to compete.
5
Fellow White Voters: Do you now believe that white voters are so damn smart? Why they cannot even run an election. Watch South Carolina and take a lesson on how; a huge number of black Democrats will display how to do it! Freaking know-it-alls in corn country should never have been first. Sheesh!
If Iowa starts this party off next year, then we are, truly, a stupid people incapable of education.
Also, people should understand, sure it's fine not to know right away, but that's not the issue. All of these candidates have spent enormous amounts of time and resources in Iowa because, in our silly insane way of doing things, the power of being announced the winner of this contest has such out-sized significance on the entire process, every minute of delay and confusion diminishes it. Yes, that's a pretty stupid game, but that's the game the candidates are forced to play. You can't screw it up now and ever be given such a responsibility again.
1
I watched the Iowa caucuses on CNN, and through most of it, I was impressed and inspired. Regular patriotic grass-roots Americans were raising their hands to be counted, or writing their first-tier and second-tier candidate's names on little cards, and when their candidates didn't get enough votes, switched over to candidates who could still perform. Democracy is messy, but this system worked in a good old-fashioned patriotic American way, without any kind of glitch that could be hacked by any computer, foreign or domestic, up to a point. And it was at that point, with the flawed app, that the system failed.
I, personally, would not put it past the Russians or their lackeys, the GOP, to have gummed up the works on purpose. The Iowa Caucuses are just important enough to merit their attention. People like me, who are holding onto their absentee ballots in order to find out who could best beat Trump, need this information and the bad guys know it. And if the bad guys object to being viewed with suspicion, well, that is just too bad. They earned it.
1
There are a lot of decent former Republicans running around without any party to belong to. I suggest the Democrats draft or hire them to run the party. They also know how to win elections.
5
In the 1960s I lived in Southern California where I was president of the local Democratic club. On election night both Democrats and Republican volunteers went to watch the vote counting in each precinct. It was all done by hand. No computers. No electronics.
We stood over the people who were counting the votes just to ensure that they had written down the correct result.
By late that night the results were in and we knew who were the winners.
It is time to go back to the old system.
5
@Jan
Could not agree more. I have worked as an election judge, precinct committeeman, voter registrar, and a poll watcher. Each party can have a poll watcher stationed at the polling locations. That's the way my state does it (Illinois).
Elections in my area of the state are run well. The state government not so much.
1
Today Trump's approval stands at 49%. All of you that hammered at proceeding with the impeachment should reconsider your position. In the last congressional elections the democrats flipped 40 seats. Of those only two were progressives. Here in the Midwest I don't believe that any candidate that is perceived to be a socialist has much of a chance. Personally I think that Bloomberg can win the election with our support and the support of the many disenchanted republicans.
1
@Conrad The current approval of Trump is 43.6% per 538.
2
One can say what one wants and think what one thinks but Bernie just makes me laugh. I loved his take on this mess: "I have a strong feeling that at some point, the results will be announced."
3
Even Trump couldn't have dreamt of such a week handed to him by Dems! They delayed impeachment papers, pushed to extend the senate trial, lost the witness vote, pushed the final vote to Wednesday then blew Iowa. Results? In the same week - Trump gets a blockbuster superbowl interview on Sunday, makes the case they can't even run a caucus on Monday, delivers state of union on Tuesday, gets acquitted on Wednesday. Spin it all you want, the buck stops with Dems.
6
Everything the Democrats do benefits Donald Trump. They couldn't organize a 5-year-old's birthday party. I've been a lifelong Democrat, but these bozos in charge of the show in Iowa make me ashamed to say so. Trump's going to win again. Can anyone doubt it?
7
After this most disheartening of impeachment trials, where we all whom believe in our democracy, sat and listened in dismay as ONLY TWO Republicans voted to hear more witnesses to add to the volumes of incredible witnesses already heard, to impeach this immoral and corrupt person in the White House, this first Caucus WAS important. All of us hanging by a thread, fearing for this country, waiting to see who, WHO can beat Trump? We need someone to double down on, and put everything we have to getting the Republicans OUT. And the DNC starts out like this? I guess we still live in a free country, so no tears. YET.
3
I am worried that this is the DNC putting its finger on the scale. But, no, it is simply the continuing incompetence of the Dems, (I hope.)
If Bloomberg and Steyer want to make an impact in ongoing elections, they should fund an open source voting system for all the states.
1
This mess is a godsend. Less than 200,000 mostly white people participate in the Democratic caucus. That the caucus should be deemed important is ridiculous. That it should be an indicator of any candidate's strength or weakness is absurd. Hopefully this debacle will reduce the Iowa caucus to the status where it truly belongs...equal to that of Rhode Island, Delaware or Wyoming.
5
Maybe they saw how it got rolling pretty good for Bernie with someone else who was expecting high figures scoring lower than 15%... so that someone else started pulling machine strings. Taking pictures of the precinct tally sheets? So is there a sorting process going on of the best pictures to use for the final record?
I remember hearing one of our illustrious senators respond to the the question of whether they were concerned about our nationally system of elections being very broken. He said, "heck, i got elected so it can't be broken". Well, it is broken--very broken--very intentionally broken--very much hacked and being systematically manipulated by other countries. And, we do nothing. And that makes me both angry and sad at the same time.
2
Well, the Party did hold true to it's ideology in the caucuses : Everyone's a winner!
Amazing hyperbole, panic, and vitriol from every DNC quarter. Time for people, and the candidates to get their heads right and move on.
1
Oh, for crying out loud.
All this panic over a short delay.
The results will be in a little later today.
Calm down.
10
If anyone still needs proof, here is a prime example of why many people have lost faith in the powers that be to manage the affairs of government with reasonable efficiency.
And if the powers that be still don't understand what that loss of faith can translate into, just tune in to the State of the Union address tonight. It'll be right in front of your eyes.
When are the Democrats going to wake up? Is anybody out there thinking about this? At all?
1
It's really disturbing to see all these conspiracy theories proliferating. Can't we just wait for the Iowa folks to get their count accurate and verified and hear their explanation of what went wrong? Didn't we learn in 2016 that blowing a molehill into a mountain is a bad idea when you're standing next to a volcano?
7
Corn farmers have just lost any right to tell the rest of American how to vote in presidential primaries.
2
The app meltdown is awful. however I don’t believe that the idea of caucusing is so bad. It gives people a structure to think about their choices in a manner that builds consensus...something we all need just about now.
4
Boycott Iowa. Cancel culture in action. Listen, it's not like I was going there anyway- so why not just boycott it? Nothing gets action like people thinking their dollars are going to walk away.
How do we allow a state that has fewer people than Puerto Rico and is 92% white have any influence over who the nominee will be. The fact that candidates spend months and millions of dollars trying to influence 170,000 caucus goers is insanity. Now it's on to New Hampshire with that state's 650,000 mostly white population.
The four most populous states (California, Texas, Florida and New York) have a combined population in excess of 110 million people, about 33% of the country's population. How about we start there. Mike Bloomberg gets it.
5
@David Hauck California, New York, and Texas are just too big. We're always talking about the swing states and their importance in determining the results of the general election. Why not have the early primaries in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan? Apparently, in the end, they determine the winner. Let's start there.
1
I think we should look at this as an opportunity. This system we have is so antiquated it belongs in the last century. How about we have a primary, across the country, all on the same day when we choose our candidate? It is ridiculous that we have this rolling system where everyone has to play three-dimensional chess about how they’re influencing other voters. Don’t we try to avoid that in the general election by not allowing press to speculate? Why is it so different in the primaries? Come on America, let’s take change this creepy, outdated system—And get rid of the electoral college while we’re at it. It’s so past time, and this just further confirms that reality.
1
Frank, It's okay to dream big, but you have to WORK small, get the details right. this is reminiscent in voters' minds of the "system" devised to handle health insurance shopping for the ACA.
Whatever the caucus outcome now, DJT picks up votes due to the overall appearance of incompetence,..on the eve of acquittal, on the very night of his free State of the Union speech.
But, Bloomberg also wins, by not being connected to the circus. By doing "absolutely nothing", as George Costanza said, he gets a boost.
1
Iowa caucus -- lovely and quaint as a barn dance. I think Iowa has proven it must not go first again for many a year.
7
Cspan had a live caucus from West Demoinse... my wife was shocked at what she watched - this isn't normal, is it. she asked? The whole thing was chaos, counts were on the honor system, ballots were found left on a table and at one point they figured out they gave out more ballots than attendees. In that one precinct they could not possible have had a correct raw vote count. Multiply that by 100's of other mishandled precincts and no one will ever know the correct vote totals.
5
Wisconsin has a Lombardi legacy. Premature celebrating, before the score is on the board, is unseemly. Buttigieg will hurt himself in Wisconsin with this end zone dance while officials are reviewing the call. A very small, but notable, problem for Hillary in Wisconsin was the so-called Get Out the Vote party in Pennsylvania where Bill and Chelsea Clinton appeared almost victorious. It was unseemly. In Wisconsin, we knew it was tight. We were wringing our hands before a big game. We were praying. We were on a restricted pregame diet. We go to church on Packers Sundays. We wear our lucky jerseys for big games and serve the same food. It is arrogant to dance in the end zone before the call.
2
@Frustrated Given the fact that Mayor Pete gave Shadow, the company behind the app, over $40K, his celebration is possibly more than unseemly.
And at the very start of the primaries. Could it get any worse?
Don’t bother answering my question, because I already know the answer. Readying my exile to Canada now.
4
@CHICAGO
I’m right behind you. Which part of Canada? I spend my days dreading 45’s re-election and trying to figure out which part of Canada would be best.
Democracy inaction.
2
This is unbelievable! The research department at DEC took all the data from the millions of voters in the California gubernatorial election and built a Web front-end. This was the first time election results were available to anyone with an Internet connection. The project had no glitches and worked seamlessly.
The year: 1994.
So in 26 years, they can even get an app to work for several thousand voters. What’s wrong with this picture?
4
@Sheridan Sinclaire-Bell DEC was a technically brilliant company with leading edge technology. Unfortunately they were lacking in marketing savvy, thus we are now victims of the lowest common denominator technology. Looking at you Micro$oft.
1
The importance of Iowa is all about the narrative, the momentum... in other words it's all imaginary. Of course, it's politics, so the imaginary is important, but in this case it's blown out of all proportion by the need for a news story. Suppose the stories read "Announcement of selection of 41 delegates to the Democratic Convention delayed, due to new system of reporting results." It wouldn't sound all that important.
And yet, it's no use pretending that it's not important; it will be rhetorical fuel for the Republicans for a long time. And if it had all gone smoothly, it would have been soon forgotten. Politics!
3
We must not forget that the republicans ran the economy into the ditch back in 2007-2008. The Democrats fixed the problem, not perfectly, but thanks to President Obama's leadership against overwhelming republican obstruction gave us the improved economy claimed by the man-toddler. Never fear, tRump will cause a repeat with his mounting deficits and no action on the problems really affecting the middle and working classes.
Even with the Russian interference in the 2016 elections, Hillary still won by 2.8 million votes. We just need to get a larger turnout and hopefully no third party spoilers to muck things up. Getting rid of the electoral college would be a big plus.
5
Consider that in 2020, most teenagers (and many 8-year-olds) know that you can't rely on untested code, and what that says about the Iowa Democratic Party apparently choosing not only to forgo a dry run of their new app, but even to require Caucus leaders to download the software before they needed it. Given the lessons of 2016, why wasn't a newly competent DNC overseeing every detail of this process? Mr. Bruni is correct. This is an unimaginable and unforgivable screw up. Shame on all responsible.
2
Each time the primaries were discussed, I thought that Iowa voters would go the polls to select their favorites. I had no idea that such a byzantine system actually existed. It's crazy and should be abolished. Even paper ballots could have been used and aides could have tallied them within a couple of hours. I am totally in favor of paper ballots. The news media wants moment to moment tallies but paper is better at getting a real count. Less expensive than voting machines and probably more accurate. Waiting a day for results will not kill anyone.
3
Paper ballots were used. I was there. By the time I walked out of the door I knew the final vote counts and delegate counts per candidate. It’s my understanding that precinct reporting delays were due to inabilities of precinct captains to either use/access the app and that the backup phone system became overwhelmed. And now it seems that votes are being rechecked by hand in some cases. It’s a fiasco and embarrassment, yes. But the amount of attention and hyper-analyzing of a few thousand voters in Iowa is embarrassing too. It’s strange to go to your local gym to vote and see international press there. This nationwide football contest atmosphere of our politics has really distorted normalcy.
5
@Melissa Brown This could have been so simple. The media apparently lacks important stories so they invent disasters where there are none.
We need to ask what the purpose of the Democratic primary system really is.
a) Is it to pick the best person available for the job? If so, at least in my lifetime the success rate is pretty low.
b) Is it to pick the person most likely to be elected? in my lifetime about 50/50.
c) Is it to find some consensus around who looks like me/who believes what I believe/who excites me? Evaluating that is above my pay grade.
One thing for sure, whether it's a,b, or c the Iowa caucuses don't add value to the process. Time to move on.
5
Another fail for the DNC. They screwed up with helping select an unelectable candidate (HRC in 2016) and now this.
What are they good for?
2
There are countless failures in a declining country. This story is one of them.
We went from “Failure Is NOT An Option” to “Failure Is The ONLY Option” in the course of 3 generations.
Be it Boeing’s 737 MAX’s, Apple’s IPhone IOS updates, our country’s current leadership or this debacle - the pattern is becoming too consistent. The problem is that the leadership keeps getting rewarded despite the constant failures.
6
@Jeff
The problem is that too many people want to implement software; but they want to do it either on the cheap, to they want to do it too fast to allow for quality testing.
Any experienced software engineer knows there are three things going in in any project:
How fast does it have to be build
How good (high-quality) it has to be built
How cheaply it has to be built
A good software engineer and more importantly a good project manager KNOWS he or she has to pick which of the two are the most important. The third gets sacrificed; that happens either explicitly by decision or implicitly as the project progresses.
If you don't have people who honestly KNOW how to manage software projects you get disaster like the Iowas Caucus and the Boeing 737 Max. It doesn't have to be this way, But bad managers and engineers that get bullied by bad managers are the reason this happens all to often.
1
@Jeff
The difference between an independent nation and a colony.
Two simple statements that would address most structural problems this country is facing:
1. One person, one vote.
2. Tax the rich.
Ad 1: If we could all agree to translate this into electoral reforms it would mean to value human beings over States and other legal entities, regardless of where they live, how they look, or how much money they have.
Ad 2: Fair taxation that is progressively applied the higher the income, while subsidies and exemptions are categorically denied and eliminated, is the most efficient way to stop the increase in income inequality, which excludes the majority of the population from sharing the country's wealth, and is a safeguard against an oligarchy of billionaires and corporations.
3
@Sam
Mandatory voting for all citizens.
Caucuses may have served a purpose in a rural, largely illiterate, agrarian past when voters had little else to do in the winter, couldn't read editorials, position papers, ballots etc. but make no sense today. First? Why? It would be hard to find a state more unrepresentative of the nation as a whole.
5
The voting system in America is broken and outdated.
It does not represent all the people fairly.
Why are the great minds of this country not addressing and working on this issue that has been a problem for decades in any meaningful way?
1
I would ask the people in charge of election processes in every state to Please:
Leave computer systems out of the process.
Save computer systems for the absolutely final historical documentation of the vote tallies.
These voters are writing their votes down with pen and paper and either mailing in their physical document through our federally protected U.S. Postal Service, or handing it to a local elections volunteer.
This is the person-to-person moment that seals our bond to our country. We need to preserve this intimacy with a limited chain of people who are individually responsible for their role the process.
Web-based communication is essentially anonymous, despite the PIN roadblocks and identity puzzles. Personal responsibility is fairly easy to avoid and flaunting this anonymity has given new meaning to the word "troll".
It's entirely subject to the idiosyncrasies of whoever is writing the specific application's code. How things work in the application will make sense to the coder and the "team" - but it won't necessarily make sense to the tens of millions of Americans who don't do their work in this medium.
And once a communication is released into the web, it is in a global public domain for any interested party - quite a boon for all these cottage industries gathering advertising contracts and scraping up salable data.
Web-based communication is offered as a "convenience".
Please keep it out of our American elections process.
2
In Connecticut, we built a health insurance exchange that worked. It was not a miracle, just hard-nosed management with attention to due dates and the need to serve customers. We weren't perfect, but we rolled out something that was tested and ready.
Most of the rest of the country and the Feds failed with their exchanges. They believed the contractors they hired and never held them to account, let alone manage the process.
Sounds like this failure was yet another example in blind faith leading to no effective end; blind faith in contractors and in technology.
That is incompetence, and the charges of the current administration ring true.
You have to manage these things, you cannot outsource them.
Now, our current administration is right to call it incompetence, but this was a sin of commission. The folks in Iowa actually tried something and failed miserably.
I only see our current administration talk, while our infrastructure decays, our education system is ignored, and the military-industrial complex is left to its own devices. I sense they may be no more competent than the folks in Iowa, but they are smart enough not to try and do anything.
If you do nothing, no one can fault how you go about making things happen.
1
So the Iowa Democratic Party made some poor assumptions and it'll take a day or two to sort out the results. I'll take that over an entire party intentionally selling out the people and the constitution to improve their odds of getting elected.
6
The whole primary system is a disaster. We had more real democracy, better-qualified candidates and more national stability when it was done in smoke-filled rooms, or by the convention delegates with a degree of their own judgment.
3
The news media are being so careful to blame technical glitches, incompetent local technology providers, simple mismanagement by homegrown, inexperienced election managers, etc., etc. Why aren't Democrats blaming Trump-Russian collusion like they did in their 2016 election loss--and still do?
2
@Ronald B. Duke Maybe, just maybe, because the delayed results were caused by "technical glitches, incompetent local technology providers, or simple mismanagement by homegrown, inexperienced election managers?"
8
We need to switch to one, unified primary voting day, with all states using voting machines.
Two major reasons why this is necessary:
1. The caucus process is not only laborious, but it is not a secret ballot! Isn't a hallmark of democratic elections the secret ballot?
2. Giving some states primacy over others means making some votes count more than others. This is fundamentally anti-democratic.
Switching to a unified primary day with voting machines, and delegates apportioned out proportionally is the only way to ensure a democratic primary process.
8
@Chelsea If there were just one unified election day for the primary, how would you campaign if you were running? You would campaign only in the most populous urban areas like LA and NYC. This would allow you to win the Democrat primary but it would almost assure a loss in the general election when the electoral college puts emphasis on the less populous swing states.
@Krista I also think we should abolish the electoral college and go by the popular vote. Plenty of countries have unified voting days and do just fine.
Candidates will always campaign primarily in the more populous areas, but at least with a unified voting day for the primaries, all the votes will count equally, and with no electoral college, the popular vote winner will win the Presidency.
Last night was the first time I've witnessed caucuses in action. I thought they were charming. Now they're alarming. We can't pick candidates like this in the 21st century.
10
At least Iowa should be able to handle the votes that counts. It gets six electoral votes.
2
Last evening I happened to hear on satellite radio an “explanation” of the Iowa caucus process provided by an Iowa Democratic Party official. I place “explanation” in quotes because at his conclusion it was apparent that by comparison to Iowa’s process, solving Fermat’s Last Theorem wold be a walk in the park. With what was an apparent straight face he explained that as many as three different candidates could legitimately claim victory, depending upon what measure they chose. That the Democratic Party would support and pour millions of dollars into such a farce does not speak highly of their prospects of defeating Trump.
11
What's wrong with PAPER BALLOTS? Ever since we moved to voting machines, the "irregularities" have gotten worse and worse with each election cycle. Voting machines are notoriously susceptible to tampering and hacking. WHY KEEP THEM??
15
They do use paper records for the Iowa caucuses. All the votes were recorded on paper, as usual. The app in question was only for reporting precinct results from counted paper votes. In the past, they were phoned in after being counted. These technical issues merely delayed the final tally, they did not affect the underlying votes that were all recorded on paper.
2
No one tested this system!
That company needs new top management OR erase them from existence! This is not acceptable! As engineers we don't build bridges and find out later they do not work.
16
"Even before the candidates boarded chartered jets late Monday and headed east, their senior aides were effectively backstabbing one another ... trying cast their likely Iowa caucus outcome in the best possible light ... angling to make a rival pay for a potentially dismal finish ... candidates positioned themselves as victors even in the absence of official results ... "
To this Independent voter, disgusted with Mr. Trump, a day or so delay in a campaign that lasts years is not a major problem. But the behavior of the Democratic candidates as a circular firing squad is not encouraging. Here in Texas, we have been hearing a lot from Mr. Bloomberg, and almost no other candidate. He got in too late to participate in Iowa, and is not in the debates because of a minimum donation threshold (he accepts no donations) (!!). But I agree with his policies, especially committing to remove Mr. Trump whoever the Democratic candidate is. This Iowa circus can only help Mr. Bloomberg.
11
"Pete Buttigieg spoke later than other candidates and seemed to have information that convinced him that he’d finished at or near the top."
The former mayor gave over $40K to Shadow, the company that wrote the dysfunctional app. Shadow's exec suite is staffed with former Clinton '16 campaign veterans.
Nevada had better make other plans for tallying their votes.
6
@Penn
And the Bernie Bros. hacked into the DNC during the 2016 campaign to steal voter lists. Maybe they hacked Iowa too.
source?
@dlb They did no such thing. The DNC ineptly left their firewall down and a Sanders worker took advantage of this error to access data. He was promptly fired. The DNC reported only on the Sanders campaign's actions and never spoke to whether or not the Clinton campaign had also accessed data.
If this debacle brings an end to the anachronistic and undemocratic role the Iowa caucuses have played in our electoral politics, then much good will have come from it. Actually, the outcome is quite positive. Without Iowa to hog an unfair share of the early decision making, the rest of us will have a chance to weigh in on the candidates before they are branded as "non-viable". Good riddance to the caucuses. Next target, the equally unfair "first-in-the-nation" primary in New Hampshire.
8
the Uk elections count every district on live TV. Why can't a small state do the same?
2
We needed clarity from Iowa because we need seriously to winnow the field. Now that important job waits to be done by other states. This is unfortunate, but in the end it is not disastrous for the Democrats; and the usual carping from Trump and his friends will soon be forgotten. It's hard to smile, but it's time to move on -- get on that plane with Amy to New Hampshire.
2
It's unfathomable to me that we keep talking about voting security and making voting seamless and error-proof, yet we're no further along that we were in the hanging chad days. We talk it to death and do too little to actually fix anything. We aren't surprised any more when the voting process goes wrong or is hacked. We pretty much expect it. Very sad.
2
@Ron McCrary
I wouldn't say that this is a problem of "we." The Republican White House which should have long since taken the lead here has pretty much refused to do anything. Other than the Kris Kobach conspiracy-theory commission on non-existent voter fraud. The Democratic House has passed laws to protect our elections but those laws have been gleefully killed by McConnell. Chaos like Iowa breeds cynicism, and cynicism favors Trump. Moreover I believe Trump would not mind getting a little direct help from the hackers in Russian intelligence, during the 2016 election.
3
Patience is a virtue. Getting it right is important. Good for Iowa for not releasing anything until it has it figured out. Things happen, it is not the end of the world. Looking forward to the announcement soon.
6
In our instant-on society, we expect no errors, especially with big events. This is inconvenient, but hardly the end of the world.
There are better reasons for Iowa to give up its caucus model and move to tradition primary voting: exclusion of shift workers, no absentee ballots, inaccessibility for many with disabilities, to name a few.
The count will be out later today, just a small delay.
4
This country seems to have a knack for overly complicating important things, from healthcare delivery to our election process. Campaigns go on for years and take gazillions of dollars, voting takes the better part of a year, the popular vote is not necessarily reflected in the final results (i.e. Donald Trump). This is nuts, and if anything good comes out of the Iowa debacle it will be the opportunity to reconsider the whole thing. One example to consider as an alternative might be France, which also has a Presidential system. To get the Presidency in France you need over 50% of the popular vote. Voting is on Sunday, which helps working families. There is nothing else on the ballot, just the question of who shall be President. Voting is literally transparent: A clear plastic box at the polling place, in which voters place an envelope containing a card with their preferred candidate's name. There is a first turn, in which all candidates from fringe parties to mainstream get to compete. Counting is done by hand, with representatives of each candidate in the room. After the first turn, unless one of the candidates got 50% of the votes, the two top candidates compete in a second and final turn, held two weeks later. Totally low tech, hack-proof, and democratic. We could do worse. Actually, we do.
7
I was never particularly persuaded that Iowa’s effect on the race was a problem that needed fixing soonest. Yes, it’s a problem for a primary to be skewed in an unrepresentative direction. It didn’t seem to me that it was likely to be problem #1 in the Democratic party or even possibly in the top 10.
For them to fall flat, now ...
2
If all states adopted the absentee ballots where they mail you the ballot and you mail it back in , it seems the safest and most reliable and simple method,,Ive been voting like this for yrs in california and even in muy death bed I am still able to cast my vote. Why all these different methods forcing people to show up and line up and where the machines can be manipulated by the hackers etc.. just make a neat overall voting by mail !
9
Some things never seem to change. I can't improve on what Will Rogers had to say:
I'm not a member of an organized political party - I'm a Democrat.
Amen Nice work Iowa!
4
The question really isn't should we have an election system consistent with 21st century realities. Of course we should. Question really should be why aren't we and why won't we in the foreseeable future.
2
So , ya wanna run da country, do ya?
3
Everyone please stop hyperventilating. The Iowa Democratic Party simply violated the cardinal KISS principle - keep it simple stupid. Their original intent, in the wake of the close vote in 2016 (Clinton 49.9%, Sanders 49.6%), was to insure the integrity of the process by gathering more data on the results in each caucus. Under the old system, only one data point was required: who won each of the 1,600 precincts. In 2020, they required more data: i.e., the numbers of voters caucusing for each candidate in round 1, then the results from round 2 when supporters of candidates with less than 15%, i.e., those deemed non-viable, had to either join another candidate group or leave. Conveying that information required more 'bandwidth' than a simple telephone call so they created an App for that. Only they did it on the cheap and never tested it. KISS. They should have simply saved the paper ballots they had each attendee fill out to create a record in case the vote was too close to call, and just phone in the winner as in years past. KISS. This debacle is not an indictment of the party or the American electoral process. It is simply another example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
8
Rank choice electronic voting. Simple. Effective. Democratic. Basically, a voting method in a related form to a caucus. One could still have the get together of a caucus to converse, network, etc., but at some point, you go into the voting booth and vote your list. Keep a paper trail for an audit, but it can be done electronically making the result fast and reproducible. Rank choice voting can be done in all states.
As a Sanders supporter having experience the rigging of the 2016 primary by the DNC and the Clinton campaign (thank you former acting DNC Chair Dona Brazil for revealing that fact. Your apology to Bernie was appreciated by his supporters), why am I feeling just a little skeptical of this "snafu" as Bernie Sanders went into the night with a huge lead in all the polls? Call me paranoid but I think I may have a good reason.
I was waiting for a bernie Sanders supporter to say this. It is odd but I don’t think true.
2
Okay, I’m going to say what so many won’t say: This was no accident. I do not blame Iowa or Iowans. I trust them as a whole. Iowa takes too much pride in its role as being the first of 50 to help choose a nominee. But I do not trust the “forces” which abound, hell bent on keeping Trump in office. People can spin this any way they want, yet something smells. And the foul odor reeks from the White House Machine whether here or abroad.
2
@Kathy Lollock
Well, if Trump can manage the not inconsiderable feat of getting Democrats to grotesquely mismanage their own primary, he is omnipotent, and fully deserving of his office. MAGA.
@Kathy Lollock
Such chaos and disfunction breeds cynicism, and cynicism favors only Trump.
1
Bring on the incredibly stupid conspiracy theories. It was Trump! It was the Russians! Maybe Weiner did it from his laptop.
It's not a conspiracy to point out that Democrats have a systemic problem when it comes to technological organization. The last Democratic candidate for President had so little faith in the technology managed by party members, she kept her email on a server in the basement. You get four years to prepare and it's a disaster. When exactly did truth become "conspiracy theories"?
3
The mess like this exists precisely because the stakes are high.
The DNC has made no secret of its opposition to Bernie Sanders. Just yesterday, DNC chair, Tom Perez announced proposed mid-game rule changes that would allow Bloomberg to participate in the debates and super delegates to participate in (i.e. control) the first ballot.
A "quality control" snafu just happens to have the "news control" benefit of denying Sanders the victory headline and momentum going into New Hampshire.
As FDR said, "There are no accidents in politics."
2
@Chip
Besides being untrue, conspiracy theories are also divisive and counterproductive in that they will discourage voters from voting for the nominee no matter who it is. They also breed cynicism, and cynicism favors only he who shall not be named. In the real world, some things will favor your guy and some won't. Let's all stay on the fact ranch.
Why are people surprised? Do they have jobs, use computers, live on a daily basis with technology and not encounter massive screw-ups on a regular basis? I am not astonished that this took place, particularly with computer software that I read cost $60,000.00. The entire population of Iowa is slightly over 3 million people, perhaps a third of New York City alone. Would anyone expect that Iowa would be the most technologically advanced State in the nation, especially with the primitive caucus system it uses to nominate a President?
7
Not American, but my goodness if Americans decide to re-elect Trump because of some computer glitches in Iowa, I give up. When Trump is de-fanging the EPA, not taking climate change seriously, giving tax breaks to the rich, openly discussing cuts to Social Security and Medicare, sucking up to dictators, and continuing to fund a bloated military instead of building schools, how can this Iowa thing even be an issue?
10
The democrats are just proving that they are the party of election meddling, not Trump! You folks can even screw up a Primary. How would you ever run a country? You let a "socialist" run as a democrat so you must be the socialist Party now, right! Can't get rid of Bernie by voting so you will find another way. A joke of a political party. SAD!
3
The cross over between a Bernie supporter and a trump supporter.
Everything is a conspiracy theory and the press is out to get them.
Ay yi yIowa!
You can't lay this entirely at the feet of Iowa Democratic Party or the caucuses. Yes, this was a disastrous start to the nominating process, and yes this ridiculous Iowa First thing is just ripe for this kind of debacle.
But where was Tom Perez and the Democratic National Committee? Did they not sit down and tell each other that this first in the nation thing was too important to screw up? Did anybody from the national organization talk to anybody from the Iowa organization to make sure all the i's were dotted and t's were crossed?
Or did they just sit back, smug and confident as they were in 2016 that nothing could go wrong, and watch as this very important first caucus self destructed?
4
The DNC must want Trump to stay. How else would they win elections?
1
Snafu. The old acronym aptly captures the Iowa Democratic caucus situation and DNC more generally.
Left wishing for the smoke-filled room jammed with the political pros who knew how to run the machine. Amateur hour is not a winning strategy.
2
Time to get rid of the caucus, and push Iowa to back of the pack. The state that gives us Steve King, easily went for Trump, and mediocre to low turnout dictating the party nomination process isn't just flawed, but dumb. Add in how this is the third straight cycle of issues on both sides tells me Iowa can't handle things properly this century, let alone as a leader in the process. Heck, their gold standard newspaper poll screwed up and had to scrap it. They are a joke, and time for both parties to move on from this experiment.
7
As the old saying goes the Democratic party can screw up a free lunch!
4
I vote in California, and actually have already sent in my primary ballot for March 3. My state does not promise election results quickly, making the case, and rightly so, that precision and accuracy are more important than instantaneous numbers. Democracy is not a slam-dunk, it can be messy and chaotic, that's one of its attributes.
2
Maybe the news cycles and media overkill will kill this mess in a week or two. But meanwhile:
As a lifelong Democrat who has voted virtually straight-party for decades -- I can find no way to defend the Iowa caucus in the first place -- and no defense for the snafu for the tech or whatever failure.
It's a sloppy symbol for where we seem to be in regard to the simplistic, single-minded monomania of Trump and his autocratic henchmen: while we are democratic, process-oriented, and people-friendly, we are all over the place, disorganized, and unable to count the votes because we're linked to worn-out, out-of-date traditions.
I'm embarrassed, exhausted, sad, scared, and worried that, while this could be only one humiliating glitch to be forgotten -- following Wednesday's impeachment vote, it feels like a miserable, public step toward a gloomy defeat in November.
3
Yes it sucked, Frank, but I’m not sure your emerging pattern of alarmism and defeatism helps.
1
We don't need Russia to screw up our elections. We can do it quite well on our own, thank you.
8
I can address the problem with the app. It reminds me of Obama's healthcare website. Software intended for untrained people needs extensive testing. Thee healthcare website got 2 weeks of testing I heard. It needed months of exaustive testing I suspect that the Iowa app has a similar problem.
4
The silver lining is that no one can claim that the voting was "rigged." This kind of screw up can only result from incompetence.
3
It's entirely possible that the Iowa caucus debacle just helped hand the 2020 presidential election to Donald Trump. In an election which has had the nation looking to it for months, the Iowa Democratic party showed that it was incapable of conducting a simple (if one can call the caucus process simple) election for one office.
The only face-saving outcome is if the reporting results somehow had interference from outside the state, like Russia, perhaps. But Iowa officials are honestly admitting, so far, that they just screwed up.
"Remember Iowa" is going to be a big campaign slogan for Trump in 2020.
2
What happened in Iowa is disgraceful. Why introduce any digital device now, adding fears of hacking, when Iowa has been hand counting votes for decades-idiotic. I watched the caucus voting, thinking how good it was that the results could NOT be hacked when you're counting bodies, not ballots with hanging chads; how naive I was. Now we learn that a dumb digital app screwed it up-what a mess. I sure hope that other states are getting their acts together but truly, I live in fear.
2
Let us not lose sight that this was a software mess up.
They used an app that had not been tested.
What should have been an inspiring story about democracy in the making instead is a story about technical mayhems.
I hope this company is never hired again and that the DNC wises up about the calamity potential of relying on apps and computers for voting. Thank goodness they had a back up. And apparently Sanders was wise enough after 2016 to ask volunteer to video tape the final results at each site.
Keep all and carry on. New Hampshire is next.
As they used to say, to err is human, to forgive is divine, but to really [screw] things up, you need a computer. Can’t wait until we have self-driving cars.
5
Caucuses suck.
2
In 1930, Will Rogers said, "I am a member of no political organization. I am a democrat."
It's been 90 years, and at this point one can only conclude that the Democrats prefer it this way--they'd can inhabit the moral high ground while losing winnable elections because guru and high priest are more desirable jobs than executive.
In "Manufacturing Consent," Chomsky points out the press's double standard when judging American (and our allies') behavior vs. that of our rivals. Curiously, this patriotic reticence to point out vicious and immoral behavior has led to the current crisis in which a President has clearly violated his oath of office, but if we actually did something about it, well, it would reflect badly on the rest of us.
The Democrats are caught in the middle. One must strive to criticize the occupant of the Oval without denigrating the Presidency. Hard to do when Trump gets up each morning and paints the walls with dirt.
Which leads us to Iowa, where the technical screw up merely illuminates the Democrats' dilemma. Shall we attempt needed change on climate change and dystopian income inequality, or shall we nominate someone who won't scare the "moderates" who like to think of themselves as good people even as they shrug and vote for frauds like Susan Collins, who can then be counted on to rubber stamp judges like Kavanaugh and cabinet members like Pompeo and Ross?
3
Oh God!! The Democrats are pulling out all stops to steal defeat out of the jaws of what should be a certain victory in the November election.
First, (in my opinion) they brought impeachment proceedings even though they knew they couldn’t (wouldn’t) win a conviction in the Senate. It was weak, and ineptly done and most of the country hardly was interested in it. What the country saw was yet another Democratic screw up and failure!
Now, the Democratic big momentum push towards the election is totally bungled by incompetence in handling a simple software app!! Inept again!! That’s what people are seeing!
And this is the party that wants to control the government’s massive programs of Medicare for all and free education programs, etc!!!! Whoa!!!
Let me say first that I voted for Hilary and I’ll vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is. But I know I, and many of my friends, are frightened stiff of incompetence and ineptness over and above the usual governmental boondoggles really screwing up the country if what we see now will be brought to Washington if the Democrats win. Just frightening!!
Sadly, this “Iowa fiasco” has lost the Democratic Party many undecided voters that could swing the election!! A pity!
4
@SAH
If you really want a Democratic (sort of) candidate with actual governing experience and some obvious demonstrations of accomplishment and competence, vote for Bloomberg. He might not meet all the progressive litmus tests, but he isn't Trump and he certainly doesn't need any outside funding.
2
Sah, yes, caucuses are a really bad way to choose a candidate in something this important. Although this fiasco will be relegated to the back burner once real primary voting begins, I agree this mess will be a slogan for the other side - even though they can’t run the government either. Iowa is a good place with fine people, but there is no good reason for the state to have this much clout. One other thing, though. A big software glitch like this could have happened anywhere. Incompetence has no state boundaries.
@NB
Agreed that the software glitch could happen anytime anywhere. But it happened to the Democrats at the much overhyped kick off of finding an actual nominee...the Iowa thing.
The event was over hyped and therefore this screw up is being over hyped, much to their detriment.
A very weak showing in the impeachment trial followed hard upon by this very embarrassing software glitch is rapidly making the Democrats a laughing stock.
They’d better get heir act together and quickly. If there’s a similar occurrence in New Hampshire, I think it’s all over but the shouting and the Democrats are done!
"There's an app for that." Really? I rue the day that slogan was coined. When are we going to look up from our phones, and start re-connecting with reality? Who is perpetrating this absurd notion that technology is the preferred solution to
everything...…..or, ANY thing? Sorry, but the Dems have fouled up the debate process, and now they/we are moving onto
even bigger screw-ups. Maybe there is an app for removing
Tom Perez? Like -- Immediately.
3
Who does this help most? Obviously Trump. Iowa is totally non-representative of the Democratic Party and the country, had 4 years to get this one thing right, yet made a royal mess of it and did nothing but make Trump's reelection more likely. As Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight explained to Iowa, you've "Screwed Up The Whole Nomination Process".
Other than the fact that American Democracy itself is at stake, there’s no reason to be upset, or to make sure Iowa goes last in 2024, (if we still have anything resembling a democracy left).
Iowa typically propels a candidate (or a few top candidates) forward, meaning it also removes candidates who are not polling well in Iowa before any primaries are held even if they’re polling decently nationally. The field would likely be different if Iowa didn't go first. There's a decent chance Kamala Harris and even Cory Booker would still be in the race, and a decent possibility Pete Buttigieg would not considering how poorly he polls outside Iowa. All projection models were based on an "Iowa bounce" and are a mess now as there will be almost no "bounce".
Finally, the one person who gains the most on the Democratic side from this is Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg not seeking to win the Iowa Caucuses and instead focusing on Super Tuesday makes him look both smart and competent, while allowing him to stand outside this debacle and say that Super Tuesday is the model which should be used for the entire country, and will be when he's president.
1
All major stakeholders in the Democratic Party need to collaborate on putting together proper tech structures and a really effective online campaign. The Republicans are way ahead on this. I don't understand why the issue hasn't already been addressed, but let's put that behind us and get to work on this crucial set of problems. It's already 2020, for goodness sake!
2
After watching coverage of several caucuses (caucusi?), and then falling asleep waiting for the results that never came, I came to the conclusion that the Democrats need to tell Iowa that if they insist on their self-indulgent while self-punishing system of determining delegate selection,they do it on their own time. Hold their caucuses prior to the onset of actual voting primaries if they must, but quit putting the nation through debacles like last night. They should be relegated to a primary date more befitting their actual relevance- maybe somewhere in the middle, where they don't have outsize influence as first in the nation bestows and not at the end, when they could influence a close campaign.
Hopefully everyone moves on from this disaster quickly, like they do from the daily disaster that is the Trump administration.
2
I never really believed the Iowa Caucus would tell us much anyway. There are too many obstacles ahead, like fake news, foreign interference, and the Electoral College. Let's all just get on with working to find a candidate that can beat 45.
Go back to paper ballets and permanent ink. Forget the technology. Even phone lines can be attacked and energy cut by an interference.
If a paper ballot counted by candlelight with results delivered by Pony Express will give us an accurate count, I am all for it!
1
It's not such a big deal. As you say, it will boost the winner less and hurt the losers less, but Iowa had too much importance anyway. Presumably we'll get results today, the coming primaries and caucuses will go smoothly enough, and we can again return to bemoaning the fact that we don't have any slam-dunk candidates. I doubt anybody will be remembering how much Democrats screwed up the Iowa caucus when they go to vote in November.
And, silver lining, maybe Iowa moves their caucus to super Tuesday where it belongs.
3
I'm glad there was this snafu. The Iowa caucus (or is it caucuses?) so under represents the make up of the democratic party and yet it consumes so much, too much attention. Caucuses are not democratic, and Iowa is not representative of the democratic party.
I think it's actually a good thing for the electorate that the candidates are moving on to New Hampshire without any clarity about Iowa. It's a joke that this one small state should have such an oversize impact.
2
This chaos has persuaded me to vote for Trump in November. Security, stability, and order are better than what the Democrats offer.
2
I don’t buy it. You already were not a democrat
It isn't bad luck, Frank, it is incompetence, and as much as I despise what the GOP is doing under Trump, they are rather good at doing it. Democrats need to begin holding themselves to higher standards of performance if we stand even a slim chance of defeating Trump and reclaiming the Senate.
2
Definitely a harbinger.
One of the most noticeable things about the GOP over the last couple of decades has been their incredible cohesion and long term strategic planning. Start with local elections, school boards, build the state level, and then move nationally.
But ALWAYS stick together and have a plan. One need look no further than Trump's takeover of the party to see this. In the early primaries they attacked him and attacked him, but once they determined he had the power, they've all become acolytes.
Contrast this with the Democrats bickering endlessly about the minute details of their various plans, and the gross organizational ineptitude shown here in Iowa, which was intended to be their showcase election.
Upon the loss of the witness vote in the Senate, I wrote that the election would be America's last and only hope to retain our democracy, but I fear that hope is slipping away. In the battle between those who organized Iowa's caucus, and those who organized the voter suppression in Atlanta and against the Native Americans in 2018, is there really any doubt about who will win?
3
Looks like Bloomberg did the smart thing.
8
All this huffing and puffing by the journos and apparatchniks is just self-regarding smoke. The results will be in shortly and they'll be correct and backed up by paper. As to the unfairness of the caucus system, all the short comings could be fixed and should be. Or we cold just get rid of balloting in all elections and just vote via facebook.
2
Paper ballots. The same tech bro’s who gave us the horrors of live streamed suicide, cyber bullying, and cryptocurrency money laundering, should be kept as far away from elections as possible.
It should be federally illegal to allow any election activity to transpire on primarily on a digital platform.
The primary results should be done solely on paper ballots, votes tabulated on machines that physically lack the capability to connect to any internet networks, that are verified to be secure by non-partisan commission on election security.
ANY device that can connect to ANY network in this day and age is a weakness that foreign powers cannot wait to exploit. MBS hacked the personal phone of one of America’s most powerful people. The entire world sees how weak the United States is under Trump. This is in all likelihood just the beginning of the worst election in US history. Doomed to make the 2000 Florida recount look like a leisurely walk on the beach.
1
This is what cyber warfare looks like.
2
If any of this had happened in Venezuela, Trump would be preparing an invasion.
3
@Chris
I prefer that he send the FBI to Iowa Democratic headquarters and make some serious arrests.
1
So this is the result of disruptive innovation brought to you by companies named Shadow and Acronym? I have a new company for you called Irony. At Irony, we undue the damage caused by the disrupters, and use the excess profits to send them back to school where they are provided a deep dive into what it means to be a part of society the does not look to eliminate all jobs and replace them with crappy apps!
3
The amazing speed with which Twitter cast blame on Mayor Pete for the Iowa problems is worth addressing. I’m very worried how quickly people accept conspiracy theories that reinforce a story they want to hear rather deal with the facts, as messy as they are (and even though we may need to wait a little longer for them).
3
Mr. Bruni is correct - this debacle helps Trump.
I'm reading reports of a crashing vote tabulation app? Built by former H. Clinton & Obama people?
In what technocratic hell-world would it be a good idea to have such an important contest rely in any way on an "app" - let alone one made by a centrist democrat company called Shadow Inc? Even the name sounds sinister!
For all the hay that has been made about "Russian interference," I worry 1000x more about Republican voter suppression efforts and centrist corporate democrat primary rigging. Those are the real threats to our democracy.
5
How are we sitting here, 20 years after hanging chads, with voting infrastructure that's a shambling mess?
Why didn't the Democrats hire Apple/Google/Microsoft to design a voting system 5 years ago? Or Harvard's Computer Science Department?
Why -- after the Senate Intelligence Committee stated Russian state-sponsored hackers targeted the voting architecture of all 50 states in our prior election -- is the state Democratic party relying on an amateur app developer called "Shadow" two months before the vote and not even bothering to stress test it?
Utterly baffling.
357
@A New Yorker Baffling? Not really. You are assuming Iowa is similar to New York. This is a huge diverse country. And I don't mean racially. I mean culturally. A native New Yorker's worldview and priorities are probably more similar to a native Londoner than a person born and raised in Des Moines. In that light, what happens in Iowa is really not that baffling.
12
@Spartan
A perfectly reasonable observation & reminder - ordinarily! - but in this case belied by the fact that for the past year Iowa has been besieged by thousands of earnest 'coastals' who undoubtedly knew best more often than not and probably made the chaotic result inevitable.
Disappointing in the extreme and let us pray that the post-caucus analysis leads to smooth sailing from now on.
It is time for all of us 'smart' people on the coasts to learn to listen a good deal more to everyone not from the East or the West; maybe then we can rid the nation of the tRumpian cult that has taken over the Republican party. Else we are doomed and so is American democracy.
7
@A New Yorker
Good God! Why design or implement something that needs computer software engineers - when so many advanced nations have found paper ballots, hand-counted and witnessed, to give them rapid, secure methods of voting and counting?
There’s no need to educate voters, if it’s a paper ballot. No need to educate those who count the paper ballots. And there’s no way to hack that type of election.
It boggles the mind that we would introduce unnecessary and failure-ridden ways of doing something that other democratic nations have proven WORKS.
Time to shorten elections to weeks - like sane nations do. Time to have parties pick those who are allowed to run. Not have untested nitwits simply enter any race they like. Time to decrease money in politics. Time to stop gerrymandering and other methods of restricting votes or voters.
Please can we have a little sanity in this nation?
34
"Maybe there’s just a terrifying repeat of the party’s awful luck in 2016."
Luck? Luck has nothing to do with it. This is a repeat of the Party's awful dependence on self-dealing consultants and insiders. Consider the following:
A certain candidate announces with confidence that he's won when in fact he has no basis for the claim. Turns out (as per the respected journalist Max Blumenthal) that this same candidate has a very cozy financial relationship with the pro-Israel war hawk who actually owns Shadow, Inc., the outfit that provided the software for this fiasco.
Even without going as far as believing that the software was designed to favor this particular candidate or to be hacked in his favor, we still have to ask ourselves why the Iowa Democratic Party and Buttigieg had the incredibly poor judgement to hire Shadow, Inc. to begin with.
Under these circumstances the only way toward victory against Trump will have to move as far away from this corrupt, self-dealing clique, something Sanders is best prepared to deal with. For those among us who have been wondering if there was any way to beat Trump other than nominating Sanders, the answer was giving last night and it's a resounding no.
1
Thanks Democratic "leadership" for handing Trump the excuse he needs to declare his loss this November on faulty voting systems, and enabling him to remain in office until a "thorough investigation" proves he lost.
"The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight" were sharpshooters compared to these guys.
3
SOMEONE is responsible for this disaster - but will we every know that person's identity?
After working in many various workplaces, the problem always, as in ALWAYS, turns out to be one person's lack of judgement, or one person's out-of-control advocacy for something that is to blame.
I'd love to know that person's name, so that he/she can be publicly shamed. A public hours long public placement in stocks is called for here.
The answer is in today’s Times. You can think members of Hillary’s erstwhile campaign staff. Roby Mook in particular.
Well played! Hillary and Roby are obviously Russian assets.
In particular this fiasco will, for instance, encourage the subset of Democratic voters who are prone to overindulge in conspiracy theories. Such things are divisive and counterproductive in that they will certainly discourage such voters from voting for the nominee no matter who it is. Let's all promise to stay on the fact ranch. Let's all pledge to vote for the nominee no matter who it is.
(Yesterday on this site alone in response to the chaos one could read a virtual encyclopedia of conspiracy theories, including: "The media is purposefully underreporting the size and enthusiasm of the Sanders caucus crowds. They stopped reporting results because Sanders was winning. The media hates Sanders, and will never let him win. The elite corporate corrupt Wall Street establishment hates Sanders, and has engineered this to keep him from winning. Anyway, they are really Republicans and secretly plan to vote for Trump. They stole delegates from Sanders at the 2016 caucuses. Buttigieg hired the same app developer, in order to, via some unspecified process, rig the system against Sanders. Some Clinton people have worked at the app developer, and they have, via some unspecified process, used the app to rig the system against Sanders." Good grief.)
2
@Robert
See, for instance, the comment just below this one.
1
@Robert
I'll try to post this reply again: See, for example, the comment directly below this one!
Buttigieg campaign paid firm that developed voting app blamed for Iowa caucus delays. The company Shadowinc is a who's who of Hillary Clinton advisers. The app worked perfectly. It invalidates Sanders win.
I wonder if the NYT will let this get posted. At best they will post it in two or three days later so it is essentially invisible.
9
Hey!
It did get published~!
Now lets see how long it stays up.
Is it really surprising the machinations and interconnected tentacles of the Clinton Political Machine, to a Private Political Party they bought and paid for?!
Not surprised at all.
Just don't imply the specter of....r-i-g-g-e-d~~!
3
@ Dobbys Sock
Hear, hear.
I was surprised to see this up as well since none of mine made it through the censorship filter.
For a good read see
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/04/pro-israel-buttigieg-seth-klarman-iowas-voting-app/amp/
2
@Dobbys sock
Yup.
2
Republicans have the reason to be proud. In anticipation of computer problems, they had their votes counted in Moscow a week before caucuses.
1
Frankly at the end of the day, I don't see the big deal. Far as I'm concerned, the Democrats could choose an empty chair as their nominee, and I'd still vote for the empty chair over Trump.
6
This should have been expected. When you learn that the official results would be reported in three different ways, you have to conclude there will be problems. Then, as we watched the process unfold, we saw people being required to move from one group to another if their candidate wasn't "viable." (What does that mean?) Then we heard that if people were in a group of a certain significant size, they couldn't move elsewhere. Others were told they could just go home.
The group who created this deserve to live out the rest of their lives in a corn field. But more than that, the officials at the National Democratic Committee who approved this process should be relegated to living in the adjacent corn field.
A national disgrace. A national embarrassment.
2
Frank -- Consider the old bumper sticker -- "A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work." Just substitute "caucusing" for "fishing" and "the Trump administration" for "work" to give you a gentler perspective.
The democrats of Iowa went to a caucus, sat down with their neighbors and discussed candidates, and voted their preferences. This is participatory democracy at its best. So we won't know the result for a while? So there was trouble with an app?
Volunteers organized all the primaries. People came in good faith. Their votes will be honored. We just have to wait.
Incompetence? Russians? Ukranians? Hackers? The people of Iowa can count and they will.
Several victory speeches were aired. They were fun to hear.
The 24 hour news cycle has to wait!
Everyone should remember what it is like to be a woman. it takes 9 months to deliver a result, and we have that much time in front of us.
2
" I went down by the river, set down on the bank/ I tried to think but couldn't, so I jumped in and sank." Langston Hughes
1
First, just for the record, this is Iowa, not Florida. As a Floridian I hope all the vote-counting jokes go there.
The Democrats have no power. They allowed a SCOTUS nomination be taken from them, a well-educated and experienced candidate lose to someone not even morally qualified, and now this voting debacle?!
Whatever grief they get from the Republicans on this they’ve earned today. Plus tomorrow Trump will not be impeached. The Dems might as well just hand the Republicans the tar and feathers.
1
Bloomberg: a pol who knows how to do things Iowa should stick to Ethanol and cows of butter.
1
Just what Putin wanted on the eve of The State of the Union.
An Unimpeachable POTUS combined with GOP silence on Mueller’s report of Russian interference 2020 election.
I am reminded in a Bill Maher sort of way another example of Lucy pull-the-football away again...the DNC leadership should, you know, show some accountability and take immediate constructive action. But they didn't and Lucy wins again...whomever it takes...get real...start owning it. Incompetence should not be rewarded!
1
Iowa? Who cares? I never put much store in such a ridiculous measure of our candidates' viability. Iowa--bye bye!
1
Why, oh why is the first primary in the country a Tupperware Party? Not only is it idiotically non-private in terms of the citizens choosing their desired leader, is is chaotic. Along with the inconsistency of an out-of-date system (imagine the candidates on horseback) of staggered voting per the state, it needs to go. A uniform system of voting and an alike primary date in the spring.
This is nonsense.
5
Remember the Florida recount, which former President Jimmy Carter characterized as worthy of a banana republic. If ever we had a wake-up call that major nationwide electoral reform is long overdue, that was it. Twenty years and more disasters later, that still was it.
And they talk about Florida having elections problems !
Lol
Maybe the “Russians “ hacked in in- and Tulsi Gabbard won !
The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!!!
4
anyone seen Dem Party Chair Tom Perez? Maybe he's in Michigan finishing up that interview about Hillary Clinton's big win in the state .
3
This whole debacle is a monumental embarrassment for Iowa and the DNC. Let’s rid ourselves of this silliness and turn to a more democratic nominating process like, oh I don’t know, one person one vote? Why should one of the smallest, whitest states in the Union that holds caucuses- the most exclusionary nominating process in the nation- instead of regular voting, suck up all the nominating process oxygen for months on end? Enough already, let California or New York or another large state that actually reflects the diversity of the party be the first to vote.
2
@Dabney L
"One person one vote" huh??
So New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago tell us how stuff works??
I think I'll stay with having something to say about that.....
Iowa is the political manifestation of the chaotic, feeling based approach to exercising power. It could be a picture of Seattle’s tent cities, Portland’s disrespect for the rule of law or San Francisco’s feces and used needle strew streets. It’s what the left—which has taken over the Democrat party—does.
1
Hopefully, this will push the Iowa caucuses, in the future, to the rear where the media "feeding frenzy" can dissipate.
2
There once was a vote in Dubuque,
So poorly run you could puke.
Are we dems just jerks
Tolerating Iowan quirks
Quadrennial elections start stupid
No, it doesn’t rhyme but, the factual reality of the last word supersedes poetic meter.
I'm in the harbinger camp. Incompetent Democrat party will hand deliver, through an app, the Great Dictator's reelection. After that, climate change will thrash us into extinction. Poor Ross Douthat will gnash his teeth repenting that white people aren't making babies anymore.
3
The best defense for Iowa: Barack Obama. Who doubts the decisive role the Iowa caucus played in Obama’s victory in 2008? Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Establishment sowed up all the traditional Democratic states (NY-CA-MA-PA-MI-FL). It took Obama an unlikely victory in Iowa to convince African American voters nationally that he’s a viable candidate. Iowa’s caucus system that embraces intimate retail politics and discourages low-information voting is RESPONSIBLE for giving the country the first African American President! Could the quiet intelligence, calm disposition, and other nuanced and subtle virtues of Obama be demonstrated in a cacophony of media storm in a state of millions? No way. Iowans should keep the caucus system, and it should be the first state in the primaries. If nothing else, they’re practiced in choosing politicians, and they’ve used this power wisely.
The Bernie Bros think this is a conspiracy to overturn Bernie's supposed victory. If he doesn't win, watch out for a full blown Bernie rebellion within the party, an exodus to 2020's next Jill Stein, whoever that may be, and another victory for Trump. Of course, the Bernie folks won't think it's their fault--again--, but it will be.
1
Everyone's reading far too much into this. So there was a technological muddle and Trump is crowing about it--so what? He'd be claiming something like this had happened, even if it hadn't. And it's not going to hurt anybody to have to wait for the results.
The lesson here should be that one state does *not* determine the outcome of a primary election. Maybe this temporary delay in getting the results from Iowa will remind media pundits and the voters who listen to them that what people think in other parts of the country should be just as important--and would be, if so much wasn't made by the press about the primary process in one overwhelmingly white midwestern state.
3
Fake Election. Only hand marked and hand counted paper ballots are real. No Fake e-voting numbers.
1
@Dave
What Dave said....
Close to Noon EST on the day after and we still don't know the results? I call for a do-over with international observers. Paging Jimmy Carter!
3
This mess has clarified something for me; why I'm not sure. But my vote is going to Mike Bloomberg. He's clear, he's a leader, he gives as good as he gets to Donald Trumpburger, he was a good mayor, and he's a natural leader. He can win.
5
"I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." Will Rogers
4
Nothing involving computers ever works as it is supposed to work.
1
@Jonathan Katz
Sure it does..... It strengthens the "Draft Hillary at the Convention" contingent....
Silicon valley wants that noise..... and they'll spend a trillion dollars to see it happen....
“Democrat party meltdown,” he wrote. “They can’t even run a caucus and they want to run the government. No thank you.”
This from the party whose process yielded us one Donald Trump.
2
Another newspaper's motto is "democracy dies in darkness." Given Russian influence on the 2016 election, Trump solicitation of foreign interference in our elections, state voter suppression laws and now this Iowa debacle that the GOP its quickly seizing upon to further undermine voter confidence in the election process, I feel darkness descending on America democracy like an Alaskan winter.
2
The Iowa caucuses are a disaster mostly for the media which had ramped up expectations for the results. They had reporters, and analysts at the ready to read the palms of the 2020 electorate. Pundits were poised to declare the odds of the Democrats' chances of defeating the incumbent in November given the winner in Iowa. The media were left speechless. They were left with dissecting the Democrats' chances given their technical incompetence.
Stuff happens. I agree it is folly using a new app. (coded computer program) that hadn't been thoroughly vetted. C'mon we don't want to give the intellectually- challenged playground bully ammunition, do we?
Nov 3rd, no matter who the democratic candidate, they get my vote. That's the focus.
1
Americans are drunk drivers - drunk on technology. It is no surprise to see the caucus crash and burn.
2
Hey Frank, with all the NYT resources available to you, can you tell us who owns, operates said "Shadow Inc."?!
Can you tell us who they formerly worked for and which campaigns are tied to "Shadow Inc." by employment, donations and marriage?
Please do a little digging into this DNC start up and alleviate any sense of impropriety and it's lack of transparency.
I understand that the DNC is a private political club, but a little aboveboard sunlight would help disavow the specter of another "rigged" election.
How about it Frank, NYT et al?!
2
Apparently the Democrats and technology don't mix. Anyone remember the roll out of Obamacare........just saying
2
@Eileen
Heh heh heh.....
You know what you are if your complaining about he Democrat’s this morning, don’t you? A Democrat! Democracy is messy. It always has been. It’s a feature, not a bug. If you want it all to go smoothly, you need to follow the republican process and have one autocratic ruler that everyone follows blindly. That’lll fix it!
They were hacked. They for some reason don't want to admit it. Of course I don't know for sure but something is not right. The Democrats have mess on their hands and my suspicion is it due to incompetence at the top of the DNC (Tom Perez). I get a sense, he is completely incapable of running a campaign against the aggressive desperate tactics of Brad Parscale. We are in deep trouble. The problrm is the same ego and out of the step hands of the Clinton campaign are all over this fiasco that was Iowa. Firing Perez would be a good start.
1
It is not official yet but one good thing Iowa appears to have done is derail the candidacy of Joe Biden. This will be a huge plus for our democracy. Lets face it. Joe is a bad candidate. He has run multiple times and in each has gathered only a smattering of support. Why would anyone think 2020 would be different. Thank you in advance--Iowa.
3
Relying on known to be problematic cell phone ap backed up by an untested phone-in system! Shameful! This is the work of high schoolers playing around with technology, not leaders in touch with 21st Century technology . . . much less 20th Century quality management competencies.
It's not just that the Iowa Democratic Party could have avoided this display of amateurishness in systems design and integration, and testing that any competent systems manager in a company or organization performs as a matter of course, the real failure starts at the top, with a Democratic Party leadership that's too self-involved . . . to averse to real management competency to run anything.
For the DNC to have allowed this obvious-to-become-a-disaster Iowa vote-counting "system" to proceed, was simply political malpractice. And, by-the-way, it wasn't the caucus voting that was the problem, it was amateurs hired to create the processes to record the choices and the amateurs who hired them.
Mike Bloomberg is sure looking good right now.
7
We have a president gloating about technical glitches who doesn't even know the geography of his own country. My best guess is the app was not adequately tested and/or precinct chiefs did not have enough training in it's use. I would not rule out hacking in any case.
As a software developer I know that one of the most difficult tasks in designing a new app is to anticipate and account for the myriad things that could go wrong. Thorough testing is essential before entrusting a new app to mission critical use.
1
Let's hope this disaster is a wake up call. Every precinct around the country needs to get its act together and its systems in place before November. Paper ballots, please!
We see here what a meltdown in one state looks like. It's very scary to imagine similar chaos in multiple states on election night. And it's even more scary to imagine how Trump would react.
2
Iowa should not be first, I will agree with. However, no one should be first. There should be a national primary day, just like there is one national election day. Let the several states run primary elections, caucuses, or whatever method they choose to select candidates, but all at the same time.
First, it would be more fair. As it stands, some possibly viable candidates are winnowed out because they do not do well in particular states. Also, too many people vote for a candidate in the later primaries not because they necessarily agree with their policies but because they did well in earlier states.
Second, it would be less expensive. The necessity to restart a campaign after each set of primaries would be gone, it would be one and done.
The biggest losers to this change would be the media, as they would have to work harder to cover primaries all over the country and would not be able to write innumerable articles about how this state helped that candidate, and that state hurt the other one. Boo Hoo.
2
Iowa is not a "unholy mess", and if anything, a cautionary tale not to trust electronic voting and make sure you have paper backups (which Iowa has). I was a precinct volunteer. I agree that the IA caucuses exclude people and IA isn't a good cross section of the US electorate. As flawed as IA is seen to be, volunteers took their responsibilities seriously to make the process efficient, fair and as transparent as possible. My precinct: Bernie won the first alignment, with Warren second, and Amy 3rd. Buttigieg not viable on first alignment. Biden, Yang never viable, enough Biden and Yang supporters moved to Amy so that she ended up with the highest number on the second alignment, and Buttigieg also became viable. The precinct was tied: 2 each to these 4 candidates.
This mess makes me more grateful than ever that Oregon has vote by mail, voter registration at the DMV, and, most importantly, paper ballots that don’t rely on glitch apps that can malfunction or be hacked. When an electoral outcome is in doubt, there are actual ballots that can be recounted by hand. It may sometimes take longer, but you can trust the results.
5
Agreed. Your column is spot on. No excuse for how this unfolded. Overhaul of Iowa caucuses, please. The country cannot afford this blunder.
2
So it's going to take another 10 hours to declare the winner. Big whoop. This is embarrassing, but it's not the end of the world. One of the candidates should show leadership by making that fact crystal clear.
2
@Livonian
But wait Livonian..... everything has to be a crisis..... otherwise the 24 hour news cycle won't work....
Me?? I think this is hilarious.... Just for the record.... I'd think it would be just as funny if it were the {R}epublicans..... but since y'all decided it was more important to be Dermacrats over Democrats.... y'all got this.... bought and paid for by the skinny jeans manbun people....
It is long past time to change to a National Primary system on two consecutive Saturdays and Sundays in June, 10 states for three dates, 12 for the other. States listed in alphabetical order and switched from A-Z to Z-A every other term. Next we must limit the time of Political campaigning and advertising to six weeks prior to the election. Third, we must have meaningful campaign finance reform with everyone playing with the same amount of funds, no matter what the source.
3
The Democratic Party is going to have to shelve their complaints about the Electoral College if they are going to insist on this archaic system in Iowa. Whatever happened to the most votes wins?
3
Yet another wide chasm exposed: this one between Silicon Valley's elite, and the ordinary American on the ground struggling to cope with technology changes.
2
My understanding is that the party installed new rules that require reporting the results three different ways. However, some of those reports were inconsistent.
It seems likely to me that these voting irregularities existed in the past, but we are only seeing them now because the new rules require extra checking. If that is so, the results of the Iowa caucuses might actually end up being the most reliable in history.
This is an example of a failure at the state level and a question about our reliance on technology. This example should be evaluated on the basis of whether the people have been able to vote and whether the system in Iowa is fair. It is not. The same thing could have happened to the Republicans. It is time to have a one person one vote system in every state and to have paper backups everywhere.
1
If the Dems wanted to assure the re-election Trump they could not be doing a better job. Fully half of their candidates are willing to "give away the store". Then there is the "open the gates to illegal immigrants". Not to be omitted is the fiasco of driver's licenses for those very same individuals, with lines around the block at DMV offices as a result. Then of course we have new bail reform in New York which, by all accounts, has a direct effect on the crime rate -- up. Now we have new system, not only ripe for hacking as every electronic system is , but the rush to create something new un-thought and untested which has resulted in disaster.
1
Since we’re all fussed about screwups, you guys find the couple thousand kids you snatched from their parents and threw into cages yet? How’s that Infrastructure Week thingy going?
I got more of these little oopsies, of course.
5
@Robert You have just exposed the problem of the "non-thinking - reactive - jump to conclusion" scenario from which we are suffering and debate stifled. Judging from you reply you think I am on a particular side. Sorry to disabuse that notion, but I am a true independent simply pointing out an issue that IMO needs consideration.
The stakes are too high to not immediately call for paper ballots nationally. This is about saving our democracy!
6
It would be unfair to the candidates this year, but in 2024, Iowa should be stripped of its delegates at the Democratic national convention. There won't be any reason for them to caucus, and no reason for campaigns to spend any time or money there. If for some bizarre reason, they still want to caucus, they can go last.
1
2 solutions to this problem: (1) VOTE instead of caucus, and (2) rotate the states every 4 years so different states can go first.
7
Totalitarianism tends to work quite well. Looking back at WWII, leaders in those countries bragged about their trains running on time. And those trains did run and run and run quite efficiently. Democracy is messy. Last night was a glorious mess-- the kind that's possible in a democracy. Better a mess than continuing to live under the current regime where politicians live in fear and everyday folks are afraid to give their names for fear of retribution and death threats. Life in a "Safe and secure" world might feel comforting, but we need to examine it more closely.
6
We have a widespread coding problem in the US. Everywhere I go, I have to use difficult or impossible to use apps or websites, that don't work as stated--to pay my rent, to sign up for school, etc.
The people who buy the websites and apps are not qualified to choose vendors, and the vendors' coders are undertrained and sloppy.
6
As a software engineer, I agree that most software has poor quality (relative to the quality it should have). There are methods for building software systems that work, but industry won't adopt them widely until customers stop wanted a steady stream of new features as quickly as possible.
We need a culture where we build software once, correctly, and then use it for a long time.
1
Iowa should not be first in the Democratic primaries. It’s not because of the app “covfefe”; that could potentially happen in any US town, county or state (given the lackadaisical attitude electoral officials exhibit), but because Iowa is a poor representative sample of what America looks like. Nor does the caucus system allow for a fair representation of the population that IS there.
If we’re going to continue with the state by state primary system (as opposed to holding larger - and fewer - primaries by having varied groups of states hold their primaries on the same day and rotate the order every election cycle; think about several Super Tuesdays), then at least pick early states with populations that look like America’s population profile.
As to the caucus system, those who have child or elder care responsibilities; those who work evening or night shifts; those not physically able to participate; and others with equally legitimate conflicts are left out of the equation since it’s a one-night, multiple hour commitment that doesn’t fit the reality of the 21st century lives of many Iowans.
There are a myriad of reasons why Iowa will kick and bite to keep their first in the nation status, but none that can overcome the national (and political party) shortfalls of maintaining it there.
Dems: time to rethink this whole primary system. We may be losing some of the best candidates for the general election, and the Oval Office, by continuing this outdated system.
6
So even this failure can be turned to an anti-Trump diatribe. Now that is all consuming hate for you.
3
@Daphne
See? this one gets it.....
Personally, I’m preparing myself to vote the first Jew into the White House: Michael Bloomberg. Sure, he’s got an ego the size of his bank account, but at least he’s had to work for it.
Realistically, I still expect ‘white fright’ to secure Trump’s re-election. I mourn for America.
9
Russia now attacks Iowa!!
3
I see Russians.
2
Can the Deep-Frted Butter-On-A-Stick State go back to that, and leave the mishandling of elections to a statw that has clearly demonstrated mastery of that, like Florida?
5
Many comments note that Iowa's demographics are not representative of those in the country as a whole. But neither are New Hampshire's, or South Carolina's, or the critical states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. Part of the reason people want to dismiss Iowa is that it is in the Midwest, and the coastal types think it is therefore irrelevant. It's precisely the attitude that earned you Donald Trump last time, and it is the attitude that will earn you Trump in 2020.
5
I'm an Iowa voter, and attended last night's caucus in Iowa City. I love the caucuses, and last night was no exception.....until the vote count never happened.
It's time for a national primary system. Democrats need to find a way to get fair representation on debate stages and a speedier resolution to the process. Much as I enjoy caucusing, it's time to find a new process.
11
@62Down
Sure..... can't win without cheating....so change the rules....
The Founders were geniuses..... It works..... just not the way you want it to.....
Who would have believed that Mike Bloomberg could win the Iowa Caucus without spending a penny there or even putting his name on the ballot.
I'm impressed!
6
I hope Americans will have the courage to reform their crazy ways of electing people to govern their country. Not doing so will multiply Trumps.
5
Since 1972 only two Democrats who won the Iowa caucuses in contested races- won the Presidency; Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. For Republicans, only one; George W. Bush.
As the paper of record, The DesMoines Register declared:
"The Iowa caucuses have a poor record of picking presidents..."
In other words: The 48 year experiment whose prognostications are on par with Punxsutawney Phil's weather report needs to meet a quick and painful demise. RIP.
8
The Democratic Party is a Greek Tragedy suffering from the fatal flaw of ineptitude which will lead to the tragic ending of the re-election of Trump. Euripides would have a field day with the Iowa caucus debacle and yes, Mr. Bruni, this is indeed a harbinger of more debacles from the party I adore, the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Seriously, Dems??? How was it not more clear that we need to do everything right to rid ourselves of the Trump scourge? Who is running things in Iowa??
I am so tired of bad news. So very tired and disgusted.
8
@Patricia Caiozzo I agree wholeheartedly. When the chips are down, the Dems fold and flee the table, chaos in the wake. This is no way to win an election nor win against a man who will do or say anything to get reelected.
3
Trump will be a shoo in now with chaotic democrats unable to run an election how could they run the country. Trump has the bully pulpit, huge finances ,the power of the executive branch,FOX STATE TV and Russia will clinch it ,get ready for a dictatorship.
2
Of utmost importance is identifying the individuals responsible for this epic fail. That can minimize the pr damage the Fox party is already feasting on. Was it Perez? Was it the person in charge of testing an app they already knew was not working yesterday afternoon? Names and accountability !!
2
Amazing incompetence. Iowa be last next time.
Seems to me this can't hurt Bloomberg. Maybe he's smart enough to avoid Tom Perez and the whole Democratic party hierarchy and their bumbling incompetence.
So much for making election security an issue in the general election....
If you want to design and work a computer system you need a 10 year old. Those over 40 as most vote counters are simply do not have the expertise or computer savvy to do it with any sense of confidence.
1
Eliminate the Caucus. Sometimes societies outgrow traditions and need to embrace improved ways of doing things. It is my determination that states like Oregon have the absolute best approach to voting. When there is an election, scanable paper ballots are mailed to all registered voters with an information packet describing all candidates and initiatives on the ballot. Once a voter has filled out their ballot they have the option to mail the ballot in, or drop it off in one of many very convienient ballot boxes throughout the state. No waiting in line for hours in nasty weather, no taking off work and losing income, no vulnerable touch screen machines, and an auditable paper trail.
From where I am sitting right now there are 7 boxes within 10 miles, the closest is less than half a mile away.
What more could anyone ask for if they want fair elections?
Maybe all of us do not want fair elections.
3
Do away with the caucuses and the electoral systems.
Let Americans vote unfettered and correctly.
4
Who in the Iowa Democratic Party signed off on an app without requiring the training on its use as well as beta testing that ran the functions and numbers that would occur during the caucuses?
That person needs to resign, and if any other states have equally dunder-headed plans in place, cancel them now. Don't even try.
And is there anyone at the national level who knew about this badly designed and informed plan? For goodness sake, we cannot afford this!
8
I now have a new reason to dread the upcoming caucus here in Nevada - apparently we will use the same app that Iowa tried.
Caucuses are nightmares. Hours of your life wasted and you can walk away feeling like your vote, if that's what it is, didn't even count.
In 2016 the Democratic party here was inexplicably unprepared for the large turnout. It took two hours just to get everyone registered. The event spanned the lunch hour, with no food, of course. Some people who were trying to vote on their lunch breaks had to leave.
It resembled the DMV more than democracy.
As much as I don't want to go through it again, I feel it's my duty. I want to have my say. But voting should not be torture.
8
Good riddance to both Iowa and New Hampshire. They both have had way too much influence over our political process. One-third of Iowa voters are over 65 and white. This is representative?
And this kerfuffle is a tempest in a teapot, or just click bait ("the Dems are in disarray"). Balderdash.
Let's move on to South Carolina and California. Hopefully this is a harbinger of re-alignment for the future.
3
In a few months this will be a non-memory and a non-issue. Iowa should not be first and should not have such an outsized impact on the Democratic nomination. It's voters look nothing like the rest of the country and are in no way a reasonable, representative sample. That should be the outcome of this debacle - time to push Iowa to the end of the list where it belongs.
6
I was on the analytics team for OFA 2012. We did tech right. This sounds like Orca.
If the Democratic party thinks that understanding people's second choice is important, ranked voting is not difficult to do. For heaven's sake, even Survey Monkey understands how to conduct ranked voting.
8
You build a faulty machine that should never be used, and you add a “ tech fix” to get it off the ground, don’t be surprised when the tech part fails and the whole thing falls from the sky and crashes and burns. Boeing 737-Max or the Democrats Iowa caucus. The end result is the same.
4
There’s only one rational explanation. Putin infiltrated the Democratic Party!
4
“Iowa is a prompt for cynicism. Cynicism is Trump’s lifeblood”. Trump wins......again. Just call off the whole ‘unholy’ mess.
2
It's time for the Democratic party to change this. States should rotate in groups who goes first. One year its these 5 states, the next cycle its another 5 states and so on. And get rid of this dumb caucus process, which excludes a ton of voters and is fundamentally undemocratic. I am tired of taking our cues from Iowa and New Hampshire.
10
Maybe we should just have all states vote on Super Tuesday. Would that really be so bad?
2
IT101: fully test an application before it goes into production
5
"amoral president" ...
Make that "immoral" ... and to the nth power.
2
Paper ballots!
6
This Democratic Party Iowa caucus is the 'wholly mess' that hacking, interfering and meddling smiling and smirking Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin dreamed of to aid and abet their mutual pawn pet puppet occupying the Oval Office of my White House.
Who is behind this scheme?
Israeli and/or Russian intelligence.
5
Gloating and taunting might be Trump's favorite sports but victimization in front of his fans is his performance art. He's the reincarnation of PT Barnum playing to the suckers.
And now, from the people who brought you the Hanging Chads of Palm Beach County and the Obamacare Rollout, we bring you Caucus Chaos.
Democrats should look in the mirror before blaming the Russians for delegitimizing our institutions.
8
Maybe this should be a lesson to the Dems that the leading (bleeding?) edge isn't the way to go, either in the tabulation of votes, or in the selection of a candidate. Tried and true will always come through.
3
Yep, should never have moved from the horse and buggy to automobiles.
The Shadowinc App management is made up of a who's who from Hillary's campaign. Go figure.
6
Haven’t heard or read this elsewhere. Please name the people involved.
1
Little Connecticut and Rhode Island ! Never in play.
We sway with the wind. !
Watching democracy , our 350 year experiment die.
Lately I am tuning out MSM and the NYT. You all are frustrating to smart people!!!!!!
Going to podcasts about History and Philosophy. and religious entomology. Stories about righteous Americans of color. Immigration stories too.
Podcasts people. Do it if you are able. Please. Better for sanity not to watch Hannity !!!!!!!
Read hi quality writing in professional journals. Get jump off points from a quick reference w Wikipedia. And make your own mind up. Everyone has their own reality intersecting . Respect each other as a weapon against trump.
And NYT why are you feeding the “ Beast”. Is it the newspapers owners controlling the pushback. ?? Must be. Some of your titles encourage positivity about trumps coup. You avoid truth. Now that I listened to that podcast about the rise of the 4 th Estate in history. I realize truth is relative. So unless you are actively acquiring knowledge you will accept “ people of the Lie”. Read good old M. Scott Peck”.... May he Rest In Peace. He was a 70’s guru of sociology. He predicted trumpworld in that book. I read it years ago and his descriptions of evil incarnate are chilling and correct in a depressing way. Our country in apathy allows their evil to flourish. Acquittal and Iowa give trump agency to go full on dictator ..... he will stop the elections . And he won’t participate in debates because he can.
3
Maybe we can get the incredibly competent folks who ran cyber security for Hillary's campaign to investigate and fix this!!!
#GigglingHappily
7
@RJ
If I’m not mistaken they were the ones who designed it.
5
I think I smell a rodent.
7
Where's the guy with the math hat?
2
previews of n'er to be seen coming attractions?? Best the Dems try bake sales and car washes as practice for the big time ... you wanna play true hardball .. make sure you bring your glove and oh.. we of the alternate view .. do wear spikes
1
This is Iowa's time to shine.
1
Reading and listening to the backbiting comments in the wake of the Iowa Caucus debacle this morning, I had the horrifically nagging feeling that I was witnessing the 21st century cyber equivalent of the Reichstag burning down.
3
Democratic dysfunction, confusion, and stupidity on display. The caucus is a joke. On-site registration at the caucus means that voter fraud is an absolute certainty. Plus it's not auditable.
4
Elections would be so much easier if we were ruled by a king, queen and/or dictator.
2
This was not the first time we’ve seen Dems, my party, botch a rollout. Remember the ACA mess? I hope sometime very soon Dems will figure out that you need to get the fundamentals right first. Show good management of the government, make people feel safe and be a good steward of the economy, and they will follow you anywhere (e.g., universal health care, environmental protection, equal rights); but if you don’t get the fundamentals right, you will not make progress on policy. If Mike Bloomberg were in charge of the Iowa caucuses, this would not have happened. Think about that and think about it again.
4
Add the convoluted system of the caucus to not enough testing a new system for recording the votes and you have a disaster. A Rep was trying to call in his group's votes was put on hold for over an hour. At the same moment CNN called him and because he didn't answer the call on hold quickly they disconnected him.
1
Iowa....K.I.S.S. You're embarassing yourselves.
1
Of course it's a mess. It was a mess even before the Iowa Caucus.
But what else would one expect from a party with so many candidates running against a president who has not only consolidated the Republican vote, but who has escaped impeachment as well?
No one should have expected anything other than the chaotic mess it has turned into -- but then again, whoever said Democracy isn't messy?
That may be true.
But at least we've still got one.
1
@N. Smith: A nation that cannot agree on an equal federal weight for every voter in federal elections cannot stand.
2
@Steve Bolger
Guess what?
We're still standing.
But that said, I agree with you --and still think we should abolish the Electoral College.
4
Who jammed the phone lines? Did someone cut the telegraph lines? China if you're listening? Russia if you're listening? Of course they are listening. Not that Republicans care...maybe Mitch did it.
BTW, is it true Iowa still uses the pony express to deliver mail?
3
The good news: no one has to justify scrapping the caucus system and the primacy of Iowa's "primary". We now have all the justification we could possibly need.
6
I'm simply exhausted at this point. Republicans love to tout the idea of "do-nothing democrats." This whole Iowa mess does not help put an end to their endless slew of lies, only enflames it.
New Hampshire needs to go much more smoothly before cynicism gets the better of people.
3
These caucuses are simply about sorting out which candidate has the ability to find and get out committed voters--a test for the organization (and inspiration) of the various candidates. It's not a democratic process with a winner. So the people organizing the event were trying to provide more data---who was "aligned first", and so on, leading to "delegates." By trying to be complete---rather than giving those of you who earn your daily bread by telling the rest of us what we think---it's gonna take a day. Take a breath and get over it.
1
Basta! I'm with Michael Tomasky in yesterday's Times: Forget this procedure that nobody understands in unrepresentative Iowa. Forget the primary in unrepresentative New Hampshire. Make Michigan and Florida our first primary states.
3
Except that Florida has proven several times that people don’t know how to vote; the people creating the voting devices don’t know how to make them simple; and the electoral officials don’t know how to count.
It is a good thing it was not the Republicans who had this caucus problem. The Democrats would be screaming fowl.
3
@KMW
Fowl ?
Hilarious.
3
@Phyliss Dalmatian As in the fowle duessa, methinks. Archaism, anyone?
2
If we insist on a single state to start things off, I nominate Georgia.
"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."
Will Rogers
3
Gosh. Where would we all be without another catastrophe du jour to feed our addiction? Bring back the good old days when we were building bomb shelters in our back yards to ward off nuclear annihilation.
2
App-schmapp -- how on earth can anyone imagine that "technology" will just do the right thing? This mysterious set-up of logarithms that few actually understand are dumped on everyday folks and presto-change-oh no one has to do her/his work any longer. More and more and more national functioning is being dumped on the harried and harassed and wow, instant gratification: graphics.
What a magic stew we have created: declining education, an aging population receiving no training, greedy mega-corporations expecting customers to do the(ir) work and offering no human assistance. All out-sourced to volunteers.
App-schmapp.
2
What's the big deal? The votes will be counted. Mr. Bruni wants immediate clarity from Iowa about who should be President. Why does he want that?
Democrats nationwide should continue to cast their primary votes without too much regard for hyperventilated journalism.
1
How do we know the Russians aren't behind this mess?
3
Because Putin said so.
2
Thanks Iowa for this unforced error and handing up a big fat cherry on a silver platter. I've been working systems for 30 years. You would not believe the conversations I have. It goes like this - There's a reason we do it this way because we've learned from experience what works and what doesn't work.
"Yeah but we have this new better way that you old guys just don't understand." Go ahead, blow it up. Then you'll understand. "Ok Boomer."
IT101: fully test an application before it goes into production
3
An attempt to torpedo Bernie? Anyone see Kerry scurrying around?
4
You had one job, Iowa! One job!!
6
How rich that Trump charges Democrats with incompetence for an application glitch when he blunders through every day.
5
Any new product, whether it’s an app, an aircraft guidance system, or a coffee maker must go through rounds of prototypes, testing (to failure) and debugging before it is released to the public. You want to discover the thing that will break it because if you don’t, the end users surely will.
3
That was a lesson that apparently went unlearned on day one of ACA signups when the untested beta product crashed. Democrats need to pay more attention to modern day realities.
3
If this is a harbinger of things to come, then I need to stock up on chocolate and wine.
11
Each of the campaigns need to accept some responsibility. Each campaign had experts on Iowa's caucus procedures. These experts knew that the Iowa Democratic party was changing how it reports votes and installing a new app. These experts had a duty to raise questions and be assured that the new system would work, especially since volunteers at each caucus site would have to be trained on the new system.
I watched as the networks’ cameras went to the caucuses all over Iowa and then to the celebrations in waiting. What was startling was the absence of any Black or Hispanic people. How can the Democrats even pretend that allowing Iowa to run the first election event, and consume all of that energy from candidates, is representative of the Democratic Party. In 2024, I hope the DNC has the wisdom and courage to select a couple of states to go first — states that have a representative mix of Democratic voters. And states with a Party that can actually run an election efficiently.
7
Agreed!
1
Iowa should abandon their overly complicated and entirely pointless caucus system in favor of the simplicity of voting for the candidates of their choice by marking their preference(s) with a pen on paper ballots. No problem with tallying the votes and then calling in the results via landline telephones.
An added bonus would be a paper record that would inhibit hacking or manipulating the vote count. In my view the legitimacy of the process should be primary, not the creation of a sense of pseudo-community for an evening that these contrived caucuses engender for no discernible purpose.
Straightforward voting with a paper trail affords a legitimacy that technology and arcane caucus rules can not possibly match.
4
As a Pete fan, I was fine with him giving his victory speech. It seemed like he performed well enough that he should take a good amount of momentum into NH. He deserves more than this disaster will allow.
4
Oh. My. God!
Small low-density low-diversity red states, in conjunction with the electoral college, have such disproportionate power in selecting the candidates and electing the President of the United States.
The Democratic National Committee's continuing decision to make Iowa caucuses a Democratic first in the nation primary election event was fraught with yester-year thinking and planning.
Iowans simply proved it.
4
The caucus system is a joke to begin with. We use to have it here in Washington State. When I attended in 2016, it was obvious that "party insiders" were going to intimidate the Sanders supporters and there was a full fledge onslaught to get us to turn to Clinton. In the end most did. I walked away angry at the process, angrier after the presidential election. Caucuses should be done away with, one person, one vote.
6
An epic disaster. Just one more sign that we are truly living through the fall of Rome.
The mishandling of the process is inexcusable.
However, it was always absurd that such a small and homogeneous group of people could have such a profound impact on the selection of the person previously known as the leader of the free world....
As each day passes, it becomes harder to be hopeful about the future of democracy.
4
How about shucking this quaint caucus idea, and just running a conventional primary where people go and vote, using a voting machine with paper backup. Use rank voting if you want to keep that aspect of caucus voting. You'll probably also get a much higher turnout.
2
Primaries held on the same day in all states with mail in ballots. No voting machines.
Mail those ballots in!
2
Let's get this straight: a state with a couple million people gets to decide who the nominee will be through something called a caucus, not a circus, but a way of shuffling votes until somebody emerges as a clear second or third, like rugby when you throw the ball backward while running forward.
Then add the fact that it's extremely cold and dark in February in Iowa, the least representative state of any in the nation except maybe Wyoming. Hard to move around and even harder to stand around in some godawful Elks' hall in Dubuque.
Then there's the inept, disorganized factor. Welcome to the 21st century, Iowa! age of technology and all that and you guys just do chaos in the great big oversized national spotlight.
It's high time to stand aside and let other states decide.
11
I am trying to look on the bright side. Maybe an enormous turnout caused the whole system to break down. Enormous turnouts are usually good for Democrats.
2
Imagine this archaic caucus system in NYC. Go to your designated Starbucks, spend an hour over your lattes with others, vote on a paper napkin and have the cashier tally the votes. It would be a far more diverse and efficient process than this Iowa debacle.
4
Putting aside for the moment the conjoined lunacies that are the Primaries and the Electoral College, why should anyone pay any attention to Iowa? Its demographics and overwhelming whiter population make it an unlikely predictor of the national mood. Things can and will inevitably change in the next nine months. Tempest in a teapot!
1
@Archibald McDougall
I wanted to call your attention to the fact that Obama was propelled to the presidency from his win in Iowa. Perhaps you had a different opinion then? It is indeed a long way to Election Day--and this is just one step or rather misstep. We need to look at it for what it was--a snafu of technology and perphaps hubris.
I don't belong to an organized political party-I am a Democrat! Was that Will Rogers?
The tech problems encountered in Iowa remind me of the excellent Obamacare rollout that was nearly derailed by terrible tech management of the website. No wonder Parscale is laughing.
Bloomberg is smart to do do things differently.
5
IBasta! I'm with Michael Tomasky in yesterday's Times: Forget this procedure that nobody understands in unrepresentative Iowa. Forget the primary in unrepresentative New Hampshire. Make Michigan and Florida our first primary states.
After the DNC literally robbed Bernie Sanders of the 2016 nomination how can any Democrat trust them?
I don’t and wont contribute a dime to them. Perez was the wrong choice to run the DNC as he is just another Clinton clone.
The Democrats need to be led by progressives not moderates.
Does anyone really feel we are in normal times, needing average Democratic politics...I don’t think so.
4
@JD - The DNC didn’t “literally” or figuratively rob Bernie of anything, last time or this time. That the DNC did anything to prevent Bernie from winning the 2016 primary was debunked. Now he and his supporters will cry foul if he’s not #1 in IA. As we saw in 2016, caucuses favor Bernie. Even if he’s first in this caucus, he’ll won’t be in the primaries, especially those in states not as white as IA and NH.
Btw, Bernie isn’t a Democrat. He puts down Democrats. Theoretically, the DNC should favor Democrats over him, and should definitely favor any Democrat who CAN win in this fight for our country’s life. Bernie can’t possibly win the presidency.
3
@A Dot The DNC should *not* favor "Democrats" over Bernie. The difference between Bernie and the rest of democrats (what you would consider "real democrats" or otherwise) is infinitesimal compared to the difference between the GOP and the Democrats. DNC should favor whomever has the best chance of winning against Trump. Vote Blue, No Matter Who.
There is a reason that Iowa is so white, so rural, and so old. The rules for the coucuses are also so antiquated. Is there a more laughable and less computer savvy group on the planet.
2
Hold back on reporting the results of the Democratic Caucus until tRump's SOU speech. This will steal some of his thunder. :)
Jeez, cut 'em some slack, will ya'? Yes, it's embarrassing, yes, it's poor optics, but it's not a deal-breaker. Our republic has never had to face down a slow-moving, fascist coup. ("Permanent one-party rule in the service of the plutocrats".) The cynics you worry about losing? They already don't care about truth and fairness. To me, democracy is inherently messy and disorganized, so the Democrats reflect that. Sure, Iowa will lose its appeal as a bell-wether, but that's OK. We've got bigger problems ahead of us.
5
There is some good that may come out of all this. Perhaps the DNC will reconsider Iowa as the first state to vote next time round. Michigan would be a smarter choice - far more diverse. But of course the DNC could not offend Iowa Democrats unless...
1
The Democratic Party has rarely passed up an opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Over and over again it demonstrates its unfitness as a serious participant in the electoral process, let alone to govern.
While its soldiers on the ground make a royal hash of routine procedures, the Party tolerates sclerotic figures like the ever-bitterly unhelpful Hillary Clinton sniping at viable candidates from behind a curtain of irrelevance. Unsatisfied with ruining her own candidacy, she gleefully pours sand into the gears of other candidacies.
Who would be motivated to support such a carnival of clowns at the polls? We found out in 2016, but the Democratic Party failed to learn the lesson. Even if a political movement deliberately set out to lose momentum, it could never do worse than today's donkey cart of bumbling Democrats.
The Democratic Party does not deserve to win. The rest of us hardly deserve the consequences of such woeful ineptitude.
4
Last time Iowa should go first. What a mess!
1
It shallow be known as"The Ma and Pa Kettle" primary..
1
"I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." Will Rogers
The best committed Democrats can do today is hang our heads in shame that the party that didn’t bother to campaign in the upper Midwest in 2016, now produces this telling reminder of absolute incompetence. Tonight comes the malevolent one before a huge national audience, chortling and stretching the truth only in part that the party that wants to wipe out every insurance plan in the country cannot even run an election in a small state. This Democrat is taking a new look at Mike Bloomberg this mornings. He was smart to stay out of this Iowa debacle that consumed an entire year to make the Democratic party look unfit. Democrats might consider that competence is always an option.
1
I think this is great! The Iowa event should not really have much weight in choosing the nominee, and now it won't
3
It’s ridiculous but not catastrophic. It’ll be fine. Take a breath. Better dumb stuff happen now than later. The process made the candidates a little bit better.
But whoever ran this process and technology should find a new line of work.
1
Once the “mellow” Boomers made “don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s ALL small stuff,” America’s go-to mantra in the 90s, America itself was finished. Now we have a Boomer president and his Boomer base who could care less about mere truth, facts, norms, morals, our Constitution, you name it. Now even German Iowa has been swept up into this idiotic Boomer miasma of heedless, careless, national incompetence. Adios, America. Have another hit from the national Margaritaville bong, wherever it is, and let the Chinese do the heavy lifting of running the world, for a change. We prefer Lotusland.
When I woke this morning, I wondered if I had gotten my eight hours sleep, looked at the time on my phone, saw 6:13 and asked, "When did I retire last night?" Having recalled that I had stayed up to watch the Iowa returns and, upon learning of their delay, gave up quickly, I thought, "That was about 10:15 and close enough."
The thought then came to me, "Did the Iowa Dems delay their announcement of the caucus results in order to step all over Trump's State Of The Union Day?"
Wouldn't that be surprising for its wit and its guile?
If that wasn't the IA Dem's intent, it's still a delightful eventuality.
Always look at the bright side of life. Tadi do do dum dum.
1
While emblematic of the Democrats’ general melt down, what we are learning of the results is a clear indicator of Americans’ feelings on the Democrats latest TDS induced impeachment hoax.
Biden received almost no support at all.
The American people do not want a crooked politician.
There is already a crooked president.
2
Iowa is a political carnival for affluent white people with too much time on their hands, forcing candidates to lie, early and often, dishing out all the requisite flattery of all things Iowa to titillate jaded, self-important palates. Iowa is a place where even Amy Klobuchar's Minnesota "Hot Dish" -- suitably coronary cuisine to be sure -- gets national coverage because it might be a pandering faux pas, insufficiently Iowa for Iowa caucus goers. End it.
1
Oh Shakespeare, how did thou divine human nature so brilliantly?
Investing so much in much ado about nothing could wipe those who did it out of contention. Draft Adam Schiff. He can articulate what is wrong the the US judicial system. There are honest lawyers out there who are as disgusted with the infestation of the profession by shysters as I am.
The Iowa vote must be nullified.
Was Hunter Biden a paid consultant for the app?
2
Get rid of this caucus nonsense! Its childlike democracy. Bloomberg smells like a rose. He is the smart money!
1
I caucused last night and served as a volunteer. Over 60 percent of the registered Dems in my precinct showed up, enthusiastically participating in what many of us view as the most important election in nearly a century. Many left saddened by the realization that a caucus cannot simulate a primary when you have 9 candidates, 4 of which have nearly equal levels of support. In my precinct Klobuchar received about 12 percent of the first preference count, but in the end received no delegates. Other candidates probably experienced similar outcomes in other precincts. My hypothesis is that the leadership expected these discrepancies to average out such that at the county level there would be a close match between the initial preference votes and the distribution of delegates. When this did not happen the first inclination was to look for data errors, and there no doubt were some, but in fact the real problem was probably that surprisingly large and awkward discrepancies between the preference counts and the final delegate distribution implied that there were errors when the data was in fact correct.
3
Exhaustion all around .
88
@GW
"As Democratic elites braced for a Bernie Sanders triumph in Iowa, a mysterious piece of technology spun out by a group they supported delayed the vote results, preventing Sanders from delivering a victory speech. And the politician many of them supported, Pete Buttigieg, exploited the moment to declare himself the winner. In such a strange scenario, the conspiracy theories write themselves."
"Democratic Party’s Iowa caucuses ended, the results have not been announced. The delay in reporting is the result of a failed app developed by a company appropriately named Shadow Inc."
"This firm was staffed by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaign veterans and created by a Democratic dark money nonprofit backed by hedge fund billionaires including Seth Klarman. A prolific funder of pro-settler Israel lobby organizations, Klarman has also contributed directly to Pete Buttigieg’s campaign.
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/04/pro-israel-buttigieg-seth-klarman-iowas-voting-app/
Interesting twitter feed on caucus software, https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1224561674679488513
The United States: World Leade . . . never mind.
170
@genegnome maybe not a leader; yet we seem to be mirroring the chaos around the world; as the earth shakes again in Puerto Rica and a virus misrepresented by the government of China. M. Scott Peck often said that chaos breeds opportunity, so possibly we are on the brink of sanity and safety in the USA.
2
@Nettie Glickman
You are understanding that the USA is not a nation under God it is a nation of you the people. I hope you are correct but Nihilism is so much easier than fundamental change. I used to love the America that believed in a better future and I hope your citizens again embrace a better future.
2
Iowa should never go first again and the inability to count votes is a joke. I trust the Democratic Party is going to take immediate action so that Iowa is never given this kind of power going forward. Unfortunately, Iowa has now given Trump a major talking point about Democratic incompetence.
Diverse, populated states with substantial economies should be given an early equal voice.
At least in Texas, I get to vote somewhat early on Super Tuesday in early March when several candidates still remain. I feel sorry for readers in New York as by the time you get to vote in the primary system, most candidates have already been eliminated.
4
Calm down. There is no imperative to know the results now. If I were the DNC, I'd have IA Dem's announce the results tonight at 7:00 Central Time. Yup, at the beginning of Trump's speech.
5
Smart move :-)
We should only pay attention to large urban voters. The cities are as diverse in their populations as they are monolithic in their thinking and contempt for the rest of us. It is frightening how quick the blue bubblers use this to minimize the existence of voters everywhere else.
1
Other than not having to mill around for hours on end at a gymnasium or a football field, can someone please tell me what the difference between how these caucuses are conducted and how ranked-choice voting works?
Is the peer pressure exuded by physical presence really that determinative? Should it be?
Come on Iowa, do it right. Many other States already have. Please adopt ranked-choice voting on paper ballots that are machine readable. There, I fixed it for you.
10
Take a deep breath. The results will be reported today or tomorrow. The winner/s will take a victory lap. This is the first inning of a nine inning ballgame. In a couple of weeks it'll all be forgotten.
2
Diversity takes time and attention. I don't mind a little wait in order to get it right.
The Iowa Democrats were smart enough to require extensive paper documentation as a backup to their apps. This should be a lesson to every state that puts their faith in digital voting alone.
4
SC's presidential preference primary is coming with a considerably more representative electoral sample and a professionally run real electron, not this incomprehensible, complex caucus method.
Those of us working at the SC polls that day will have our chance to do it right. I think we'll succeed. Don't give up hope.
5
This is the rotten fruit of the completely undemocratic caucus. What should we believe? That it was all a problem with an App that somehow all the great minds in the tech world couldn't solve? Should we believe the candidates "internal polling" to be fair and accurate? Does anyone believe that the immediate statement by the caucus officials that there was no hacking is any more reliable than the blaming of the App. The most important thing to exclude is hacking by a foreign or domestic entity that has vast experience and the resources to carry out the hit. Is this the grand scheme to discredit the entire Democratic Party and certain candidates, words that were uttered immediately by our current President last night? All the candidates should be calling for such an investigation, rather than immediately claiming victory based solely on their internal polling. The last election was rigged by those foreign forces, who are poised and encouraged to do it again. Our current President used those words as a prelude to claiming the coming election is rigged allowing him to nullify the result should he lose. Can't happen here? I'm not so sure.
6
Why the delay? Give us the mechanics of the problem. What is the process? What is being done to complete the process? When might it be complete?
I don't mind waiting for results if I know this. Waiting without it just fuels conspiracy theories.
4
Technology would be great if it worked. And therein lies the real message of the 2020 election: do not put your faith in computer systems that can easily go down, be hacked, or simply be the victim of operator error. We must insist that all elections--primary or general--have paper ballots. And in the absence of that, we should encourage every voter to screenshot their vote as proof.
I feel awful for all of the organizers and volunteers on the ground who have put their lives on hold for a year or more only to have software glitches ruin what should have been a very triumphant night for a select few candidates.
Let's finally put Iowa to bed as the decider of who is worthy to continue toward the nomination. Perhaps, oh, I dunno, a diverse state with a large population should go first? California? New York? Just spitballing, here.
5
I wonder if the major mess up here will be Mayor Pete's premature announcement. Of course he had the opportunity to be in Iowa while Sanders, Warren and Klobuchar were stuck in impeachment hearings so maybe he does have something to crow about. We'll know soon enough. In the future, maybe we should expect longer waits for accurate results. Sure beats getting it wrong ...
3
Above all, voters demand understanding and clarity of the voting process. The Democratic Party delivered neither, and worse, destroyed any faith in their ability to run the country.
5
Don’t release the results. The process was tainted the results should be negated. On to NH.
5
I disagree that there are "stratospheric stakes" in the upcoming election. Both parties are militaristic, fiscally irresponsible, beholden to wealthy individuals and corporations, and environmentally irresponsible because they refuse to acknowledge the crisis of global overpopulation. Although the Democrats are better on social issues, their policies on immigration are likely in the long run to be self-defeating. The best I can say for the Democrats is that all of their candidates are far more dignified than Trump.
3
Above all, voters demand understanding and clarity of the voting process. The Democratic Party delivered neither, and worse, destroyed faith in their ability to run the country.
2
IOWA- I Owe the World an Apology
They will lose the economic benefit of being the first Caucus/primary state for this and rightly so. Pick two diverse flip flop states like PA and FL. A much better representation of our country’s diverse populations and political ideas.
9
Sure, Florida. The one with the hanging chads, amongst all the other incompetencies displayed over the years. Face it, you and a lot of others were just looking for any excuse to dump on Iowa.
The Russians did it! Impeach Trump!
1
Back before electricity and indoor plumbing and modern voting machines, caucuses like Iowa's presumably helped make up for the lack of the latter, rather like lanterns and pit toilets did for the other lacks.
Let's stop "Donald Trumping" ourselves. Really. A new system didn't work as expected last night. Let's just get over it and move on. Leave the chastising and outlandish criticisms to Trump, his cronies, and Fox News. We don't need to keep giving them self-flagellating and divisive fodder. This is is a fatal flaw that is sinking the Democratic Party.
5
My dystopian nightmare finds 'irregularities' with/in voting and as such - the (Nov) election is postponed/canceled/invalidated (etc)...
Thanks Iowa for reality...
3
All the time & money that the candidates put in seems wasted. Looks like the winner here is Michael Bloomberg!
1
Obviously hacked by all the usual suspects!
The only problem with Parscale's and Trump's hack is they don't yet have a definite target or specific opponent for their scorn and filth!
Democrats and many Republicans, as it turns out, are so anxious to make this change that it's no wonder the channels were overwrought and got a bit scrambled.
There was a recent poll that couldn't be released because of some glitch. I guess this is related.
Something is definitely going on, but what??
1
The results are in and safely stored on a server in the Ukraine.
3
How many people outside of Iowa can explain how their caucus system works?
@Dennis Driscoll Probably the same number of people as those who live in Iowa.
And now after all the things Jodi Ernst has said about Joe Biden over the past few days, she and Chuck Grassley are begging Dems to stay in Iowa. You have to give it to them - the Rs have got chutzpah.
Show some spine Dems and move on - you know its best.
2
Another reason to dump Iowa from primacy and start with primaries in more representative swing states. And with a field this large, voting should be ranked choice. This Iowa caucus nonsense has gone on for far too long.
5
"The firm behind the app reportedly is Shadow, an affiliate of ACRONYM, a Democratic nonprofit founded in 2017 “to educate, inspire, register, and mobilize voters,” according to its website. Shadow started out as Groundbase, a tech developer co-founded by Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis, who worked for the tech team on Clinton’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic nomination."
Hillary. Why won't she go away? Maybe because, Bernie is still winning.
4
Settle down! Crazy stuff happens. After all, we elected a mafia blowhard predator who lost by 3,000,000 votes and then blamed it on non-existent dead people. Seriously, it doesn't get weirder than that.
As for Iowa: I have warmed to concept. Super serious people attempting a close scrutiny analysis as a starting point before cash and media sculptors intercede. Iowa, I am on your side!
3
What a circus, all bombastic, but magi's tricks (results) left hanging in the air. But, to be really clownish, braggadocio Trump was missing (in-person, given his ever present little fingers in Twitter's nonsense), the most arrogant beast in history (stemming from his deep ignorance of the facts...unless defined and fabricated by him for his convenience). Can't we see that Trump, an inflated buffoon, has no virtues of his own, hence, diverting our attention to other's shortcomings? This, however at fault Iowa's 'app' was. But please, do not become belittled by cruello jester Trump's parade, a farcical show only adept for a second class reality TV show.
2
I would not be surprised if there is. SABOTAGE. We R living a nightmare.
It's Iowa, where corn rules supreme. Wake up America. Shut Iowa out once and for all.
How embarrassing and fodder for Trump for the year to come.
4
Repeat of 2016 indeed. If 2016 is an indicator of how 2020 will go for the democrats, just strap yourself in for a blindfolded ride. So much of what happens with our election process is secretive and ethically questionable. Just ask Bernie, who democrats actively worked against in the primary season of 2016. We were not supposed to know that - until some emails were outed. Whoops.
The two-party system is theater. The U.S. government will always represent elite, wealthy and corporate interests, regardless of party. Anyone offering a lifeboat for the poor and the middle class will be shut down unless a popular uprising occurs. That Iowa happened is just another flourish on the stage.
Read Howard Zinn’s “The People’s History of the United States.”
5
“If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving is definitely not for you.” Steven Wright
Words of wisdom for the Iowa Democratic Party leaders.
6
Trump is crowing "I'll protect Iowa's first in the nation voting." Gee, I wonder why?
1
Caucuses are an embarrassing anachronism, to be thrown into the same historical garbage can as the “Electoral College.”
Delete that app and fill out your paper ballot in the privacy of a booth and watch as it gets fed into the ballot box.
4
Oh come on. I'm not a Sanders supporter, but I understand why his are livid at the coverage he receives in the national media. Even when it is not a major point of a piece, columnists like Bruni just can't help themselves.
Bruni is right that Biden's "We’re going to walk out of here with our share of delegates" was "a safe statement, because it was an utterly vacuous one." It's every bit as safely vacuous as Biden's candidacy itself. Safe and vacuous is what he's openly selling to voters most worried about what they imagine other voters, Trump voters, white voters, might dislike. He's got older African-American voters so enthralled in that worry that the party lost its African-American candidates even before last night's disaster, for lack of African-American support in the polls. Women candidates face the same peril.
Bernie Sanders didn't "match" Biden's vacuity. "I have a strong feeling that at some point, the results will be announced" was fully ironic, said with a mischievous grin, and the funniest, wittiest line of the night. Calling that a match is both gratuitous and dead wrong.
Please, if you want Democrats to unite after the primaries to beat Trump, as we all do, just give Sanders his due. Stop this incessant 2016-holdover sniping at every opportunity. If we were to judge candidates by the humanity of retaining a sense of humor under fire, Sanders' "I have a strong feeling that at some point, the results will be announced" was almost enough to win me over.
7
Great optics Iowa. This just adds to the increasing list of reasons why you - indeed no state - deserves this kind of outsized, early influence. Iowans are so bullish on themselves assuming this role. Still, I'm concerned that less than 20% of your population even participates in the caucuses and recent reports suggest few new how they worked. And now the app doesn't work? Republicans will have a ball with this.
it's already pretty tiresome hearing Iowans say how in this 90% white and middle to upperclass state, hey seriously consider the issues that affect ALL Americans, that they have our interests at heart. Sorry. I never heard a better example of White Privilege.
Let Ohio or Georgia or any other more economically and culturally diverse state hold its primaries at the same time. or immediately after.
Oh and Iowa Democrats: Your state has elected:
Gov Kim Reynolds (Big Trump Supporter)
Joni Ernst
Steve King
Chuck Grassley
Senate Majority is Republican
You do not represent us well.
5
Doesn't seem fair to blame the entire Democratic Party or all the Democrats for the problems only in Iowa. It's the Iowa election apparatus that is having trouble coming up with the total counts. Let's not make it a referendum on how bad Democrats are, because this is no indication of it.
2
If this had happened to the Republican party instead, they, and their media, would be saying this was exactly the plan all along and they'd be boasting about their perfectly perfect, beautiful new app that would revolutionize caucusing like no one in the world ever dreamed possible. Maybe that approach would be better than publicly joining them in piling on.
1
Perception is everything in modern politics. Unfortunately, after the Iowa debacle it will be hard for the Democratic Party to shed the label of the gang that couldn't shoot straight. If there is a silver lining one can hope it will result in some other option than making Iowa a perennial king or queen maker.
1
The amount of time and money that candidates are forced to spend in a state that does not represent the country and uses the antiquated caucus system is obscene. And the results are now meaningless and without credibility. Let states vote (vote, not caucus) in order of population; even alphabetical order would make more sense than the current system.
3
@Susan Dean: So much sound and fury that signifies nothing. Yorick always gets the last laugh.
A good reminder of the limits of technology, our media driven frenzy, and being in too much of a hurry for small potatoes. This will serve as a 'heads up' notice: Here in California with our 495 convention delegates versus Iowa's 49, they are already saying it will take days, perhaps a week or so, to count the results. This is due to California's Vote By Mail system, paper ballots, and the ability to register up to the day of voting, provisional ballots. Be patient, it will work out.
5
There are enough locally reported data to get the gist of how this turns out. 1a Bernie - as expected; 1b Pete - better than expected; 3 Amy - much better than expected; 4 Warren - worse than expected; 5 Biden - as bad as feared.
1
It's long been a mystery to me. If the general election is decided in a handful of States like Ohio and Florida, why aren't our first primaries in those States that ultimately decide the general election instead of tiny white States like Iowa and New Hampshire? Iowa and my home State of Nebraska are both irrelevant. We both ought to have our primary elections on the same day.
4
Iowa can no longer be the first primary. Simple as that. Not just because the State is inept but because it does not represent a true cross section of what America is in 2020. The first primary needs to be in a State where a large number of people actually live.
5
So, Frank!
"...a baffling spectacle resistant to any quick, definitive verdict."
You do know that this is pretty much "caucus" defined, right?
The caucus process here in Iowa is always chaotic. You can frame that as a "disaster," or as "Democracy being its usual messy self."
My experience last night as a precinct captain for a candidate was this: Our large caucus (@800 people) was well organized, congenial, chaotic, loud, challenging, interesting--and a great chance for neighbors to stand up for what they believe in. The caucus as a party-building event positions us well to organize for the general election (when our priority will be replacing Joni Ernst).
Yes, there's a glitch. But the caucus last night was also a community celebration.
1
@Sarah
If you want a community celebration, have one.
There is absolutely no reason it needs to be connected to our political process with outsized influence.
Your comment makes me think you don't take this seriously at all.
11
This morning the Washington Post reports that Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and Iowa’s two Republican Senators are defending keeping the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. Why am I not surprised? The state gets a big economic boost from the campaigns and the media people who camp here for months--and, even more in line with the Republican's hidden agenda of voter suppression, the caucus process effectively limits citizen participation.
In 2016 I spent hours sitting on the floor at my precinct caucus waiting to be counted for HRC. Last night I was a volunteer precinct captain for Amy Klobuchar in Iowa City. I’m a committed Democrat but this morning I’m exhauste, and embarrassed that we've handed a bunch of talking points to Trump that he won't even have to lie about! As Howard Dean and Illinois Sen. Durbin are saying, it’s time for the Iowa caucuses to go. Indeed, we still have a primary in June to choose non-Presidential candidates. I hope that the Iowa Democratic Party will seriously consider replacing our deeply undemocratic (and now, dysfunctional) caucus with a primary.
9
This whole anachronism requiring persons to go out at night and sit or stand around for hours is absurd. More importantly it is discriminatory and ageist.
Many seniors can't or won't drive after dark. Many find standing for hours impossible, or fear going out in the cold and dark. Clearly this system favors one candidate whose cult is tilted toward millennials. This may have also favored another, the 38 year old candidate. But we know who it penalized, and the surveys show he wins big among the 50 and over voters: Joe Biden. Therefore take his third or fourth likely finish with a grain of salt. It's a long slog.
Then consider the tweets of the hard right activist crowd. The false claims of a plot against Sanders. Always with the right, hate radio and Trump, they're rooting for Sanders and attacking the former V.P. If that doesn't tell you who they want to face (because he's an electoral college disaster), then nothing will.
Elections are not determined by twenty-somethings living at home with Mom, nor by aging radicals of the 70's nor by professors of sociology/gender studies/ethnic studies. Sorry, Sanders cult. Just the facts, Mam, as Sgt. Friday (Jack Webb) of "Dragnet" once intoned.
4
Don’t forget, in addition to this foul up, tomorrow will be the results of the Democrats misbegotten impeachment, where the jurors were supposed to do the prosecutors job. Not an impressive political party. Why did we have to have an app? Weren’t there enough volunteers to do it manually.
1
The whole electoral process needs a thorough clean up. It is too expensive, too long and too confusing. Candidates are really campaigning from day one of the inaugurations for the next elections. We should start with limits when to start to the campaign, 6 months before the election should be more than enough. Maybe our elected leaders would have some real-time to really govern.
4
The Democrats look like a high school team compared to Trump's pro NFL-like organization. So frustrating to watch these people slowly lose another presidential election.
5
The Bad News Bears er, Donkeys
1
So what have we learned? Primary elections are a better method than caucuses for sorting and selecting candidates. While there may be many justifications for “early primaries” in smaller media market and population states, they do not overwhelm the justification for asking for early views from a more diverse and representative population of voters. The Democratic Party needs to take a long hard look at its candidate selection and vetting process. In the most critical election in at least recent history, 2020 is not off to a good start. We can and must do better.
2
Harbinger of Bernie's inability to actually consider the practical requirements and consequences of what he wants, and of the Democratic party leadership to take a stand and manage anything competently.
They should have pushed back on his advocates about collecting this additional data which serves to do nothing but hinder the winner's ability to gather momentum (politically, the entire purpose of the caucus) and introduces as we've seen significant complexity that nobody was prepared to actually deal with.
If the party is going to act like this, there is no need for a party. Parties are supposed to be a machine to identify and promote talent, raise and direct funds, and provide messaging all from the standpoint of what are supposed to be political professionals. If you don't like that, well then I wish you good luck against the organized and disciplined republicans. It's a fantasy to think the will of the people will prevail if only everything was wide open.
The democratic party similar to congress has abdicated its responsibilities to the roar of the mob, or at least that of Bernie bros. We will all suffer 4 more years of Trump as the result.
1
Question: Will citizens appalled at the thought of four more years of Trump, decide to cast their votes to re-elect him because of this?
So much forceful language about failure. I mean it is truly outrageous! But not that the silly Iowa caucus experienced some difficulties. No what's is outrageous is the failure to reform the primary system. I mean really . . . the major parties and political leaders cant be persuaded to give up this convoluted one state at a time til super Tuesday nonsense. One can't expect help from the main news media; it's just too much fun in a world where being a political reporter is the career pinnacle. The system is so absurd the major newspapers and TV networks should start ever report on the results with a qualifier - "In the undemocratice, highly criticized primary election race . . ." On second thought - stand your moral ground and insist primary season start in Hawaii . . . where it will be much more dun.
2
We’re so in trouble.
Unless young people are compelled to come out an vote, our American experiment is done.
When you’re born into a system, it’s easy to forget that the only thing that’s for certain, is that nothing is for certain.
5
The electoral college should be scrapped completely.
Election day should be a massive National holiday with everything except health related businesses closed down. Like malls, fast food (sorry Donald), Disney Land, gyms, you get the picture. Polling places should open for the entire day, starting at midnight.
In 2016 74,074,037 people who cast votes did not vote for the republican candidate.
Hmmmm....that is over 11 million votes more than the Republican got. Oh well.
1
If I’m not mistaken, the GOP has had its fair share of next day results from Iowa too. It’s amazing how people forget
1
our reaction to the problems well-meaning people under such national scrutiny are being treated with the same anger and sarcasm as democrats and republicans treat each other. way to go journalist for stoking the fire.
2
Totally agree that Iowa’s lead position in the nominating process is unwarranted. Totally agree that the caucus system predates ancient Athens and should be dropped. But there’s this little problem called “The Constitution of the United States”, which gives the power to set voting procedure to the individual states. So, for all those who are complaining, PRECISELY how do we change it??
Who has two years to spend camped out in Iowa to establish name recognition?
3
The democratic party doesn't care if Trump wins. The insiders get their money either way. You think anything else matters to them?
1
Iowa is only one state that the media has hyped too long. Now they're overly disappointed that the state tried something before the bugs were worked out. That's what you get for creating these false idols in the first place. Relax. It wasn't the election. Many more primaries to come. Who cares what the Trump campaign thinks.
3
Perhaps we could force the parties to select candidates without using each states wlection process. Smile and wonder if the parties were left with nationwide online voting. Pimaries make our parties look like government institutions when they are not.
1
Can you imagine what would happen if on election night 2020 one or a few swing states leaked news that a minor kerfuffle occurred at a polling station or while counting votes. It wouldn’t matter if it was true or not. It wouldn’t matter if a minor discrepancy that was resolved swiftly & without drama transpired. Trump would seize upon even a hint of a kerfuffle happening. It wouldn’t matter whether it was true or false & if true-completely resolved; Trump would throw the weight of the office of the presidency, his armed torches & pitchforks crowds, & Bill ‘Roy Cohn’ Barr at the state election boards, steamrolling over & contaminating any & all evidence of the vote counting process & final results.
And what could we do ? Absolutely nothing since Republicans have bought into Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz’s logic that the president can do anything that he believes will help him win an election, as it is in the public interest.
Put nothing past the emperor wannabe Donald J. Trump. Don’t expect Republican congressional leadership to balk at any sign of a Trump or a Trump surrogate move to suspend the election if it looks like it’s going to close. Democrats need to be prepared for any Trump move to muck the 2020 election up - because there WILL be an attempt if the election is close.
3
This whole spectacle does so remind me of the Monty Python line:
"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government…"
5
Every state in the US is an island unto itself in its administration of federal elections.
2
“There’s no excuse for this, not given how long the Iowa Democratic Party had to prepare, not given the privilege of the state’s first-in-the-nation status, not given how deeply invested tens of millions of distraught Americans are in the effort to get rid of an unfit, amoral president. That effort can’t start like this.”
I’m beginning to realize that maybe it’s not Democrats, or Democratic candidates that is our problem. Maybe it’s the Democratic Party itself?
At first, shunning Bernie for Hillary, (in retrospect) was a mistake. Electing Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to anything was a mistake. And of course, taking the bait of phishing email by Russians was a mistake.
Maybe Dems should just get rid of the Party and start fresh?
3
Time for the DNC to rethink their whole primary process. The only thing Iowa should claim to be the first in is corn
2
We needed the Democrats to do everything in their power to keep Trump from winning a second term. But no, we had to have a partisan impeachment with a known result that only enhances his chances of winning that election. Now this in Iowa. I fear we are in for four more years of this man, and much of the blame goes to the leadership of the Democratic party. What a travesty!
Good riddance, Iowa. The winner is Michael Bloomberg , who avoided wasting his own money on this small, lovely, but totally insignificant (in election ) state.
The whole fiasco is not the Iowa Democratic Party fault, but the media’s fault. They (including this newspaper) have overhyped the importance of this primary and the whole thing blew up in their face - nothing to report!
5
Gold Standard polls hidden.
Secretive App malfunctions.
Phone lines down.
Good thing the DNC have never been caught cheating before ,am I right?
This is the first time in American history the same candidate won both the Republican and Democrat caucus' in the same night.
Simply...amazing.
2
Brad Parscale and the dark arts of American democracy. How much Russian money will fund the GOP in 2020?
4
Let’s join the Democrats, said nobody.
They really seem to have their act together.
Still trying to figure out how to cheat Bernie.
1
@Ken
This entire mess happened because Bernie whined about getting more data to burnish his showing.
@Sarah
This is Bernie’s fault because he wanted to make sure he wasn’t cheated again?
More data. Like how many votes there were?
Is there an app for this app?
2
Iowa stumbled but Trump will lose 2020.
3
The irregularities that put the results on hold came from Sanders campaign. He had his own app to log results and when the DNC was showing crazy numbers for Mayor Pete ,Sanders app was showing he winning by large margins.
Time for the DNC chair to step down . NYT please do your job.
After such a display of blinding incompetence, how can we possibly believe whatever results and figures the nitwits who run the caucus process finally report?
We don’t need Russians or Ukrainians or aliens to sabotage the Democratic efforts, the Iowa Democratic Committee has already done the deed.
There's an app for that. . .Or not.
1
D for Democrats. D for the lowest passing grade. D for riDiculous. The sham trial and this and the state of the union...Trump is off and running and Democrats haven't figured out how to tie their shoes.
2
I'm having flashbacks to the roll-out of Obamacare. Way to go, Dems.
2
ShadowincHQ the maker of the app on twitter follows a dark money group paying for attack adds against Bernie last week. Hey reporters do your job!
2
Can one of the NYT reports that I pay for please find out if it's true Mayor Pete's campaign also funded Shadowinc? The app that failed?
3
So let's move one, you were supposed to report on Monday but can't so let's move on to NH. You had four years to fix your mess, let's look for a new state to host the first caucus. How about NY?!?!?!?!?!
It's a mess eh? We're supposed to believe the results of this? Building a house on shaky ground - nice job.
80
@Concerned Citizen
We have more than enough continuous polling, who needs primaries? Cabel TV talking heads talk do polling and bean-counting 24/7, as if public opinion shifts hourly, who is even left to pay attention? Relentless campaign talk day in and day out wears people out.
2
@Concerned Citizen, you lap up the news of Democratic party problems. And right after you willingly 'believe the results' of that Senate trial?
Anyhoo, the event was a debacle. That's true. Democrats did it in full view of America, so their debacle was public. The mistakes and foolishness are there for all to see, which is called transparancy. The DNC and those who designed the process are up front as responsible, and are on the hot seat. They system is dumb, and will change. And guess what? The NYT didn't bury it. Lots of reporting, lots of analysis, and none of it FOX-like desperate attempts to defend and protect anyone.
See the difference? I'd much rather see errors, reported in a free press, etc, instead of screaming about 'fake news' and lies upon lies.
You who accept that your dearleader can never be questioned, let alone checked? THAT's shaky ground, citizen.
18
Once a yaller-dawg Democrat and still a reliably left-leaning voter, I continue to be appalled by the Democratic Party's ineptitude at all levels in matters of organizational coherence and competence. The problem is of long standing. Anyone who has heard Will Rogers's Depression-Era comment that he does not belong to an "I'm not a member of any organized political party.... I'm a Democrat" knows that its coherence is problematic. (He also said, "Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they'd be Republicans.") Had I not been one of each, I would say too many English majors, too few engineers.
What is astonishing is that Iowan Democrats have learned little or nothing from past mistakes. At a time when many Americans are rightly concerned about the integrity of elections
(if Republicans will let them vote in them), this kind of mistake is a disservice not only to Democrats in Iowa, but to voters everywhere. The Democratic Party should punish Iowa for its mistakes by ending its privilege to continue a caucus system and to go first in the nation. It should also assemble an expert team to ensure accuracy and reliability of all party election processes long before elections take place. Real-time, not to mention post-election, repairs of problems do not serve anyone well.
3
Dump the Iowa results and move everyone to Super Tuesday. All we get from Iowa going first is continued corporate farm subsidies.
2
It appears that Democrats in the Hawkeye state abjectly failed to keep an eagle eye on their vaunted, first-in-the-nation primary system. Henceforth, it may be known as the Mockingbird state.
In an era where conspiracy theorists are running rampant in the Republican Party, Iowa Democrats have set themselves up for ridicule, shame and, worse, legitimate questions about their ability to run their own election. For Republicans, this translates into a predictable, if cynical, message about a Democratic inability to govern.
My guess is that Iowa's goal of always, always, always holding the first of the nation's primaries, with arguably outsized influence on the others that follow, combined with its rush to roll out a clearly untested system before it was ready, produced an altogether avoidable debacle that will be hard to recover from.
Iowans crave electoral attention. Now, they have it, and suddenly it doesn't feel so good.
2
Why would Iowa trust something so important as election results to an app? I'm sick of people assuming technology is so much better. When Iowa used simple pen, paper, and a landline things went much smoother. They tried to get fancy and introduced an app and bollocksed the whole thing up.
447
@Justin It sounds like it was the National DNC that encouraged this app. And the makers of the app got paid, so what do they care? I am so disgusted right now. I guess we do get the government we deserve.
17
@Molly B.: Your political donations at work.
6
@Justin - people didn't bother to test the app, and they just assumed that because it's new-fangled technology it will be wonderful. I'm afraid most people are ignorant and don't understand technology well, that's why they don't insist it be tested or reviewed appropriately. We double check the arithmetic when it's done on paper, why wouldn't you ensure the app has been well-tested before you start using it? I blame lousy management, or those in charge of the election.
14
The perfect is again the enemy of the good. Why couldn't Iowa just do the same as it did 4 years ago? Probably trying too hard to show off and to meet demands of too many pols and constituencies. When you have something that has worked for many election cycles, just leave it alone -- or do something even simpler: just go to primary balloting, like the other states.
1
@john640
Bernie's camp demanded data on the additional rounds so he could claim he won even if he really lost. That's why the system changed.
Maybe it’s time to end Iowa‘a outsized role in Presidential politics. They’ve demonstrated again that they don’t deserve this position. Frankly this is too important to make Iowa a bellwether for our large and diverse electorate.
2
Actually, there’s an upside to this system failure in Iowa. And that is that it is long past time for the nation to stop looking to Iowa’s caucuses to fix on who a nominee for the presidency will be 9 months hence. And that doesn’t mean to look (as in earlier time) to NH instead of Iowa. Wanting to know ahead of time ... and the more so the better ... has become an American obsession in so many domaines, not just this political one; and is revealing about where we Americans are maturity-wise, anxiety-wise. Hype seems to drive the phenomenon ... people becoming inflated in their importance about something, by the press reporting on this as importance; and then back to inflating the people who become even more frenzied than before in their considered authority; and then back to the press; etc. Our insecurities, revealed in arrogance of this kind, are hurting us badly. It’s no wonder we wound up with Trump ... whom we may well have again. And this through resignation deriving from dependence on reported opinions that themselves may be spurious. Consensus is important for America; but rallying through hype and conforming resignation is not the way to get there.
2
@wak: No publisher has ever approached me to write a book. There's obviously no demand for it.
Trump believes in winning at all costs, whether through hacks or foreign interference. Because of election vulnerabilities the democratic party in Iowa should have had an airtight system in place. Why didn't they? Even I, involved in election politics for many years, feel cynical today.
3
@AA: Nothing tastes sweeter than defeating a foul foe by fair means.
It's perfect. It shows how over-digitized and brittle things have become.
5
It is time to put aside about Iowa being the whitest state. It was Iowa that propelled Barack Obama to the presidency. One wonders what the critics here were saying then. I am a transplanted Iowan, and I find the people politically fair.
What has happened is that a system that was designed for another time has become the intense focus of media. The folks who went to make their intentions known are not responsible for what happened last night. They did it in good faith--but the spotlight both by the candidates and the reporters is way out of proportion.
Maybe this is not system that works any longer and the parties should address that. Diversity has nothing to do with what went wrong--hubris maybe. Iowans have been driven nuts with the phone calls, the interviews, the intrusion into their lives. And yet in the dark of a cold night they joined their neighbors to be citizens of this country. Find another way for the right reasons.
8
A national primary is too logical and the political pros in all of those individual states would be very reluctant to relinquish their power and control.
IMO this really opens the door for Mike Bloomberg, a man who's proven he can effectively run an organization be it in the public or private sector, and I can't wait for the real primaries to begin early next month.
8
Love the double standard. In private industry "move fast and break stuff" is lauded as the lubricant of rapid development, but if an even government-adjacent group has rollout hiccups, they are incompetent.
Yes, they should have done live fire tests. No, it doesn't mean go back to putting corn cobs in buckets or whatever last year's method was. Cope with today, fix it for tomorrow, and enjoy the app next time. I salute their courage to improve and determination to get their important job done right despite the bumps in the road.
4
The focus needs to be on the party leadership in that state.
Knowing their cadre of workers - what did they think would happen introducing apps into a caucus process that's already recognized as antiquated and unrepresentative of national demographics?
I suggest the national party seriously look at the preparedness of the early states. If they cannot seamlessly produce a primary, they go to the back of the line.
3
I just read the companion piece about the app. If that is accurate, then the DNC utterly failed. That piece suggests that the app was recently developed and not vetted. Apparently DOs has a security team which offered to test it. The IowacDemocrats declined.
The DNC let that go.
This is just literally unbelievable. They do not even know that it was secure!
And this same app is to be used in NV.Hard to believe.
The Party needs to forbid caucuses after this year and it has to make dead certain that the remaining caucus states this year work right.
2
Regardless of the eventual vote totals, the biggest winner of the Iowa caucuses will be Mike Bloomberg. He did not waste any time or money in this unrepresentative state, which probably will vote for Trump in November anyway. And, if the Democratic field is widely splintered, which seems most likely, Bloomberg could well emerge as the most viable "alternative" candidate. Well played, Mr. Mayor.
6
@DbB So, you're excited by the idea of YET another egotistical billionaire buying the Presidency. Frankly, I think we've all had just about enough of that.
Mostly senior citizens organizing a process run by an app. Hmm, next time you’ll see that is in the 2020 Census.
3
time for a lamaze-sized deep breath, all democratic hopefuls. this screwup is no harbinger of anything except, perhaps, more potent thoughts about eliminating the caucus system. the campaigns will go on, each candidate will batter his and her rivals until the last man or woman standing--war-weary, but battle-hardened. by then, the focus will return to the chief goal: giving this dreadful president his walking papers. at least, i hope it turns out this way...
10
If I’m a Bernie campaign manager and if what you say is true, I love it, especially in February.
The entire national voting process resembles the national healthcare system. Overly complicated for no good reason.
20