It was the Ruskies! Again! Special counsel to be appointed, Jim Comey is the leading candidate.
Oh, my goodness; Democrats hired a company named, "Shadow" to build an app for their voting. "Shadow" happens to be owned by a former Clinton campaign aide? No one at the DNC said, "Wait, this seems like a very, very bad idea?". Trump's best weapon is the Democrats themselves....
13
First the REA brought electricity through. Five years later farmers had extra cash for a TV set and Ed Sullivan introduced Elvis right into peoples' parlors, whether one liked it or not. That was followed by Payola Music. Fifteen years later Nixon's Sec of Agriculture Earl Butz told farmers to get big or get out. Great news for John Deere! Bigger more expensive machinery. So move to town, I guess. Get a job at John Deere to replace the farm.
Zippetty-Do-Da and you've got a "smartphone" with an App?(lication) that is dumber than a old cloth-bound 3rd grade arithmetic book, but flashes in technicolor just like an Donald Duck cartoon. And by-golly if we don't get Stalin era-quality political conspiracy theories pushed on us within an hour.
It's a bad deal. Would they take the electricity back, and exchange it for the tranquility and democracy we unconsciously lost in the bargain?
2
More trouble for Democrats courtesy of Hillary Clinton and her merry band of saboteurs.
3
The app was far from the only problem. The Iowa caucuses were hugely over-reported by the media, which wasn't entirely a bad thing. We got to see a process that's a lot like an old-time barn dance, and a good example of voter suppression. The Democrats in Iowa don't need the Internet. What they need to do is implement good old 20th century voting at the ballot box.
4
Perhaps the only good thing that will come out of this is that we might finally have broken iowa’s stranglehold, with New Hampshire, on our primary process. And I, for one, would be grateful for that.
I’ve worked with and for many people over the past bunch of decades who thought that throwing tech at something is always good, who also thought training wasn’t necessary and people could learn as they went, and that there was no need to do ay large or small scale tests before going all in. Let’s just say there was a lot of failure.
I’ve also worked with plenty of people who might be okay texting, web surfing, and taking photos, but ask them to do anything more complicated, like install an app, or use an online form, and they would need someone standing next to them walking them through each step.
iPads are cheap enough. Why not distribute the software already loaded? Run some trials. Run lots of training. Or better yet, skip the tech. Switch to primaries and let’s got on with the process of electing a (new) president.
5
So let’s see, political insiders who are well connected start up a company with precious little actual coding experience to create a secure app thru which the caucus tallies will be transmitted to the state democrapic party. And it doesn’t work...Spectacularly so! Then it’s revealed several of the candidates are investors in the company! I’m sorry but does anyone beside me see a conflict of interest? Does anyone anywhere see the inside game being played with the donors dollars? The insiders enrich themselves by promising to create and deliver a product which ultimately is a disaster. A political experiment in high priced mediocrity was put on full display for the nation to see.
Does anyone want to bet there will be no repercussions to those who fleeced the donors???
10
@Michijim
Well-connected is a rather curious term for tech people who worked of the Clinton campaign.
Why would there be repercussions? Obviously people must be protected from voting wrong.
The whole caucus system is undemocratic and ridiculous. It only serves those who want to browbeat other people into voting for their candidate - on voting day, no less!
2
According to US Census data, Iowa's current population is estimated to be about 3.15 million; an increase of about 150 thousand since the 2010 census. Based on such a relatively small increase in the number of caucus participants since the 2016 election, what was the impetus to introduce a new unproven technology? I've been writing software as a profession for over four decades and the most valuable lesson I've learned in that time is "if it ain't broke don't fix it."
3
Haaa - our interns have written better apps.
2
Not the Democrats first big test and not a massive failure. While the facts stated are perhaps interesting to some, this article is incendiary for the weak-minded. Yes there could have been a smoother reveal, but take a breath, not a big deal.
4
This sounds just like EPIC, our electronic medical record software. Just enough training to be barely functional, and assume the end users will figure it out.
4
So they did not test the software before they bought it. And many commenters here are surprised by that. But the situation in Iowa is much like what I experienced working in Norway a few years ago. Our managers decided to by a software program, site unseen, to manage one of the common expense systems (in this case travel). But the program did not work, so managers bought another, which also did not work. Finally, the managers bought a third program - within 2 years - that actually worked. The 2 years of chaos were extremely costly in terms of wasted work time. But the managers did not care because they did not need to care. Point is that people who think that software will fix your work issues are easily sold defective products without bothering to know if the program functions at all.
4
It sure doesn't help when papers like the NYT cover this with the doom and gloom slant.
Stop using the word failure in the same sentence as Democrats for starters.
5
No mention that Buttigieg was a financial contributor to Shadow and then declared himself victorious when 0% of the result were in?
The Washington Post found this odd. Not the NYTimes....
8
Paper, paper, paper ballots only. Remember that Putin switched from computers to typewriters.
And, please, quit the blame drumbeat against the Democrats. It's ugly.
6
@SteveRR (who thinks Democrats are inept)
FDR the only president that actually ran the country for the 99 percent.
Ronald Reagan: ruined the country as we know it.
GWBush: put a fascist called Cheney in charge for two terms. Ruined the economy and whatever was left of the morality. And that was not just that war in Iraq with pictures of tortured people wrapped in plastic garbage bags.
6
Charlie, just saw the results...
Got them by typing in the name of the web-page on a slide on a screen off to the side, in the WaPo feed...
You all still showing nada - 12 minutes in...
One political party is completely corrupt. The other appears to be full of bungling fools. Our country desperately needs a viable third option.
3
Hey Russia! If you hear me, can you release the voting count already?
1
For 10 millionth time drop these fools out 1st place every state should have a chance to go 1st or we all vote together!!
This is a mess and stinks to the high heaven.
1
Super Tuesday will make or break the Democratic Party not Iowa!!!
1
Caucus or circus?
1
Get a grip this will be forgotten by next week
Jerry W NEK VT
4
Preview of November 2020, orchestrated by vlad, and the other frump allies. If you are shocked by this, you have been sleeping for a decade.
1
Russian disruption?
1
I liked it better when Howard Dean was head of the DNC
3
Oh you Democrats. Oh you folks out in Iowa.
(A state, by the way, I have exceedingly happy memories of. The people--warm, friendly, hospitable.)
But there are millions of us who are COUNTING on you. Do you realize--do you begin to realize--how much we're counting on you? I wonder sometimes.
Yes--we all KNOW that Mr. Sanders' program and Ms. Warren's program have points of difference. Yes--we all know that BOTH of them are not altogether the same as Mr. Biden. Then there's Mr. Buttigieg and--and. . .I forget who else.
At least, it's not as many as the original twenty five. That was the number, wasn't it?
ANY of you guys--whether man or woman--is so INFINITELY PREFERABLE to the guy we got right now.
Votes for (so we are endlessly told) by 63 million Americans.
That leaves around 65 million Americans who DIDN'T vote for him--
--and for whom every single day of his presidency--
--is an unmitigated NIGHTMARE.
Oh you Democrats! You Democrats!
For God's sake, get it together. GET IT TOGETHER.
Mr. Trump is exulting over your discomfiture. If I were he, I would too.
Pull that succulent pacifier out of his mouth--
--and give him something to worry about.
We're COUNTING on you.
Millions of us.
Please!
2
There are alot of retired programmers who are Democrat. Need Help Iowa? Start website---IOWA Abends! I can test really well-I'd help
I guess no one learned their lesson from the disater that was the Obamacare rollout, who could forget the the confusion, the problems connecting, the lack of crucial data, I think the reason no one learned is because the Media (NYT,WAPO) were too busy cheerleading Obamacare and did'nt want to pile on, This is the faiure of a Biased media, The DNC and Dems will and can do whatever they want in terms of maldeasence, incompatance, primary rigging, etc because the Respected press simply dosnt hold them to account, they are to busy being focused on the Repub to see the disaster thats right under their noses! don't believe me? Tell me who the president is again, and will be president again,
2
"Democrats desperately need to win the internet to beat Trump. Their first big test was a massive failure."
This is a ridiculous reach. Maybe you should have run this by your tech editor. An app for reporting caucus results has nothing to do with "winning the internet". This belongs on Breitbart, not the Times.
3
The author is impossible to take seriously. Such ultra hype in just the few front paragraphs is astounding.
4
Mr. Wartzel, I think you get every piece of this pretty much wrong. Which makes sense, as your basic basic assumptions all seem to be in error well.
No, the Democrats don't need to win the internet to defeat Donald Trump. They need to attack him for what he does, not traffic in wild conspiracy schemes that gain credence simply for their ubiquity in the corporate media. The excess reliance on technology as a remedy for message coherence and/or policy deficiency is going to be with us for the forseeable future but its a mistake and fails as often as it succeeds. Just like this app apparently.
Two, this app came out of Obama/Hillary world who, 2012 wizardry or no, are the original source of the problem. David Plouffe said last night on MSNBC that he is on the board of Acronym which apparently created Shadow and the hand behind the whole thing seems to be Hillary's 2016 campaign manager Robbie Mook. But even the idea that Mook et al sold that the Democrats needed digital extra security to keep the integrity of the election safe—from the Russians I guess—seems, I don't know, sketchy. This guys are half grifters, half conspiracy theorists.
And then there were the gullible idiots of the Iowa Democratic Party and Tom "change the rules in the middle of the game" Perez, who seem to have not taken any basic precautions like trying the thing out first. Hard to see what they were thinking. But you get the feeling it wasn't nothing good.
6
“win the internet”?
it’s called rigging an election by another Clinton operative! what a joke. Go Trump!
2
Just goes to show that America can not put the snowflakes in charge.
2
I agree with DoctorHeel- hey Bernie and Liz - how you going to run the medial insurance system again???????
The Republicans are malign. The Democrats are asinine.
“..but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the IDP was not (sound and accurate).”
Captain, your transmission is garbled English, in Earth vernacular.. "garbage out".. The end of Shadow Inc is only logical. Spock out.
Dean/AG,
For Pete's sake - will you guys just let the Trump stuff boil back up to the top-half of the page...
Getting carpal tunnel, having to lean on the scroll key so much...
There's an app for that..... LOL!!!
How ironic that the DNC makes a big deal about pushing out something for the bird brains of the electorate. Wonder if the GOP was/is stupid enough to do the same.
We have a president who shrieks like a little girl. Where is repeat where is Our President's testosterone, the world wonders.
To imply that the Iowa caucus issue means essentially "TRUMP WINS because of Iowa snafu" is not only absurd and reckless, it's downright idiotic. I thought the NY Times was above sensationalist and tabloid style journalism? (guess not).
3
“…Officials in Nevada, the next state to hold caucuses, said they would not use a caucus app, as they had planned…
Instead, they plan just one pull on the giant “Free Millions For All” 5-wheel slot machine at The Sands…
> 5 sour grapes – and Bernie gets the nod!
> 5 lemons – wake up, sleepy Joe!
> 5 (extra credit) stars – Amy, all that hard work now paying off!
> 5 rainbows – this wheel is rigged! no rainbows allowed in Sheldon’s house!
> 5 Native-American warriors – wrong casino!
> 5 gold bars – hey, ya never know!
As Kara Swisher pointed out, could Shadow and Acronym have ever been more poorly named to exude transparency and trust? No, me thinks not.
5
Married to a tech guy, who has been in the industry since its inception, here are some of his comments about the Iowa Democrats App:
1. If it’s true that Shadow Inc., took only two months to develop this app, that’s not enough time. And it was irresponsible of them and of the Democrats in Iowa to give their volunteers this app.
2. If it’s true that Iowa Democrats didn’t properly train their volunteers, it smells! Who was behind this and why?
3. Technology works if properly vetted, tested and tested some more. Two months to develop this app is a joke!
America expects better, Iowa should too! By they way, Nevada Democrats plan to use the same app, I say Nevada scrap it!
2
? What cold go wrong?
What a mess. And this from the bunch that’s going to use the benefits of technology to provide free college, free healthcare, free this and free that. Can’t even manage a simple polling device. And they propose to put one of their people’s hand on the nuclear trigger? They’ll probably hire Boeing to automate the nuclear controls. Oy vey.
Of course the app was sold to Iowa by a Democratic insider. This from the same bunch that makes sure our engines run roughly with their ethanol. Time to urge them to slop the hogs and move early political decisions elsewhere.
1
I’m sick of people attacking the Democrats just for having competing candidates. In 2016 the Republicans did too, and looked just as messy, this is normal. And sorry about the glitch, but the ACA started badly too and went on to work just fine. Have some patience and remember what we’re fighting for! The Democrats will finally unite.
1
Oh please. Not that big of a failure. Stop the panic and all the let’s dump technology from the election process. This was a human error. Whoever defined what the app needed to provide fell short and then the programming fell short because of it.
1
We have two political parties in this country. One party is totally corrupt and willing to stoop to any available skullduggery in order to win an election. The other party is completely incompetent and will forever find novel ways to blow an election. So who do you think is going to win in November?
1
The Republicans would never have these problems. They would already have decided who won the caucus before any votes were cast.
2
The blame for this rests squarely on Tom Perez. He's clearly incompetent to have allowed this to go on on his watch.
An app is not the internet.
As a programmer in a previous life, I can tell you probably what happened. The software development company that built this likely over-promised on it's delivery (like many consultancy tech companies unfortunately do) and the tech company likely did not do something that is often undervalued called Test Driven Development (TDD). They should have vigorously tested the software to account for a number of scenarios using people to do quality assurance and through programmer automated testing. And 2 months to build!?! Ridiculous for product with such high stakes. You also need time to do user research, etc, to make a quality product. I can't imagine whoever managed this project to be someone with any real technical background, because they would have likely pushed back on a proposal with such unrealistic expectations. I can tell you both greed and carelessness was involved with such a contract. Also, everyone needs to stop being paranoid, Democrats will be fine. It's a tech failure, not the fall of the democratic party. Geez.
3
Is it just me, or does anyone fell like the entire Democratic Party apparatus is part of the stealth Trump campaign? Who needs the Russians with these guys running things. Good grief.
1
So on the subject of "counting", perhaps the New York Times should look inward to their own disfunction that is equal to the Iowa Democratic Caucus.
Today I received an email from the NYT' subscription Dept that they are increasing the price of the Digital Subscription more than 13%.
Really a 13% increase is nearly quadruple the rate of inflation to pay for a mostly biased point of view.
How many digital subscribers do they have? According to Wikipedia there are 2.9 million digital only subscribers which equates to $5.8 million /per month or $69.6 million annual revenue increase.
Well, I will be reconsidering keeping this subscription and rely on the AP's and other free apps for news since the increase is not justifiable and the contents of the subscription is no longer valuable.
So count me out..
I really want to see the Des Moines register poll that wasn't released now
3
I'm pretty sure you'll know the answers around 9pm tonight. Also can the DNC hire Wendy's twitter operator for the Democratic Nominee.
Taking in to account recent unnecessary remarks by HRC one has to wonder at the significance of this https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-04/clinton-campaign-vets-behind-2020-iowa-caucus-app-snafu
None of the votes are lost or in danger.
All the votes were written down on cards signed by the caucusers. They are counted and written down on a worksheet. Then the app was supposed to be used to send the numbers in with a picture of the worksheet. The cards used and unused get sent to local party headquarters. The old way was to just call in with the numbers and send in the papers to the local. I see no valid reason for having made the change especially without ever testing it.
I always test my code in Production.
Good for you Mark...
1
Base on the title alone (I refuse to read the rest) this is a ridiculous comment. First, one failure in one small state is not a reflection of the entire Democratic party or electorate. But also, it is meaningless to talk about "winning the internet".
Why is it SO HARD for Americans to just go back to voting with pen and paper?
Seriously. Why must everything be digital and prone to hacking and identity theft? Can't we do SOMETHING the ol' fashioned way for once?
1
Being an old guy I read "circus" for a second. Then, I said to myself, it is a circus indeed!
What a joke.
An app, financed by Mayor Pete and his SuperPAC, built by the DNC Shadow spooks, and overseen by Hillary's campaign manager, appropriately name Shadow, Inc., was said to have a glitch in its coding. The ‘glitch’ occurred when it showed Bernie creaming the so so runs.
Here is how it likely went down: The app was peddled to the Iowa Democrat Party, which in good faith accepted it as a faster way to relay caucus result. The Iowa Democrat Party did not know the data would first pass through the anti Bernie cabal.
The cabal had a choice, allow Bernie a big win, rig the election and declare CIA-Pete the winner or turn it into a big nothing burger and throw a blanket over Bernie’s shining moment.
It pretty easy to put in lines of code that will report one in every 10 votes that went from one candidate as having gone to another candidate. You can bury this stuff away and it is in general how those apps or voting machines get hacked.
Added to that they generally claim the code proprietary so it very had to access and examine for errors.
That all said, given the ties candidates had to this firm in the way of financial investments there’s no way on Earth it should have ever been considered as a developer of an application to count the votes.
That yells out “Conflict of interest” so loudly it is deafening.
3
An MBA, an engineer, and a compuer programmer are in a car that gets a flat. The MBA says, let's call AAA. the engineer says, let's use the jack and the spare in the trunk. The programmer says, let's have lunch - in a half an hour, it will fix itself.
1
This just put additional emphasis on the fact that we have an outdated electoral system, from quaint primaries such as Iowa's to the undemocratic Electoral College.
This, combined with the overwhelming influence of private and corporate money makes the US a deeply flawed plutocracy, certainly NOT a democracy, which makes the country an easy target for plutocrats, would-be dictators and crooks.
1
This is unacceptable. Iowa isn't first is the only answer. Fire everyone in charge. Troy Price says "redundancies" are in place for accuracy. Really? Inept times 3 or 4 or 5 is still inept.
1
How could it possibly have failed? After all, the Democrats "had a plan for that..."
-
Lets just do things on paper.
This mysterious computer stuff is just begging for some hacker to change the results.
I send money to candidates, as the party itself has its head up and locked.
I am not noodling on any conspiracy theories here. This is just sheer incompetence. A lot of people need to lose their jobs over this.
"Reports suggest that the app was engineered in just the past two months. According to cybersecurity consultants and academics interviewed by the Times, the app was not tested at statewide scale or vetted by the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency."
1
Paper, paper, paper.
We kill turkeys to have a happy Thanksgiving.
We can sacrifice a few trees to secure our elections.
And elect people who will fight climate change so the elms and oaks will not have given their lives in vain.
“as building a long-term, side-by-side ‘Shadow’ of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and the progressive community at large.”
What else is this both creepy and apparently incompetent company up to??
1
"Shadow’s failure suggests a potentially deadly combination of techno-utopianism and laziness." Yep, definitely a Democratic Socialist device.
1
Feb 3, 2020 NYT
"J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, and David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said Monday night that they had warned state officials that the mobile reporting app was vulnerable to what is known as a “denial of service attack,” in which hackers flood the central servers used to power the app with traffic, stalling them or knocking them offline."
DHS also stating that they weren't consulted to eval app. It's not required but DHS is involved in providing election security and available to help states strengthen their systems. (Even as I write that I wince a bit wondering if we can trust the Trump admin on this)
Iowa Dems have a lot to answer for in why they chose to ignore this advice & why they claimed assurances of no hack or intrusion.
Halderman testified before Senate Intelligence Com in June 2017. His team was hired by DC to hack the voting machines to reveal vulnerabilities. They successfully hacked the machines and changed all of the votes. DC knew they were in their system yet could find NO TRACE of the hack and vote changes.
I don't for a minute think foreign adversaries are the only ones tampering with our voting equipment. It's time to get real about what we're up against. McConnell refuses to bring legislation to protect elections to the floor. Do you think AG Barr will investigate any suspicious activity if it implicates Trump and GOP?
1
An untested App. Unbelievable. Prepare for stolen emails and interference of all kinds in the 2020 Election since the Dems haven't learned a thing.
1
"Rigged." Now we know the theme for the most important election in national history. Get used to it.
So Pete and Joe invested in Shadow Inc.?
It's classic. You never want (1) McKinsey-ites to choose software (or be near its implementation and usage, for that matter) (2) the old wannabees who buy the buzzwords.
1
The app was issued by Jimmy Hickey of Shadow Inc., metadata of the program that the Des Moines Register analyzed Tuesday shows. Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis, who worked for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, co-founded Shadow.
1
What's missing from the stories about this debacle: WHO is the genius who approved the use of this app without adequate testing/training/tech support????
1
Breathtaking incompetence by the Democratic Party and an amazing gift for the re-election of the most corrupt president in history: Indeed we are lost!
Iowa, there isn't an app for that.
Will the Shadow be investigated by NYT? Please inform us about the Shadow. Who financed the Shadow? Did any of the campaigns contribute to the Shadow? If any of the campaigns did contribute to the Shadow, how much and why? Who developed the app for the Shadow and were those developers associated with previous campaigns?
2
Technology is useful in certain applications. Voting isn't one of them. I'm reminded of the "Saving Private Ryan" scene where the translator holds up a typewriter and Tom Hanks holds up a pencil. "Keep it simple stupid."
We can have debates on ranked-choice voting, open and closed primaries, private versus public ballots. We really don't need to have conversations about voting software though. That's an aggregation tool useful to political professionals and the news media. The general public can certainly wait a day while the county clerk's office tallies and verifies results. The software company is only going to turn around and sell your personal and voting data to campaign strategists. You know this, right?
A paper ballot is fine. Learn a little patience.
Quoted from this Opinion piece:
"Shadow, according to it's website, bills itself “as building a long-term, side-by-side ‘Shadow’ of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and the progressive community at large.”
Didn't the company mean "for" instead of "to" in the above-quoted sentence? Perhaps their website, and their product, were not quite ready for prime-time.
And neither is the Democratic Party, evidently.
3
It's all over for the Dems.
1
Oh bother, Mayor Pete nailed it. And he said so. Forget the app. Breathe.
What? The guy from military intelligence is coming from behind to win after a computer problem? Which Banana Republic are we talking about?
1
"Wake up boomers. From now on, we using smart phones and electronic media for elections. Your jitterbug phone won't work."
"Oh yeah.Tell me millennial boy, who won the election?"
It’s lazy and counter productive to blame tech. This is clearly a failure of the Democratic Party and government in general to prioritize excellent project management. I’ve seen these kinds of failures in tech and non-tech related projects in my time in NYC govt. I’ve seen people spend needless time in jail because of computer failures and also idiotic processes for scheduling cases. It’s why MTA is a disaster. It’s not tech, it’s a disregard for operational excellence that plagues all of government.
As long as government work remains a safe place for people to work at a comfortable pace then go home, these failures will persist and faith in the power of government to better society will remain subdued.
2
Politics must be rigged. This must be part of some stage-planned drama.
There's no way the Democrats can be this incompetent.
Can they?
I am so sad.
1
Hyperbole much?
Now we have to wait One Day for results of a caucus in a non-representative state. I can't stop sobbing.
1
If Iowa democrats would only give half the effort to getting rid of their troglodyte senators, they would be doing the country a far greater service rather than promoting their electoral narcissism.
Win the internet??? Laughable, the internet is fake, a fraud, is not representative of the real world in any shape or form, winners would do staying away from the internet.
1
The Iowa caucus app is no more Democracy than the slave owner/white supremacists on caffeine, electoral college or republican voter suppression.
Massachusetts or California should be the first election or even better they both need to be on the same day.
America has lost track of what Democracy should look like, and it is not white farmers who elected Comrade Trump to the American presidency.
2
Well at least it has taken Iowa out of the winnowing. Who will take it seriously after this? May the Democratic Party did it on purpose. Robby Mook has already claimed he had nothing to do with it...
Well at least one silver lining happened. Nevada Dems just announced they're scrapping the app. They'll have to cheat Bernie out of the nomination the old fashioned way... stuff ballots, bring in goons to intimidate voters... ah the good old days!
2
Democrats,stop feeding into the propaganda that is being disseminated portraying the Democrats as big losers and incompetent over a glitch in the Iowa caucus app. The bigger tragedy is how many Dems appear ready to join in the bashing. The willingness to attack our own party is a much greater threat!
1
Trump won in 2016 without any technological edge.. Don't kid yourself Dems, a technology edge will not win the election..
Move on, everyone. It was a fiasco. But let's get over it!
I confess I don't have a smart(sic) phone & don't quite know what an app is.
Husband suggests that Democrats should get smart and shout, "The Russians did it!"
Maybe Iowans should go to the polls like the rest of us. And maybe the rest of us should stop putting all this emphasis on such silliness.
1
Way to face-plant, Dems. Great time for it, too!
Maybe at this point we just need to toss the DNC, and start over? Unless Trump outlaws all opposition parties in his second term, of course. Which, naturally, Republicans would do nothing to stop. We're a Putin-style oligarchy with a corrupt, for-life leader if he can get it, now. Pathetic and sad.
Last week the Democrats were trashing Iowa for being too old and white. Now they are waiting with baited breath to see how they voted.
1
Who's celebrating this morning and doubling down?
Michael Bloomberg.
And after this unbelievable train wreck, I am taking another look at him. Tired of the circular firing squad that is the Democratic Party. Cannot organize a rock fight.
Democratic Party is party of losers. I am not a Trump supporter, but they can't blame Trump or Republicans for Iowa fiasco. It is obvious to me that they will lose next Nov.
At DNC, heads should roll.
The New York Times is missing what may be a key part of the Iowa Caucus / Shadow Inc saga. Look carefully at the Shadow Inc website. Its home page apologia for matters Iowa is NOT the most important part. Instead, read a bit further, study the "About" Section, and then scroll all the way to the bottom and click on the "Privacy + Terms" section.
How is it that a for-profit entity states that it was founded in 2019 (on LinkedIn) when its privacy policy, which includes a false or outdated street address for its headquarters, dates from 2017? What is REALLY at that address?
Dig deep! Or at least dig deeper than apparently did the Iowa Democratic Party. Then ask: where IS this Shadow Inc actually located? Where is it registered as a corporation? Who's in charge?
1
For crying out loud, stop with the hysterical panic!
Yes, the Iowa Democratic leaders messed up by stupidly using an untested phone app, and it's a black eye, but it's not The End of the World, people. The votes will come in and in a month this will mostly likely be all forgotten.
The much bigger problem is that political pundits and "opinion writers" have big mouths and even bigger spaces to fill in their ridiculously overblown and verbose digital columns!
2
Gosh, I thought winning elections was done by people voting either in person or, sigh, by mail. You know, stamps, post office. Ancient low tech stuff.
What's the internet got to do with it? Ah, yes, all that juicy fake news and hocus pocus that trump and the republicans do so well with their eastern European, not even American thugs.
1
Everyone knows how unreliable computers and tech are. How many times have you called a business and told computers are slow or down? The fact that this thing was slapped together in the last two months, not tested and no one trained to use it is sheer stupidity. But, then again, everyone is assumed to know how to use and fix computers and tech
The name of the vendor is "Shadow." Seriously?
Wasn't there some old radio show--Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
The Shadow knows . . .
How fitting.
Clueless. Reckless. Hopeless.
What a way to start.
I looked up Shadow Inc., which has a strong presence in France. Their website is boastful, with statements like:
“... After studying computer science, Emmanuel Freund founded Isidor, an ergonomic software development company, where he joined his cousin Asher Kagan, a computer genius ...”
“At Shadow, we have a dream: to have our own island, with fine sand, palm trees, and a cold drink - specifically with a huge laser to light the sky. Why? The answer is simple: because we want to achieve the impossible! This dream is our way of keeping our identity, but it also sets our way for the future. This is how we show you can aim high ....”
Wow! With tried/true vendors like Microsoft, Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, and many others familiar with all aspects of software testing, connectivity, data architecture, large-scale deployment, etc, why not go with neophyte Shadow? It’s sponsor, Acronym, is run by an Obama associate - not surprised.
1
Way to go! You have just given trump ammunition to yell "FAKE ELECTION"!
Two Words: Paper Ballots
Is there an App for this?
Amateur hour!
As an IT professional I have seen it a million times. Poor leadership sponsors shoddy tech, and then tech gets the blame. The blame is on whoever decided to underinvest, underlead, undertest. No different than building a poor quality house or car, although interestingly there are zero quality regulation on tech. Any idiot can sponsor an app, and source it thru an immature company with weak skills.
Get a tech leader to use an experienced company to build a rock solid app that is fully scalable and secure. You may still have occasional issue but it will be 99.9% reliable with a good support structure if anything amiss occurs.
It's the cyber version of the "dangling chad" and we all know how that ended..
You say you need to win the Internet?
The internet is on fire with Iowa and DNC memes, just Google them, they are that good.
Remember, once it's in the internet is there for ever.
You lost the Internet long ago, this just became the latest memelicious moment the Democrats have provided, right up there with AOC saying to avoid Coronavirus, avoid Mexican beer.
Sorry kid, last night you guys just fed the god of memes.
The real target should be to have any one take you seriously now.
And that is a far far harder achievement now.
Paper ballots are only half-measure...
Papyrus, perhaps – or veggie parchment made from industrial hemp and recycled soybean silos...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
“…a belief system among members of a relatively undeveloped society in which adherents practice superstitious rituals hoping to bring modern goods supplied by a more technologically advanced society…
PS
Now, Liz is exhorting and evangelizing for:
“Free reams for all”…
That never turns out well – even with a plan…
Should being able to perform a task over your cellphone really be the most important consideration when deciding how to do it?
Clearly not. Hopefully this debacle will put an end to both this kind of tech worshipping idiocy as well as to Iowa (and New Hampshire's) undeserved outsized influence in the selection of presidential candidates.
The decision to use this app, the apparent total lack of testing, the failure to assure that people had downloaded the app successfully, the lack of training in how to use the app, and lack of a backup system, all make the party look like complete idiots and promotes distrust of the outcome.
The endless pursuit of faster results should stop. Iowa had a system to do this before there were smartphones. Do what you know works until you prove that something else is better.
Rahm Emanuel once said it right about the Democrats: "They never miss the opportunity to miss an opportunity."
Ugh! But trump and his thugs won't miss the opportunity to make the Dems look Dumb tonight and beyond.
Ugh! What happened to our Country?
1
Please, let's not blame Silicon Valley mentality for Shadow's amateurism. The app should've been run in the shadow in parallel with the existing method for a few times before rolling out in production. It's just plain stupidity and arrogance of amateurs to think that they could roll out an app of this importance without full beta. A real irony given that their name is "Shadow".
Schedule driven releases are always buggy.
"Reports suggest that the app was engineered in just the past two months. According to cybersecurity consultants and academics interviewed by the Times, the app was not tested at statewide scale or vetted by the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency." Stop calling for paper ballots. Warzel's paragraph says it all. Incompetence is glaring.
Let’s just call this app what it really is: the Bernie glitch! The news media is s-o-o-o happy to avoid reporting on Bernie winning; it’s like avoiding surrounding ones lips around that morning grapefruit without any sugar!
Luddites are not necessarily wrong. K.I.S.S. Everything does not require an "app" since the only truly immutable "natural law" is Murphy's. Machines doe not LIKE human beings and have no reason to make our lives easier ; if humans cannot solve their own problems, what makes us think a "cyber" thing will do the trick?
What few people understand is the inherent security in an open source software solution. There is no secrecy and the security and encryption methods are well known to all. The code is viewed and tested by anybody with an interest or passion for this kind of software, and vulnerabilities will be ruthlessly exposed and eliminated.
The best part is that the code will be written for free, by a community of thousands of experts. The old way is to hire a for-profit firm who will use anonymous developers from who-knows-where with who-knows-what kind of experience and expertise. Expensive, slow, and error-prone. Open source is not simply the future, it is the reality today where millions of products are already using open source code.
How exactly do they know their was "no hack or intrusion"? It seems like a big coincidence that this "disruption" occurred on such an important day, and with so much at stake. I would take "no hack or intrusion" with a heavy grain of salt.
How did they test it? You can never assume software is going to work unless you perform rigorous testing under expected conditions of use. Was there a test plan? Who did the testing?
1
Where is the DNC in offering any kind of tech leadership to its party? The fact that the Dems in Iowa thought they could roll out an app in two months for $67K just shows how utterly clueless party leadership is.
How about 10-12 months, doing some quality user research, interface design, front-end and back-end development and testing, and then some user training? Multiple seven-figure budget. That's reality.
How about holding back on a TV spot or two and doing digital right.
2
Amazon should have made the software. Their accounting system runs on software. Any change in code has to be correct. r Anything new is tested: then again, and again. With certainty built using transactions that are reversed out. Yes they strive for the min. amount of code that will do the job. only if t he results are right.
1
How is it possible that the administration of the software was left in the hands of amateurs? We're redefining the definition of a third world country. Maybe we could get Jimmy Carter to monitor our elections. He's done a fine job elsewhere.
5
@dutchiris -
Yes Jimmy Carter should monitor our elections.
1
Elections in the untied states are not eligible for Carter Center oversight. The reason is simple.
Election rules in the United States do not meet the minimum Cater Center standards for free and fair.
Fact!
1
Will Rogers said "I am not a member of any organized political party, I am a Democrat."
1
The attention span of the American public is, I would say, about 48 hours. So, 24 hours to go. By Super Tuesday all of this will be forgotten, helped along by the half dozen or so Trump outrages between now and then. We can stop the hand wringing and finger pointing now, and move on to the paper ballots of New Hampshire. The longer the Democrats do this, the higher the funeral pyre becomes. Give it a rest.
3
Not even a thought given to the theory that the powers that be built the App for that purpose ...?
2
@David Yep and that Buttigieg was a major financial contributor....and self declared winner. With no results in. Makes you wonder.
1
@saltlakeq writes: “The press is definitely our enemy on this.” Who do you sound like? I learned a lot from this NYT story about how Iowa hired a “shadowy” tech firm that rushed out developed of the failed voting app in the last two months, with zero transparency or independent assessment. No test trials or training of the volunteers who would use it. Our democracy Iives or dies on the reliability & security of our electoral process. I want information from insightful reporters. You can live in the dark. A free, independent press is critical to our survival.
1
"The State Democratic Party ... stressed that there was no 'hack or intrusion'."
The reality: they don't really know.
2
Everything the democrat party touches is a failure. The States and Cities they run, Obamacare, Impeachment and now the Iowa Caucuses. Simply not being a part of this group is a win.
3
Last week at a concert in Los Angeles, Laurie Anderson succinctly declared, "If you think technology can solve your problems, you don't understand technology -- and you probably don't understand your problems."
102
@Tim Clark
"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
2
@Tim Clark - Yep, sounds like Laurie: specialist in circular statements.
1
@Lucy Cooke the thing is. If it really was some weird conspiracy then we should all celebrate because it was found out and stopped. They used the paper records and redid the counts.
So you are celebrating the success of the Iowa Dem party to block the Buttigieg conspiracy.
The truly sad thing is that most people still believe in the virtues of the internet, its obvious and inevitable fatal flaws notwithstanding.
All of us here criticizing the process in Iowa are, nonetheless, complicit, inasmuch we are sitting here complaining on the internet, thus legitimating and effectively encouraging its use. For the sake of personal convenience, everybody still pretends that the good guys are smarter than the bad guys.
3
It's funny that most everyone is thinking this isn't working as planned. It's working just as it was intended.
C'mon people, less than 200K showed up to caucus. The results should have/could have been in this morning; even if they had to be driven over and delivered by hand.
This isn't a bug, this is a feature.
4
Ugh. Isn’t Rep. Gabbard still lurking out there, improbably pretending to be a real candidate? What’s the likelihood she seizes upon this fiasco and twists it somehow into her third-party spoiler bid, punishing us all in the process with a second term of Trump? Could this massive hiccup have come at a worse time? Did we somehow all fall through a wormhole, into the darkest timeline?
4
Holy cow, who came up with the idea for that app to begin with. All you need is to transmit data from 1600 locations, 8 or so candidates per location, 3 data points per candidate. This is not a lot of data. You could just have a simple website to enter that. Or go really low tech and just have the precinct captains all take a picture of the results they post at their caucus location. Email that to the party with the location ID and have 20 volunteers there key in the data. Should take less than 2 hours. Doesn't have to be particularly secure either, as long as you audit the paper trail afterwards.
4
Do any of you really think the "app" didn't work just by chance? That is wouldn't download to cell phones or work on the cell phone? That around the same time the phones to dem headquarters didn't work? That precinct people in charge didn't know how to use the app? All by chance right? Several Billionaires running for office, with one million measly dollars could set that up within 24 hours. And now, one of those billionaires states he will be doubling his campaign spending. All by chance right? As Bernie Surges and the capitalists are scared stiff of him?
5
"Win the Internet"?
This sounds like the app had a load issue. This is completely different than Democrats "winning the Internet" in terms of marketing on Facebook and online.
Conflating concurrent usage and load testing with marketing is a bit of a stretch.
2
Democrats should obtain technical help from the Russians. That’s what Trump and the Republicans do.
6
If candidates were like products linked to online purchases via credit cards, the app would have worked.
We have to wait, maybe, 24 hours to hear the results. Nobody's campaign seems terribly affected. This is not a thing.
This is a Big Story because journalists had to go to Iowa and didn't get the results they wanted by airtime. From that, we're seeing a thousand Chicken Littles screeching about how this is a huge gift to Trump, that this is evidence the national DNC is incompetent, that technology has ruined us.
It's 24 hours. Calm down.
3
Thank you.
Thank you!
As a college professor, I cannot agree more with the "deadly combination of techno-utopianism and laziness" that has been compromising the education of our college students. The current students' dependency on the internet is causing a mental laziness that prevents them from integrating and critically evaluating facts. The ability to synthesizing and creating new thoughts is also waning. I wonder if it is possible to know the ages of the coders who were responsible for writing the APP for the DNC?
1
Bloomberg made his fortune developing reliable computer software.
And he was shrewd enough to just say no to the Iowa caucuses.
I like Mike.
61
Me also
Job accomplished for the DNC. Everyone is focusing on the app's 'software defect' (there was no defect - it was designed to crash), not the real issue (that the DNC effectively erased the Iowa results, deliberately depriving Bernie of a (no doubt) significant win and momentum going forward). Face it: stopping Bernie matters far more to the Democratic hierarchy, than beating Trump. DNC is already preparing for 2024, not this November.
3
I wish the president would voice concern about the voting process - not contempt. I wish he could see tens of millions of voting Democrats as fellow Americans, not enemy combatants.
6
I find it totally inconceivable that Iowans chose to use untested "transformative" technology for such a center stage event. Whatever were their tech people thinking...or not?!
@J2
You're assuming this wasn't the result they wanted.
3
Trump will win. Democrats will not unite behind their candidate. The only hope is to take back the Senate. Trump will be impeached again, and a different Senate may remove him from office.
1
It has been reported that app cost $16,000.00. I have been writing software for 30+ years and if the price is true then that is way too cheap.
Call me when you want it done right for $260,000.00.
2
The good news is that Iowa caucus chairs do have actual results as counting the bodies in a group within a room is pretty low tech. Getting paper or actual phoned in results might take more time but can still be done. The caucus by caucus results are there. Caucus chairs have them. The problem was in trying to satisfy the desire for meeting an early evening time table.
Technology has its place in some things. But for something like reliably counting votes with an auditable paper trail, old fashioned will seemingly beat "gee-whiz" every time. Given the problems, and what all is at stake, we should perhaps rethink our mad rush to technology as an election process panacea. Just because in theory, we can, doesn't always mean that we should.
2
Forgive me because I am an ousider looking in. From what I see all these years I understand Mr Warzal's frustration about caucuses.
I'll be brief.
1. Presidential elections in the US is an industry and many players with vested interests are involved: the TV networks (the endless political punditry, the hotel industry, the restaurant industry, the advertising industry. Each has a stake in the many billions spent. They all want to prolong the circus.
2. Caucuses don't mean more democracy; it means more debate and rancour. It's the equivalent of Brexit.
3. There is no scientific reason that Iowa or New Hampshire or Oregon. or whatever, is a bellwether state representative of the average voter. It is a myth.
4. Whay can't they -- DNC and GOP -- spend a few months campaigning across the country and hold one election in ANY state selected at random to appoint the party leader?
5. That will never be done: It's all business. A long drawn out season is good for the Election Industry.
3
Not by any means an expert, but I did spend 20+ years in tech support. I've been thinking:
1. Did each caucus location have adequate wireless capacity to handle a large number of (app) downloads and uploads at once?
2. Was the site receiving the data from these locations adequately equipped to handle the incoming volume?
3. Were the people who trained the trainers to help at each location fully trained themselves? Sounds like the app was a pretty hasty build, and documentation scarce.
And last but not least, were the ages of the people in the caucuses taken into consideration? It's easy to assume everyone 40 and under was capable of loading and wading through the app. However, (and I'm part of this wild bunch) were older folks taken into consideration? Yes, there are those of us who do experience momentary confusion once in a while when confronted with unknown technology. But we also vote!
2
There a several things that anyone who uses computers and online applications must remember to do.
First, how to get it up and ready to use.
Second, how to stop and exit the applications and to shut the system down.
Third, always maintain current copies of anything one wishes to continue using.
Fourth, always have a backup plan when it all stops working as anticipated.
The Democratic Party in Iowa should have been prepared to return to what they have done before that works. It means twice the cost but it assures that the job will be done in a timely manner.
Until any complicated system has been used for awhile, there is a high likelihood that things will go wrong. Not preparing for this is the biggest factor in catastrophic failures of human systems.
4
@Casual Observer Maybe we could vote on Amazon. I can get a bottle of mouth wash in 2 hours. there's no reason we can't get election results the same day.
3
@Mike
The pie recipe for apple pie equivalent to new tech systems.
1. Plant the apple seeds....
We are too reliant on "disruptions" of Apps from start ups. We need to standardize voting across the board in this nation, and have it overseen by an impartial, nonpartisan agency made up of people from every political party.
1
If it is made up of people from both parties, it is bi-partisan. If it is made up of people from no parties, it is non-partisan. Just sayin'
So this app which was "built to deliver quicker caucus results" actually contributed to a massive delay in reporting results.
So much for "quicker is better" and "new, innovative" technology.
Heck, even with various Apple apps which are often the cutting edge of technology, they experience hiccups and a "patch" is required for the program to function and work smoothly and seamlessly.
So are we to expect a "patch" to be in place in order for this apt to work too? Before long, there could be more patches in place on this software than there are on an Amish quilt.
Either way, the notion that this problem was not noticed much less addressed long before last night does not bode well with me nor instill much confidence in the entire voter data process.
3
Iowa's governor and senators issued a statement, but I think they must have been misquoted. I'm fixing it here. You're welcome.
“Iowa’s unique role encourages a grass-roots nominating process that empowers older, more affluent Iowans at the expense of all other Americans. The face-to-face retail politics nature of Iowa’s caucus system also encourages dialogue between candidates and the aforementioned Iowans that makes our presidential candidates far more accountable to this tiny minority than to the American population as a whole.”
4
To the Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party:
Too bad you’re experiencing an unanticipated difficulty. (Problems happen to all of us.) I’m writing about a solution to your problem: you should contact my grandson. He’s quite good at coding. But wait until this afternoon to contact him, as he doesn’t get home from Middle School until about 3:30.
1
It's a good thing that Tom Perez got himself a golden parachute in place before this debacle. He should be pulling the cord today. Or someone should pull it for him.
2
How I felt after reading this morning's news on the Democratic race out of the Iowa starting gate: Go, Glue stick.
1
When I moved to Canada in 1991, I scoffed at their old- fashioned paper ballots designed (admittedly really well!) by the federal government. But then Bush v Gore happened. Paper works. Period.
6
Please go into exactly WHY Iowa changed it's counting process. It changed it because Sanders complained of the caucus being "rigged" because Hillary squeaked out a win over him in 2016 and he then demanded a backup count in the future.
Ever since Bernie suddenly appeared and decided he'd invade the Democratic primary, even though he wasn't a Democrat, things have gone South. For instance, the fact that he had a part in getting Trump elected. Now he will complain about the system again and act like he had no part in making it into what it became.
In the first place, ALL caucuses need to go. And it's been obvious for years. And in the second, when are the Democrats going to find some spine and reject interlopers like Sanders from running on their Party's banner? The Party is so sensitive to any criticism that they come off as being insecure wimps. And that is not a good look when you want people to vote for you.
4
@Steve Dumford
Lol...asking to see the numbers suddenly broke the machine? C'mon dude. Pencil and paper. Just like 1st. grade. Show your work. It isn't that hard unless you make it such.
Lol #2...if your looking for correlations, then HRC and her machinations would have to be included also wouldn't they. Shadow Inc. is a spin off of her campaign staff. If you wish to point fingers...best each time to start at the top don't you think? Why point at the victim and accuse them of being the issue?
Lol #3...it would be ridiculously stupid to have someone that pulled in 43% of the Dem. vote to run as an Independent 3rd. party candidate in the GE. Guaranteed D. loser...again. Think it through. Better to have a candidate under thumb, where you can cheat 'em, than have them out running on their own without oversight.
Agreed, our duopoly needs to be abolished. Just so D's 'n R's can't game the Republic. Until then, this is the game the Private Political Parties want to play.
1
I am long time software engineer. Minimum Viable Product and the book The Lean Startup have been awful for my field. All the book did was create a pseudo-intellectual justification for abdicating long term thinking and methodical project management so of course it became a cult. It has its place but that place is not in mission-critical election software. Mr Warzel nails it too when he mentions laziness. In this case if product management took just 10 minutes to stop and really think about the problem they were trying to solve, they wouldn't have built anything because there is already a working solution in place and properly replacing it would take significant R&D since it's election infrastructure. Instead they built something and then didn't properly test it. None of the testing they would need to do is even difficult. It is just time consuming and extremely detail-oriented so of course it didn't get done. I guarantee that in addition to angry Democrats there are lots of angry programmers out there today.
2
Paper ballots in every state. National Primary, all on one day or one weekend. And let's stop obsessing about immediate results. Let's wait a day and make sure all counts are correct.
5
Another "theory." Maybe it was not about rigging or hacking results. It was simply about creation confusion, disruption and intrigue. That was the "bug" hidden in the belly of the application. If it was, it fulfilled its purpose--and created ideas for disruptions at greater scales in the future, in politics, elections and many many other fronts. Let's go back to certified "paper," at least in something as important as electoral events, the pillars of a democracy, and especially with all the security unknowns about the digital world.
3
What better way?
Firstly, the technology failed. The democratic process didn't. "Since the caucus is conducted in public view and with a full paper trail, it seems hard to imagine that the results would be lost."
But there is no doubt that the caucus system is flawed. It is hard to schedule caucuses, to find appropriate and affordable venues, and people can be excluded by virtue of mobility problems and other disabilities, weather, and work schedules. The process of polling citizens for their leadership preferences should be carried out via carefully tested tech with a paper trail.
Nevertheless, we shouldn't lose sight of the value of having people gather together to discuss issues and exchange views, which caucuses do in a very limited way.
In a country as divided as ours, we ought to consider the use of citizen assemblies to discuss specific issues in a non-partisan environment. Let people communicate across party lines concerning medical care, or climate change, for example. Let the assemblies issue recommendations, including minority reports. Then let the politicians and the parties respond.
Smaller groups in multiple locations over a period of time are a lot easier to manage than large gatherings on a single evening.
Citizen assemblies are no panacea, but they did help in the establishment of peace in Northern Ireland. And that is a place where politics were so poisonous that people were actually murdering each other.
1
Still think government should handle all of healthcare, college, etc.?
5
I do. Because in the end, government is composed of humans, as are private corporations. Both can make errors. At least in government, they are their for the people as a whole, vs. a corporation that is beholden only to it's shareholders.
2
@Brown woman How could health care be any worse than it is today in the USA?
Better than any corporation that tries to cut any corner to save a dime. Keep thinking you aren't anything but a number for private healthcare to cull, person without even a name or location.
The conclusion that this (pretty big) glitch imperils Democrats' use of the internet is ridiculous.
It probably WILL alert the party to the importance of making haste slowly, and to follow a fundamental rule of software development: Never 'go live' with a process that you haven't tested so thoroughly that it's bullet-proof. And I'm betting that there will be a lot more attention to quality BEFORE the event, rather than (as the Iowans are now claiming) AFTER the failure.
And the biggest positive may be that this failure puts a final nail in the coffin of the oddity of party caucuses--inherently unfair and unreflective of a party's total membership.
1
Can we just ignore Iowa already and move on with real primary elections.
3
(Fake) News Flash: By virtue of the Democrats mastery of the self-flagellating art of self-defeat and automatic disqualification, Donald Trump wins the 2020 Democratic Nomination for President.
At major e-commerce companies, technical foul-ups can easily cost millions of dollars per minute when servers crash due to high traffic issues. Those responsible individuals who fail to bring the servers back online instantly or even to anticipate an impending crash are absolutely out of a job. They are decent people who care, but so are Boeing's aeronautics engineers. In aviation as in e-commerce or democratic elections, foul-ups are harmful, prodigiously expensive, and cannot be tolerated in business or by the public.
The nature of the Iowa caucus App problem, from what I have so far seen, was probably more in the area of user-interface and user-experience issues. The human-machine interface is super tricky and arguably is an arena of high tech design that presents the most insidious technical challenges. But like any complex state machine, it is made useful and dependable through extensive live testing and no Gee-I-Hope-It-Works well-wishing.
The question I have for Iowa Democratic officials is what did you do to test it and did you follow the vendor's testing recommendations prior to release?
Short of a Boeing 737 MAX crashing in New Hampshire en route to delivering hardcopy Iowa caucus tallies, I can't think of a worse way for technical glitches to ruin an election.
1
The problem is from the software maker. Who is that?
I would investigate a large, cold Eastern European country working perhaps with a political party.
Technically speaking, Russia is in Asia. But I forgive your misunderstanding seeing as Russia has had a strong influence in many European countries elections, it's easy to confuse where their actual borders lie.
@akamai. According to other articles published in this paper, the software developer was started by former Clinton campaign staffers. Russia ain’t involved in this one
What a farce!
Nevertheless the mishap also shows that this caucus system sucks and the Electoral College stinks.
The GOP knows how to hijack these flaws to win elections and stay in power. As the party under Trump has turned authoritarian, Mitch McConnell imposes iron discipline on party members and voters – with success.
Partisan unity is exactly the political ingredient Democrats need if they want to beat Trump in November.
3
If there was ever a better reason to vote for Yang, this caucus debacle tops them all. We need a candidate that understands technology and the implications it has for our future and the know-how in dealing with these issues. Trump is using the likes of Cambridge Analytical and the DNC is using a phone app. The DNC just showed how stuck in the 20th century they truly are.
4
There was an nyt article in the last week about how advanced the Republicans are technologically, so advanced that people can be traced through their cell phones as they go to church, and then specific ads can target them, for example, ads that would appeal to their church-beliefs.
So I see that the Democratic party is behind the Republicans in technology.
But more than that, I find this technology just awful. It feels like spying to me. I can't believe that we the people think so much of our devices that we allow this intrusion into our daily lives. I would think this might violate freedom of assembly. It would certainly put a damper on where I would choose to go, or where I would take my device.
Also: I agree with the person who said we should go back to paper ballots.
1
You know what's really not helpful?
Feeding the trolls who are having a bash fest here watching us bash each other, the DNC and everyone in between.
I choose to see this as a positive moment. If it's going to be screwed up royally, I'd much rather it happen now than later.
It's also fitting the state that gave us Grassley, Ernst, and the lovely Steve King, is showing itself to be incompetent. I don't like that such a red state is first with the outdated caucus process, gets to have first pick on who the rest of us get to choose from. Maybe this fiasco will end it.
We have a much bigger problem to solve here - sending trumps, all of them, packing. Instead, we voluntarily become targets, along with much help from the media. This is what got them into the White House in the first place with a big assist from the Times.
Stop it already!
5
The reason why it’s important to focus on this is that the leadership of the Democratic Party needs to create and execute on a digital platform strategy ASAP (at a national level so we avoid debacles rolling out in each primary/caucus) or Trump/McConnell will win. Democrats better get it together or we won’t be winning anything. Lots of work to do.
2
The Dems have a tech screw-up and everyone's jumping down their throats. At least they were transparent about it and took their lumps. And the timing is certainly inconvenient and embarrassing. However, all of this pales in comparison to the authoritarian GOP's encroachment upon our values and institutions. How do we square this event with our president's constant lying, cheating and profiteering at the expense of us all? Not to mention the Senate's exoneration of Trump's extortion and their toleration of his treasonous acts.
5
The credibility cost of this can't be overstated.
Here we have a party with leading candidates who say: I want to force you to give up your well-functioning private health insurance and let the government control that system instead.
And yet, the same party cannot count a few caucus votes in Iowa.
And which do you think is a much harder task?
The simple point is, grand theoretical ideas, no matter how well meaning, should be constrained by a strong dose of humility and realism. Fix what needs to be fixed and avoid screwing up the things that work well enough now.
5
@Baldwin
"Well-functioning private health insurance"? Surely you jest.
And what if you don't have private health insurance, as tens of millions don't?
3
@Baldwin Well-functioning private health insurance?? What planet are you living on? No, seriously. Going broke over one appointment or not going to an appointment because you can't afford the high deductible in NOT "well-functioning" insurance. Not if you truly care about the well-being of your fellow citizens.
@Baldwin
Apparently, you haven't experienced the European model.
Imagine if our national defense worked the way our healthcare does. In the event of a war, the wealthy would get the best protection, with the middle-classes and poor more or less fending for themselves.
Sound good to you?
It is clear from the sensationalism of the author and his misinformation about software development that he knows little of the subject.
This article is written to ride the line of "somewhat accurate" and "scaremongering" that I wonder if the author chose to be disingenuous on purpose. MVP is a process of defining the minimum requirements of a product to satisfy customer expectations. This process is used to limit "scope creep" where new requirements and requests come in and move deadlines back. It isn't, as the article subtly implies, anything to do with collecting data on customers (owners or users of an app) nor is it about "minimum effort" by developers.
Some concerns raised are legitimate: Voting software should be open source - able to be inspected by the public and experts at will for vulnerabilities and improvements. The experience of the user should be as clean, clear and easy to use so that even the technologically impaired (many elections volunteers and caucus precinct captains, apparently) can use it effectively. Help documentation should be accessible on the device. There should always be a paper trail / second form of conveying results from a location. The infrastructure to run a given event should be stress tested top-to-bottom in simulations several times the highest expected real-world scenarios.
Software is involved in every critical aspect of our lives. It can do voting - this is a stumble, not a fall.
2
Bloomberg wasn't my first choice of Dem candidate but I'm going to caucus for him, because I truly believe he is the ONLY Dem candidate who knows how to strategize effectively and win. And if he's President, well then, I will be much happier than I am with Trump.
9
@Sydney Or strategize to over-turn term limits to keep himself in power longer. He is exactly like Trump but with a better P.R. machine. Be careful there - you are asking for one huge ego to replace another huge ego.
1
May sew up election for Trump. Gallup says his numbers are rising; tonight he'll make hay about this sad affair; stock market is good; economy not bad for most. Looks good for him.
4
Maybe it's a diversion, to stop the DNC officials from noticing that Bernie Sanders, like Donald Trump, is not, actually, a member of the Democratic Party.
2
To err is human to really foul things up requires a computer. I think the phrase needs an update to an app. 2020 and they can't even get a simple count a vote number app right. Heres why we need Bloomberg. No one is perfect but he made his fortune gathering data and analyzing data. Do you think the top traders in the world would put up with this nonsense. Let the man run the data of this country and tell me do you think he will save our wasteful spending?
1
I remember the days when my Palm IIIC would give me a "Fatal Error" message and I would lose all of my data in my Contacts and other vital information. I would have to pull out my little black book and do things the old fashioned way.
Paper doesn't crash, folks.
2
@larry Yes, thank goodness they have it all on paper; the failure was just in transmitting the results to the central office. Now apparently it's just about phoning them in. (For some reason, I haven't heard anybody talking about faxing.)
2
The source of this is a lack of management of the timing and rollout of the app. Why did the Iowa Democratic Party keep the app secret? Where was testing and training? Only two months to develop and rollout - seriously? Please, this is basic project management. Seriously need some stronger leadership in the Democratic Party that will provide decent oversight and has a strategy to use digital platforms.
1
The DNC has stumbled from one self-induced train wreck to another for years. That said, I don't agree that we "desperately need to win the internet". Indeed I think we need to free ourselves of the internet and entirely ban such agencies as Fakebook and Twitter from publishing any political ads at all.
2
@Neal This isn't the DNC, as it happens. I'm afraid realistically a lot happens on the internet, and we have to pay attention.
2
You, Big Media, make this worse. You want results now, up/down, yes/no. Caucuses are are not elections. These are "preferences," not votes. You made this bigger than it was intended to be and then complain when it doesn't meet your expectations. The results are there, they just didn't come in at the time you wanted so it's time to trash everything. Didn't used to be this confusing. But Big Media and Big Campaigns made everything worse. Thanks for nothing.
2
That's precisely what the Democrat Establishment wants to do.
No more Bernie Sanders.
No more Howard Deans.
No more Liz Warrens.
No more Pete Buttgigs.
If they can remove this Populist favoring caucus style election out of the limelight, the Establishment can apply their formidable financial resources towards more important things..like getting an Establishment candidate nominated by focusing on expensive media states like FL, VA and NY.
Get Iowa out of there.
Focus on the big expensive states who RESPECT and ADMIRE power and prestige brought to you by the top of the hierarchy known as the Democrat Party, Corporate Media and Wall Street.
1
Charlie, Charlie. No one needs "to win the internet”. What the country needs is to have the most intelligent, aware, flexible, honest, and healthy candidate win the contest.
And it really doesn’t matter who, in your view, provides the most entertainment or “wins the internet.” The internet isn’t reality, it’s just bits in a processor. If you think I’m wrong, ask it to make your bed, clean your home, wash your clothes, cook your food. Yes, you can hire someone, using the internet, to do all those things--but in the end, it is a human who does them.
1
@Susan
Sorry, no amount of rationalizing will disprove that Democrats need to win the internet. It's how people gain impressions nowadays, where they spend their free time, it's how they communicate.
2
@blgreenie
Hey, maybe the Dems should start Tweeting outrageously--it works for the Don.
This failure is beyond belief. Does anyone in the Democratic Party remember the laughable failure of the Obamacare roll out? Remember how it took people hours, days, weeks to sign up for coverage? If not, anyone who has ever worked with a computer could have warned the Dems to make sure their new software worked perfectly! I can hear Trump's mockery now: if they can't even run a simple caucus, how can they run the country?
4
How can they be so sure that no hacking was involved? If the tabulation is based on spreadsheets with a set of macros (High Level commands) running on them, a hacker can mess up the tabulation by getting into the command file, add or remove a command, and leave without a trace.
2
Paper ballots would help to control local election result manipulation and in my view are the only way to ensure confidence in the voting system but that's not the critical issue exposed by the bungling in the Iowa Democrat caucuses. I think the real issue is that the national Democrat party is unprepared to meet Trump's social media warfare and it will be up the the candidate that ultimately triumphs own organization to try to counter the lies, misdirection, and rumor mongering. The Republican controlled Senate has given him the the green light to retain the presidency by any means. In a nation where the majority of people rely only on Facebook or Fox tv for for news, failure to counter Trump's relentless barrage of lies on a real time basis will get him re-elected. Get ready for President Donald Trump Jr. in 2028.
1
The fuss surrounding the Iowa caucus meltdown is not, as some commentors here claim, “making a mountain out of a molehill”. Rather, it is yet another example of Democrats shooting themselves in the foot. This die-hard Democrat thinks that party leaders in Iowa and elsewhere deserve all the heat they’re getting. How else but by expressing our frustration can we expect these folks to get their act together? We are depending on them to help us get rid of a very powerful and charismatic demagogue—and if that isn’t a towering mountain, I don’t know what is.
3
Look on the bright side.
If this brings an end to the Iowa caucuses then it will have been a good thing.
If it brings a reform to the primary system then it will have been a great thing.
In many countries there's a six month campaign then a national primary, featuring all the candidates from all parties and independents. Then two months later there's an election featuring the top two vote getters. with the winner receiving the majority of the popular vote.
This allows for five or so different political parties featuring real ideas instead of just a horse race / beauty pageant style campaign.
If this pathetic debacle results in that level of reform then it will have been fantastic!
4
I just read a new Gallup poll saying half of Americans now support Trump. If accurate after Trump's first three years, there is no hope for America as a nation. Work in your own blue states to improve the lives of the most needy. Engage in efforts to support policies that improve the environment, educate our children, meet the medical needs of everyone, provide equal religious freedom for all and allow equal civil rights for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation. The nation is ruled by its racist and religious segment. Don't let the same happen in your state.
3
Another example of technology making things worse. I think the problem may be that ss individuals we are aware of the problems with digital technology but when we form committees somehow wisdom goes out the window and everyone follows the people hyping digital technology solutions. Iowa should be a wake up call of how dumb this all is. Digital technology is full of glitches and is hard for even PhDs to use. The motto should be keep it simple and keep it analog. Unfortunately that doesn't sound very cool so expect more problems ahead.
1
Democrats are doing their job, glitches happen. Sadly, the media makes a huge issue of it, but also, your president will most likely do something in the next few days to make the news cycle his and this so called horror story will be yesterday's news. The press can be a big part of the problem in that the magnifying glass they hold up to the Dems is largely of their own perceptions rather than that of the millions of voters who simply hate Trump.
This is like the rollout of the ACA portal. Why do Democrats shun profit-driven companies with the technical expertise to get a job done right the first time.
I get it, tech firms are greedy and capitalistic, but winning the battle of giving a small, under privileged firm a chance at a big contract leads to the losing the war as voters lose faith in your ability to execute well.
2
That gives Trump 4 more years to make America stronger. I hope USA will be strong enough to sustain the onslaught of the incompetent Democratic administration starts from 2025.
1
Drop anything electronic from the caucus process. This circus was built to get results out faster. For who, the networks at 11 PM? Go out, buy a box pf pencils, a stack of legal pads, a few calculators and a telephone. If the media has to wait a day then they wait a day. Sometimes old school still works best.
1
Why not blame the Russians as part of a Trump conspiracy? The party has sought comfort in unfounded conspiracies for the past three years - why stop now?
2
When the old guard is replaced with neophytes you get amatur hour.
1
My home state DNC just delivered an unmitigated disaster for the rest of the world to see, and for the RNC to enjoy. I caucus because I have no other choice. I would rather vote in a primary and couldn’t care less if I remain “first in the nation”. After months of participating, knocking on hundreds of doors, and volunteering my time on the pavement and at the caucuses I feel humiliated and somewhat betrayed by my state officials. You let us down. As an elected delegate I will endeavor to end this antiquated process. We, the voters of Iowa must demand that we banish the caucus, irrespective of those who are obviously profiting from it.
6
I used to be a Republican but there is no way I would call myself a Democrat. Just after the impeachment trial and Trump's approval rating at 49%. Please focus on who makes up the electorate. 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 as a socialist has a chance to win.
Enough with flirting with the extremes and let's focus on getting rid of the bully in chief.
3
And this is the party that wishes to take over all the medical care in the country?
I’ll pass, thank you.
56
@DoctorHeel I have yet to meet a single person who is on medicare and wants to see medicare end.
30
@DoctorHeel I saw this same snarky comment all over conservative twitter last night. Not original, nor accurate. The Iowa Democratic party, or the national party for that matter, would have little to do with what would be a nationalized healthcare system. A small, state party should not be compared to what would be a national support system backed up by an extensive government bureaucracy, and almost infinite money from the richest nation in the world.
43
@DoctorHeel
I have an idea. Let's let EPIC's medical software handle it!!
As an IT professional, I'd say mistakes were made but that happens with an overwhelming percentage of go-lives on new software. Big deal.
18
Having Fun Yet?
Don’t count on the Dems to keep their count straight,
Don’t count on the Dems to keep food on your plate;
It’s Iowa, boys, all caucus confusion
Say it ain’t so, it’s all a delusion
That they have a winner, but just can’t be found
Can’t count the votes, our system’s not sound;
So best to surrender, we don’t have a champ
Can’t count the voters, it’s time to decamp
Up Canada way, a hard freeze in winter,
But count votes they can and have a winner.
So the party that wants to run the country, can't run a 2-bit primary election in a small state?
And they now try to blame "technology"?
Really?
These are the best and brightest the Democratic Party in Iowa has. They couldn't even download an app to a phone.
Run!!!!
6
Sigh. You should come to San Francisco and walk up Market Street to get a full flavor (and whiff) of the Democratic penchant for managerial incompetence. Once upon a time we at least had moderate Republicans to mind the shop while Democrats were off doing their kumbaya thing, but alas, they went extinct decades ago...
5
It seems there must not be a clear front runner in Iowa, like Barack Obama was in the 2008 Iowa caucus. And Jesse Jackson, second only to Mondale, in the 1984 Iowa caucus.
Iowa's caucuses can yield pretty racially progressive results for an old white state.
1
The only thing worse than Democrats is, well, Republicans. Keep the paper ballots. Dump "high-tech" voting. Assume nothing - keep it simple.
Dems can't figure out what happened last night but I bet that Republicans have already figured out how to game this disaster and use it to their advantage in 2020.
2
The poor Iowans ! Confusion seems to reign and the campaigns aren't helping . Paper ballots people , apps or anything that can be hacked will be hacked . In the old days they worried about dead people voting , now it's the live ones that can cheat via hacking . The Democrats need to move on , this election is too important and superegos need to stop sowing discord by angry demands and ageist attitudes . Align yourselves with your fellow Democrats and may the best true DEMOCRAT win .
The NYTimes editorial board has failed to identify the culprit in this incompetency event: the company that misrepresented the app as capable of handling the Iowa caucus results.
As a former programmer, and as a former system test engineer, I would hazard a guess that any/all of these is true:
- The company that programmed the app was out to make a quick buck and is lying;
- The people who chose the app didn’t have the experience to ask the right questions and demand a witnessed load test, probably being volunteer leaders.
The caucus system may be of historic value, but paper ballots would be better. The caucus system could be approximated by ranked choice voting.
2
Is anybody besides me worried about foul play? These snafus are sooooo convenient for Trump (and Putin).
2
Yeah, this story feels just a bit overblown. Since 7pm last night, the entire press corps has been desperately trying to leapfrog each other to come up with the first scoop on predicting the outcome, even though there was little more than scattered anecdotal evidence.
These caucuses have been one of the most over-covered stories in a while. Keep your pants on, people. There's a paper trail and the votes will be counted.
These kinds of technical failures result from having people making decisions over things that they are unqualified to evaluate, usually bypassing the people who know much more about it. That's poor leadership. Heads ought to roll, because no organization can afford to repeat this sort of failure. Fortunately someone insisted on a non-technical Plan B: paper.
2
This sounds super fishy. They say there was no hacking, but I'm having a hard time believing it given the depths certain GOP leaders are going to win.
1
It's 2020. You use technology for everything. Saying we shouldn't use it and should go back to paper is admitting you're too incompetent to use technology which is an utter embarrassment for a party meant to attract young people born into technology, such as millenials. It's also a great way to refuse to take responsibility for this total screw up. The fact they're calling it a "coding issue" is them refusing to take responsibility. This isn't about technology, it's about incompetent organizers. Would have it been so hard to do some training, to hand out phones where the software was preinstalled and tested, to have hired a company that had high quality assurance software strategies ? Yea blame it on the code, that'll make you look great.
1
@SG >> ...admitting you're too incompetent to use technology...
The first step is admitting you have a problem. Maybe a change of leadership at the DNC would help.
The very definition of shooting yourself in the foot is the snafu that the Democrat party made of the Iowa caucuses. And these people somehow think they can convince Americans that they have the smarts to govern a nation? They can't even govern a statewide voting process without screwing it up royally.
3
Dems blamed the Electoral College in 2016 and wanted that changed. Now they blame an app and want out of Iowa, a place that had always delivered the first votes without failure or disruption. Blame this, blame that. Same mantra.
2
I think the Democrats desperately need to show the voters that they’re listening and responding. And they need to realize it. Hopefully the reaction to last night’s debacle will be such that it turns out there’s an app for that.
As to what the voters want, I think Tim Wu was on the right track in his 3/5/19 NYT op-ed “The Oppression of the Supermajority.” His partial list at one point of what a substantial majority of voters would like to see but can’t seem to get: higher taxes for the ultrawealthy, paid maternity leave, net neutrality, stronger privacy laws, buying cheaper drugs from Canada, and allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices.
The list goes on, he said, and I believe it.
Back to the basics. This is after all supposed to be a representative democracy.
Those of us who work in the gig economy can tell you that apps for reporting results, which turn out to be poorly engineered and infuriatingly flawed are common. They are often designed by off-shore programmers and are chosen based on the cheapest bid. I hope this is a lesson learned by the Iowa Democratic Party: Low bid = low quality. And btw, don't blame sr. citizens for the problem of not using the app correctly. I would bet most of the app's users did not receive any instructions on how to install and use the app. Is there a video on how to use the app? I'm guessing NO.
1
In this age of universal computer hacks at all levels and the Russian’s high tech interference in the 2016 elections, resulting in continuous warnings about further attempts to disrupt our elections, it is beyond my comprehension that the powers that be continue to employ new and more vulnerable technology to add votes, rather than simply use the old punch cards and/or paper ballots which, while slower are not hackable.
Even without the massive screw ups, the entire Iowa “caucus” process itself seemed like a farcical convoluted/Byzantine scheme for choosing delegates to nominate a President.
The whole episode is a very disturbing commentary on our brand of Democracy
Discount Iowa. They don’t deserve to send delegates. And the head of the state and national DNCs should resign. Democrats have to show we are accountable for our performance while our president is not. You screw up- you’re gone.
2
They designed an app critical for voting in not nearly enough time to do proper testing, installed it onto people’s individual phones, many of which may not be secure, and now they want to blame it all on bad software? Sounds like it was set up to fail to me. What result did they actually expect from this?
6
I used to deliver apps in my old job, working with an application developer. The issue is testing and quality control. It's always up to the client to properly outline requirements and to test to those requirements. An app with correct requirements and decent testing of the prototype doesn't fail like this. It seems pretty obvious the client (Democratic Party) didn't do even basic due diligence on the prototype before it was used. Hard to believe, actually. It signals a lack of rigour and professionalism, which bodes ill.
7
My 30 year career in the software development business suggests to me an absolute, embarrassing failure on the part of the customers, developers, quality assurance testers and managers. It bespeaks the sort of intellectual arrogance which nailed the Democrats in 2016 and which will doom them again if they don’t learn some humility from this experience. You can’t even get a simple app to work yet want to run the country?
4
I do not think the Democrats should have to apologize because the Iowa Caucuses did not feature the Democratic equivalent of Trump’s grand escalator entrance.
Democracy is supposed to be messy. What’s happening now seems like an attempt to create drama where little exists. Perhaps this is just the byproduct of 3+ years of Donald Trump. I could not help but feel the same way last night as a CNN reporter walked from the Bernie side to the Warren side and asked people if they would vote for other the candidates if the one they were there to support did not win. Without exception, each person asked replied that they would vote for the Democratic nominee no matter what. It was obvious the interviewer was looking for the opposite answer as that would have created drama (and better T.V.).
Vote Blue no matter who!
3
No, BUT they should have known that this was not a good way to develop an app like this.
2
There is no good reason to continue the Iowa Caucus.
For the 2024 election, there should be primaries on the same day in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. That would provide a fair balance of regions.
They should all be classic secret ballots, with opportunities for mail-in ballots in advance.
We don’t need the Internet for this.
11
Doesn't the Democratic National Committee have a responsibility to ensure that caucuses and primaries undertaken under its aegis have the tools and resources to make them work? The DNC should have provided first rate technical assistance, training, and the funds to implement its digital solutions in Iowa and to party operatives in all the states that are engaged in selecting the nominee of the party. Its their responsibility as a national party. If they don't want to play this role we need to create a party poised to compete in the 21st century. And don't blame Iowa and its volunteers who contribute their time to the democratic process.
1
Counting votes is, and always has been a straight forward affair for the past 250+ years in this country.
4
Even if the technology had worked flawlessly the Iowa caucus needs to go. It's both anachronistic and undemocratic. It should instead be a primary. And even then, given the extent to which Iowa's demographics do not come close to reflecting those of the nation it should not have the power it does to affect the nominating outcome of the party. Ditto for New Hampshire.
2
Has Iowa not heard of Scantron? They've been around for nearly 50 years. They instantly tally and report voting results, AND they leave a paper trail.
Specifically why did they try using an app? What functional or time efficiency benefit did they think they were getting with an app? It takes longer to download the app, install it, navigate to it, and as it turns out report results than it does to fill out and submit a scantron and have this system collate results, AND you have no paper trail.
@JA
The votes are written on cards signed by the voter. They are then added up and marked down on a worksheet. The old was was to call in with the numbers and send the paper to the local office. the app was to send in the numbers with a picture of the worksheet. and then send the paper to the local.
It looks bad but no votes got lost or miscounted. I see no reason for having changed it at all.
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-04/clinton-campaign-vets-behind-2020-iowa-caucus-app-snafu
2
By "Democrats" Mr. Warzel means the "DNC." Bernie has won the internet very effectively as his poll numbers and most probable primary win in Iowa show. It is the "centrist" corporate Democrats who are out of touch and fail to understand that the "commons" has shifted beyond their venues.
4
Rehearsal maybe? This was a big show. Only once every four years. All the panic and recriminations could have been easily avoided. You could also hand count these numbers in a few hours.
1
Why the importance of Iowa? Not to disparage Iowans but why is any state given priority? This country has turned into a bad joke with a reality show personality as President and now this. So much money wasted appealing to a certain group of people is appalling and goes against everything the candidates allegedly stand for. Flying into Iowa, NH etc what happened to concerns about the environment? Back biting among the candidates and their followers with even Hillary chiming in and riling up her tribe of followers helps no one. Civil discourse, empathy and respect are pretty much extinct in this country.
1
Is it OK to say that I don't care who the good people of Iowa think would be the best candidate to compete against Trump? As everybody continually points out, they are not the least bit representative of the country as a whole.
4
I have to agree. The whole thing is political theater and this was a very bad performance. Caucusing is time consuming and as a result shuts out a lot of the citizens who are unable to participate, Only a handful of states still do it and they should stop. And if some state must “go first”, pick one that’s a bit more representative of the country’s actual demographics, and it’s not Iowa. I have nothing against Iowa. I’m sure they’re awesome. But who they select as a candidate has no impact on my choices whatsoever.
2
@The Wanderer
You assume.
Seriously, "he party desperately needs to win the internet" is at best your opinion, at worst, fake news. Despite Trump's supposed skill at tweeting, the polls don't show that it he has a majority of voters, the majority disapprove of him. More than tweeting, his disrespect for people in general is welcomed by people in this country's heartland who are tired of the "hurry up and wait" attitude of traditional pols, allowing narrow wins in their states. And, of course, he is losing the Internet battle big time to voters 30 and under - seems the Democrats are doing OK there!
If anything, the Democrats need to get on the ground in those states and demonstrate that the days of hurry up and wait are over. Unfortunately, many Democrats are trying to undermine the Democratic disrupters that can do that, Internet or not.
1
Okay, that's it. As if it was needed, this blunder should destroy the notion that one tiny state's "caucus" (of for that matter a lone primary) is a rational way to conduct a start to a presidential election.
Let this be the last year the Democratic party participates and even organizes this small state fiasco process.
A series of five primary elections featuring a national representative 10 states each would be a vast improvement.
Or even three elections with 16 or so states spread over a half year would work.
In fact, almost any scheme other than the current undemocratic one would be far more rational. Enough!
8
As a keen outsider I have to laugh at the parade of contestants for the DNC leadership and potentially the next US President. When will these Delegates and the DNC grasp the fact that they are confusing the middle or the uncommitted group that will determine the next president, so the sooner they get to a unified message, the better because voters will take them seriously.
Right now Trum and his strategy team are laughing their guts off.
3
In a month, this technical glitch will have faded. This is not going to destroy the Democrats' chances in the election. Analytics, social media, digital advertising: these are the more important things. This app is not on the critical path to the election.
4
The one thing we can be certain of at this point is that we do not know what happened. All speculation - as in this piece - is idle.
One of the officials had to do calculations by hand. Luckily that person still knew how to do so. Unfortunately, now that our education system is overrun with technological improvements, such folks will be few and far between. Let’s save the apps for ordering pizza and leave education and voting alone.
8
Allow sufficient time to test any app before putting it into production. Expecting an application to work well without a comprehensive end to end test plan is asking for trouble.
7
While Democrats are fiddling with their apps and broken technology, I would like to refer the Democratic party to Google Forms, Survey Monkey, and Doodle...Easy to use and secure resources which can be used to create and disseminate forms, and to collate and report results. Easy enough that even 12 year olds are capable of designing and using in a matter of minutes.
6
The results of the test are in. When it comes to using digital technology and the internet, chaos and disruption are typical by products, easily leveraged by the disruptors in our midst.
The results should lead us to paper ballots scanned and recorded. Anything more complicated is likely to be either compromised or manipulated.
8
The fact that there were four years between the last caucus and this one and that this app was field tested in the last month tells me something’s very very wrong with the Iowa Democratic Party, or the state or the counties or whoever. It also tells me an overconfidence in Silicon Valley to actually fix anything has brought us to this low estate. The DNC (and, probably RNC) need to step in at some point and say “we’ll risk litigation, other states are going the same days as Iowa and NH in future primaries, the end”. It’s really only a fiasco for journalists and the campaigns who need data, etc. Those of us in Texas really don’t care. But, it does show a lack of capability, this time among the Democrats of Iowa, to pull it together. You want a new app? Great. Test it beginning 1/1/18. If it’s not ready then, tell Shadow, “give us our money back”.
6
The scenario that I/we won't be able to trust the reported results of the November election is, for the first time in my life, no longer "unimaginable".
In fact, it's moved past "unimaginable", through "worrisome", and is fast closing in on "default"
Mandatory paper ballots, paper trails. Now.
(And, of course we have time between now and then. It can't be that much harder than building a 1000-bed hospital in a week)
6
2016 happened the DNC and Clinton campaign conspired against the Sanders campaign and were caught. Now the final definative poll was quashed right before these technical difficulties. It just happens to soften what appears to be a devistating loss for the parties favored candidate.
But If you notice these things you're the problem.
7
Those who believe that election results collected and tallied by a computer system(s) can be relied upon to be accurate are woefully and profoundly naive.
Building tamper proof and flawless systems has yet to be achieved, as demonstrated by the endless security updates of all of our personal devices, to use a universal example. There are so many ways that an election system can be compromised by unscrupulous actors that one can never be sure the results are reliable. No one can seriously believe that Edward Snowden is the only person with the technical skill and will to break into a supposedly highly secure system, but that a programmer or company that builds an election system would never slip in a piece of malicious code or build in a hidden back door to manipulate the results.
The lawmakers and bureaucrats that have allowed these systems to replace paper ballots, especially the systems without a robust paper trail verification process, are guilty of gross negligence or worse.
We have lost our democracy until this is rectified.
1
Agreed, except Snowden didn’t break in. He had high level access as a result of his job functions. And as I understand it, he just put everything on a USB stick and walked out the door with it. But your point is otherwise well taken and accurate.
1
@WesternMass.
I agree, it wasn't the right example to use. There's the Sony Pictures hack, the innumerable hacks into personal info and credit card numbers held by retailers, etc., etc. My guess is that this will not turn out to be a hack, but bad code that was not adequately tested. It makes Iowa and the Dems look utterly incompetent.
This fiasco points to a more fundamental concern of mine: the pernicious fallacy that technology is the solution to our problems. This fallacy fuels society's increasingly reflexive response to problem-solving, which is to assume that some new technology is going to be better than older technologies simply because it's new. It's important to recognize that technology has never solved any of humanity's problems. Technologies are simply tools that humans apply to solve problems. Some tools are better than others for certain tasks. The tried and true technology of paper and pencil, augmented by computer scanning, is still the best voting system.
3
I am an Iowa resident and have been a software developer for nearly 20 years. Beyond the app being a horrible idea in the first place, it appears it may not have been vetted for security, load, or even proper function.
Tradition should not be enough to keep caucuses. They make it near impossible for anyone who works late, has small children, or is disabled to participate in the process.
17
@Socrates
Higher taxes are fine. I would argue though that the current taxes paid could be significantly optimized in terms of civilized use. Cutting down the military budget by half is more than practicable. If we stop invading countries and stopping funding companies who make that and the stay there possible while making billions for themselves that cuts number can be even bigger.
Taxing corporations and collecting those taxes by ending all subsidies that are not justified by environmental or educational reasons; ending all tax exemptions for private educational institutions that horde money in huge endowments enriching the financial sector in transaction cost while sitting on the risks are no brainer solutions.
We need a political revolution to achieve all this.
Bernie 2020.
3
The opening of the article suggests that Trump wins the internet. What hokum!
Aren't the classic Trump voters the older set that doesn't care for the latest technology? We have known for years that no Russian Facebook ads supported Trump until AFTER that election.
Then, there's the resistance of the older set to using social media. One guess was that perhaps a million conservatives are even on Twitter, while most Trump supporters on Facebook are talking about kids and recipes.
But if it makes you feel better to think that Trump's edge comes from the internet-
- where Google has already demonstrated its ability to flip independents to supporting Democrats by the millions -
- then go right ahead.
That way you never have to ask yourself why Trump's polling numbers are looking better than Barack Obama's.
1
Unfortunately, in an important caucus such as this, a tried and true method would have been the better option. Trying a new app or a new way of counting votes in this environment is shaky at best. Who knows what gummed up the vote.
In New York, a computer system is in place. It is new. I work the election poles. We are "trained" in an hour. The primary was the first time we used this system. It worked for most, it failed for many. Computer experts came from the BOE to fix them. Was the count accurate? Who knows. It was a slow day. Most of us were doubtful about the upcoming primaries and the November elections and the possible failure of the computer system.
Will this system prove to facilitate the vote or be accurate for the what will prove to be a heavy 2020 election with those who were trained for an hour to work this new system?
Granted, it is only for finding voters names in the book of eligible voters, but if they are not in the system, they will have earned an affidavit vote which most are not certain whether or not it is counted in the popular vote that evening. This is extremely debatable.
Bottom line, don't change things at the last moment at critical times. Go with what you know.
I had the flu last week and bought a new thermometer only to realize that an app was required to get the temperature reading. I dragged myself back to the drug store and found a more basic option—why should we have to mess around with screens when ill? And why should some random people harvesting information in some random cubicles be rewarded by our spiking fevers? As a society, we need to have more confidence in what we have that already works. We know how to collect and count paper ballots. Why put up a hackable barrier between our votes and the results? When an app creates something that didn’t exist before, great—but we can’t indiscriminately give into automated everything just because that seems inexorably to be where we’re headed. When something works it works. We have actual problems to solve.
12
Everyone needs to take a deep breath. This is not the general election, it’s only Iowa, and there is a paper trail. Now everyone is paying attention. It’s a blessing this happened now, it will increase awareness and preparation.
Let the Republicans laugh. This sucker’s just begun.
8
Replace the caucus with a vote where voters rank 3 places, and use Iowa to give a deeper read on a real vote, New Hampshire. Iowa is and has been a mess and a guess. Turn it into a useful tune up. Ban caucuses, now. They are just a way for party managers to manage results and exert power, while banking political IOUs from candidates.
3
Perhaps it is not a surprise that a party that is busy demonizing Silicon Valley tech companies is struggling to attract competent talent to manage their own technology.
4
Judging from your column and other articles, Shadow produced flawed software and the Iowa Democratic Party may have managed to violate almost every rule for prudent testing and implementation of the software. Did anyone make money from this debacle?
5
Every single person involved in the decision to use this app for the DNC caucuses should be fired/dropped/let go immediately.
I'm a software professional, and this is a debacle beyond belief. There is no defense for any part of it: not the decision to use the app, not the procument, not the selection of who would create it, not the testing process, not the deployment, not the backup planning.
All of them, every single person associated with this needs to be gone, right now (or as soon the results are actually made available).
22
1. They aren’t DNC caucuses.
2. Over more than twenty years, it has been my experience that the clever software you guys hawk NEVER works at the roll-out meeting.
i think last night illustrates some very unfortunate and inconvenient truths.
you have a few people at either end of extremes and a few more in the middle. nobody is solidly leading. a few people should probably drop out of the race.
it's time to unite behind somebody.
i think the person that can get it done without interference can match up nicely with somebody from the group i inferred initially.
Mike Bloomberg and Amy Klobuchar could be winners. Bloomberg is unafraid of trump and trump is obviously afraid of him. Amy Klobuchar would destroy mike pence.
let's put last night's fiasco behind us and unify behind people who can defeat trump. that's job #1.
8
The impeachment process originated by the Democrats in the House was portrayed as deeply flawed and rushed by the Trump team and apparently all of the GOP in the Senate agreed. House did not properly pursue remedies ib the court. Mueller report was mishandled by the House. Now the attempts to appease Bernie in Iowa for mistakes made in 2016 appears to be a fiasco. The primary contenders are elderly or totally inexperienced.
Great talking points for the GOP. Democratic Party needs to get serious about dealing with the fascism creeping up in the GOP to win voters.
2
Mr. Warzel's column is spot on. So far, the Democrats are handling tech issues as if their heart's desire is to lose to Donald Trump.
5
I’m a member of no organized party.
I’m a Democrat.
104
Actually I will take a cynical view:
The Democratic Party is highly organized in that they do whatever it takes to represent the One Percent. The DNC could orchestrate any mafioso scheme as they did under that shameful chairwoman to get their candidate the edge.
Biden is the Hillary of 2020
The Iowa fail was a master stroke of succeeding by pushing faulty technology which was not tested given the polls showing Biden behind.
6
@Rob Kadar Borrowed from Will Rogers.
2
@Blunt
Wow - very cynical, indeed! But now that you mention it, seems plausible...
“I don’t always test my code, but when I do, I do it in production”
15
This was spot on. Thanks so much for a good laugh, even if what you said is probably true.
What if the company at the heart of it -- Shadow -- is actually a GOP (or worse, a Russian) plant? Could its name even be a tongue-in-cheek retort to the Democrats? Please tell me it isn't true...
2
@PT Never attribute to malice what ineptitude can fully explain.
Like another idea from the Democratic left, "Medicare for All," this caucus will also die.
3
Didn't Dali say, in effect, "the children of geniuses are idiots?" He must have had FDR's political heirs in mind.
2
Just how trustworthy will these results be after everything finally gets "fixed"?
6
Paper ballots. Photos of the ballots. Hand counting. Get everyone used to the fact that it's going to take more time--a day or two. How hard it is?
Sometimes I think we forget technology is something we use--it's not supposed to use us. We don't allow two-year-olds instant gratification. Why should we promote it in adults?
10
I guess requesting a recall by some individuals would be in poor taste.
1
Suggestions to fix the problem:
1. Replace Dem. national chairman Tom Perez. He's not up to the job.
2. Get rid of this "trickle into the contest" method of national delegate selection: Iowa first, then New Hampshire, then South Carolina & Nevada, etc.
Instead, hold four super Tuesday primaries in a combination of states that, when put together, add up to 100% of the total delegates. It would look like this:
25% on 2nd Tuesday in February;
25% on 2nd Tuesday in March;
25% on 2nd Tuesday in April;
25% on 2nd Tuesday in May.
By Memorial Day, all delegates would be chosen. The Democrats could have their convention in July, and have 90-100 days to campaign before the general election in November.
Rotate the order of the four groupings every 4 yr. cycle.
3. The Democratic National Committee has to take hold of the entire process and say to the states: "We certify your results in order to award the delegates. If you do not follow our requirements, we will not certify."
As it stands now, each state decides when and how they will run their caucus or primary.
That's good for the early states because they get outsized media coverage and commerce, but it's not good for the candidates or the national party or the remaining states waiting for the calendar to get to their event.
4. Show the Clinton people to the door. They are old news, and they need to be removed from influence.
16
Spot on; especially point 4. One of the greatest political miscalculations in the modern political era is running Hilary for president in 2016. You can point out she won the popular vote and that matters...not at all. Adding new point 5: anyone over 70 should not receive serious consideration for any national office (including Speaker of the House).
3
The Democrats should stop cheating.
3
This is an opportunity to ditch the current caucus system entirely.
Have primaries with low tech ballots on an early schedule in mid-size states where retail politics are still feasible but with a demographic and geography that are more diverse and representative than IO and NH: say, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Wisconsin, South Carolina and Connecticut.
2
And here we go, Democrats trashing Democrats, as usual. Maybe we can stop doing that an acknowledge that things happen and that a technical snafu is far better than the corruption that is the entire Trump administration and the ex-GOP now POT.
10
The term "minimal viable product" is like a metaphor for our entire slapdash instant-gratification society.
8
Voting.
Health Care.
Infrastructure.
Our systems are broken.
And that's only the top three of a too long list.
Are we going to do something to remedy this mess?
Or do we keep chasing our tails?
3
"Unexplained inconsistencies in results, heated conference calls and firm denials of hacking . . . "
And people wonder how, why and where conspiracy theories get started.
What Iowa is attempting to do is slam shut the barn door even though all of the cows, horses, and sheep are long gone.
This data collection debacle will not die or fade away. This is exactly what will be used as a perfect example for questioning voting results come November. And no foreign country even picked up a cell phone, touched a keypad, nor fired up the computer.
This public perception nightmare is on US and no one else. Good luck trying to walk this puppy back.
4
Voting and ballot systems are deceptively complex: It seems like a so very simple communication and record keeping problem until you account for reality. The mechanics of reliably communicating, recording and counting votes with auditable certainty is a very challenging problem to solve. The difficulty arises and grows exponentially from all the things that can possibly go wrong in the process, accidental or otherwise, that therefore have to be accounted for in that process. Adding new 'features and capabilities' to a working system of this kind virtually guarantees its failure in ways that are impossible to anticipate. This is all well known.
The bottom line for now is to use only well known paper based systems for voting.
David Lindsay
13 mins ·
The New York Times
·All the Iowan Democratic leadership needed to do, was pick a second phone number for tech support on their new, untested caucus results app that no one could figure out. By using their main reporting in number, it was too busy for managers to call in their results.
The brouhaha over the Iowa caucus management issues got me reading Charlie Warzel today, and though I didn't like his piece, suggesting that this phone mistake indicates the end of the world, I followed a hypertext to his column below on November 1, 2019, about the importance of fighting the Republicans on the internet, with memes, or, folk content, of our own, but also, organized by professionals. He pointed out that the Democrats only spent 15% of their ad budgets on internet ads, while Trump was more like the opposite, but he doesn't give a figure. He wrote: "The Trump campaign already has a healthy head start building up its microtargeting and fund-raising technology. In the digital ad-spend arms race on Facebook and Google, Mr. Trump’s campaign has spent more than the top three Democratic candidates combined to identify and turn out supporters in key states and counties. Arguably more important is the data acquisition play. The Trump campaign is building tools to take advantage of information like mobile location data to learn intensely personal details about potential voters and then hit them with explicitly tailored messages that fire them up."
2
Warzel is a great addition to the Times. He's not ideological and he understands what others miss. Zuckerberg's command to "move fast and break stuff" was an ominous hint of what was to come. Too few paid attention. Using those words atop this piece reminds me that Democrats are on a dangerous course in using technology fast when they and the technology aren't ready, aren't proven, aren't yet reliable. The broken stuff is more than the caucus, it's the esteem and trust that Democrats are trying to amass for their Party and for their candidates.
4
You would think the sky is falling. Get a grip people. Especially amusing are the people blaming the entire Democratic party.
In all my working life, newly-released software was always buggy the first few weeks even after beta testing.
Voting simply doesn't belong on software.
10
Progressives. So much progress.
5
@TL
No, corporate/establishment democrats, NOT progressives. The "old guard" still runs the party and its operations. That is why they must be expunged from it and that is why they lose,
And who is the anti-establishment candidate? Sanders? Warren? I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale if you wanna come by and take a look.
This article is lazy. Did you talk to developers, firms who develop apps or other who are not "academics" but actually make a living doing this? I think the answer is no.
The app is a colossal failure because it was poorly architected, poorly built, poorly tested and the training was bad. This is what happens when you got to a "progressive" firm to build your app, vs. hiring a competent firm who builds apps and has a track record. BTW, most of us are on the progressive side of the spectrum, but we are tech firms first.
5
LOL. Iowa is just the latest example of central planner focused parties (ie. Democrats) proving to the American people they are the last sort to be trusted with any meaningful segment of our lives (healthcare, economy). Government is, at best, an inept administrator and at worst maniacal and tyrannical.
2
The Iowa Caucus - Principles of leadership evidenced in China by the Coronavirus and their creative democratic communist response - What’s not to like ?
1
The tech utopians of San Francisco are no more friends to Democrats than 50-button TV remotes are friends to pretty much any human. Ditch the tech.
Here's a novel ideaf or future elections: Pen and paper. Period. Verified hand count. Period.
And do away with the Iowa, I gotta be first, Caucuses. They are pointless and useless.
3
I just want honest results. I’m sick of shenanigans and republican corruption.
We have an administration that constantly mocks people participating and attempting to vote and choose their voice in government. That right there is the true threat and absolutely repugnant.
It's rare that people can clearly see into an organization's processes and their capability to run their operation. We have that here. The entire country can clearly see the Democrat Party is completely inept.
3
Charlie, an absurdly easy fix awaits…
> Just invite each of the candidates to comment on this article, using a readily-identifiable handle
> Declare those – and only those – as NYT picks
> See how many of your readers recommend each comment
> Rely on FB to block votes by people who also read – and worse, comment on – Breitbart
We’d be done by noon…
Leaves enough time to detect that Trump’s speechwriter is from a state not of this union – someplace like Bangistan or Kerplakistan…
Or – pay off the sign-language signer to read Schiff’s lips during the speech, instead of going with what Trump’s actually saying…
Including that he actually resigned an hour ago – and the new P and VP sitting right behind him…
PS
Be interesting to see if Bloomberg attends…
Would stop and frisk the guy, before letting him in…
Who knows what’s in that booster seat…
Oooh – it’s only money…
IOWA: DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT.
Seriously.
3
It is a redux of
"Man of the Year" - Robin Williams
crossed with an
"Our Gang/Little Rascals" comedy from 1920s to the 1960s "hey kids let's put on a show" cockup
and done in the context of not-really tested software (and anyone who installs software that hasn't been out for at least 1 year is asking to get burned......Microsofts uber-tested operating systems are usually still blowing up in the first 12-16 months)
1
Was a mistake for Democrats to buy their election app from Boeing.
3
Things are going very well. The Mueller Hoax failed, impeachment backfiring and now Iowa meltdown. The democrats can't get out of their own way. Today Gallup is showing Trump's highest approval rating with 99% unfair new coverage. In addition we have CNN, NYTs and the DNC trying to cheat Bernie again. It's 2016 all over again!
4
Caucus is a lovely, old-timey idea that's seen its day. The demand for information RIGHT NOW has brought its demise.
This is karma for the botched bogus impeachment. What goes around comes around.
3
Maybe the Democrats should have enlisted a real developer instead of using a crony progressive company.
5
Shadow?! They call themselves Shadow? Good grief! That's right up there with "Fraud Guarantee" by Lev and Igor.
2
Watch your grandpa type a text message and you can see the source of this debacle performed before your very eyes.
3
Were any lessons learned from the original roll out of Obamacare? Join the boyscouts and Be Prepared.
1
How sad that 'our' current brutus ignoramus, yet expert demagogue, in-chief, must bragg about somebody else's shortcomings or failures...given he has no values of his own...other than cruelty and persistent lies (however much debunked) to sustain his criminality. We, in these United States, are living in a crisis, where an incompetent and fully corrupt president is supported by a complicit G.O.P., is able to trample on this democracy...with glee.
Electile dysfunction lasting longer than four hours requires a doctor.
10
People need to get outside more.
The DNC approved of an archaic process, the caucus, that does not favor the poor and minorities, the two groups it is supposed to help, and added technology to a process that does not need technology. Unbelievably stupid.
desperately? thats a laugh.The only desperate folks I see are the lying senate and the trumpski band of thieves.
The app was to be downloaded directly to the phones of caucus volunteers, making it difficult to ensure the safety of the devices.
Uh, no thanks. No. We absolutely cannot trust an app downloaded onto some random Iowans phone. The notion is pure stupidity.
A monumental failure with "yuuuuge" implications for the Democratic party.
1
Kill the caucuses once and for all. National primaries forever!
This is the most important election in our history and my political party appears to be run by a bunch of seventh graders with a penchant for impulsive, unconsidered stupidity.
We're going to lose.
Our republic will not recover from four additional years of this President. And we deserve every bad thing that's going to happen to us.
136
@Dan - Note also simultaneous Milwaukee Convention DNC conflict, mismanagement, discharge of incompetents - the Dems - our Dems - either a self-destructive disaster or run by Putin-GOP operatives.
5
@Dan
Democrats really need to stop flogging themselves and focus on defeating Trump. The press, and this article in particular, is making a mountain out of a molehill. We can't keep defeating ourselves by infighting. The press is definitely our enemy on this. NYtimes editorial board really needs to stop ripping the democrats to shreds.
166
@saltlakeq
If Democrats were entirely rational, Bernie would not be a candidate since he is not actually a Democrat.
The verdict of history will be what it has always been: in chaotic times (real or merely perceived), worried humans will go with the strong leader who keeps it simple--and who does what it takes to win.
10
Canada had a federal election last October, a country of 37 MILLION people in FIVE AND A HALF time zones with 365 seats up for grabs and multiple candidates with approximately half of that 37 million that voted with paper ballots fed into a machine that did the counting. Polls closed at 8:00 PM EST, the remaining polls across the country with the last closing at 11:00 PM on the west coast.
We had a pretty good idea by midnight EST who was going to win the election.
Caucuses. states right, whatever, but this is getting ridiculous America, Until you wake up and start to implement an across the board especially with a Federally run election with common federal standards in all states, in every election cycle, it is becoming a recipe for chaos and a threat to one of the few powers that the average voter has in a democracy and it seems to be getting worse without a solution.
8
@Deus
I was born in Detroit. If only my mother had crossed the river in time! Then I’d have been born Canadian!
O, woe is me!
@Deus We prefer our state sovereignty but thanks for the input.
Canada had a federal election last October, a country of 37 MILLION people in FIVE AND A HALF time zones with 365 seats up for grabs and multiple candidates with approximately half of that 37 million that voted with paper ballots fed into a machine that did the counting. Polls closed at 8:00 PM EST, the remaining polls across the country with the last closing at 11:00 PM on the west coast.
We had a pretty good idea by midnight EST who was going to win the election.
Caucuses. states right, whatever, but this is getting ridiculous America, Until you wake up and start to implement an across the board especially with a Federally run election with common federal standards in all states, in every election cycle, it is becoming a recipe for chaos and a threat to one of the few powers that the average voter has in a democracy and it seems to be getting worse without a solution.
1
Having seen MSNBC coverage, I think the uncorrectable problem is that procedures were not followed at caucus sites. It was clear that some sites allowed people who showed up late to join the caucuses. This changed the 15 percent threshold to make candidates viable between the first and second rounds. At some sites, the higher threshold for the second round was ignored. At other sites, the higher threshold was used to declare a candidate not viable. My sense is that it is this “irregularity” that’s got the Iowan Democratic Party hunkered down at the law firm. If it was just the app and the phone system, we would have seen the results by now.
1
Funny, maybe not so funny, actually sad that so many responses to this piece blame technology. Bring back paper, they clamor. Technology is held responsible rather than the Democrats who were using and hastily depending upon the technology without knowing as much as they needed to about it. I won't be at ease until I see Democrats in IA acknowledging that they messed up and accepting that responsibility.
1
All will be fine. Rest assured that the Iowa caucuses are simply an aberration. And frankly, this will help the DNC to alter its longstanding affiliation with the Iowa Democratic party's insistence that they remain the first to vote.
This is a good thing. And it provides the DNC with the wiggle room to alter the primary process moving forward.
I imagine that in the next day or so, Iowa will declare a paper-ballot back-up winner.
By then, no one will care. It is onward to New Hampshire and the likelihood that one or two contestants are closer to removing themselves from the primary.
Yes, technology regarding how elections are held and how votes need to be counted will be crucial in 2020. And yes, we are not off to a glorious start.
But it is far better to acknowledge the electoral system's weaknesses early on. And here Iowa does lead the way.
1
This simply adds to what has been a strong pattern since the new millennium to rapidly decay of democracy:
2000 The supreme court gives Bush the presidency in Gore vs Bush
2008 Obama's election challenged by bogus claims of being a foreigner
2010 Supreme court sides with Citizen's United, allowing the wealthy to further influence elections
2016 Senate refused to consider supreme court nominee from our duly elected president, further offsetting who knows how many future supreme court rulings
2016 Russia and Comey release misinformation strategically against Clinton
2016 A candidate who loses the popular vote is once again elected
2000-present Republicans gerrymander districts to their favor, restrict voters by taking them off polling list, requiring more difficult ID, reducing polling stations in democratic areas, restricting voting rights of released felons, etc.
2
And you trust an app made by a company called "Shadow"?
Paper ballots. Hand counted. May be slow, but it's reliable.
At least they have a paper trail backup.
7
Doesn't this remind us all of the fiasco of the ACA rollout of the healthcare.gov website that didn't work? HHS at the time had spent billions for software that was so buggy and crashed so much that people couldn't sign up for healthcare. It was a disaster.
What is it with us Democrats and the lack of competence on software procurement?
4
Apps quite often can not be very helpful but just junky and clunky IT. Hasn't anyone learned that yet? And hasn't anyone learned how important it is to count votes correctly? And so this activity was entrusted to an app? Good grief that was dumb.
5
The most ridiculous part of this is that all this attention has always been given to Iowa, a state that has 44 electoral votes out of 1991 needed for the nomination! What an outrage that all that time and money has been spent just to get bragging rights to the first contest of the election season. No one cares about Iowa except the media that pump it for 6 months simply to have something to talk about. In reality, Iowa matters NOT ONE IOTA - um, NOT ONE IOWA.
3
Repeat after me: Paper ballots and landline phones. Paper ballots and landline phones ....
8
Democrats should now claim Trump-assisting-intended Russian interference in the Iowa Caucuses fiasco. A Russian plot to make Democrats look incompetent (as if a secret plot were needed).
This Democrat debacle is the biggest news of the Morning.
With no other economic news out there, the Dow is up 500 points.
Could it be that this fiasco increased Trumps chances of re-election?
Hmmmm
3
Catastrophizing needs to stop. Let's take this as a lesson for November's elections. APPS and computers should be nowhere near election day. Instead, we should have paper ballots throughout the country.
So this is how we Democrats plan to win in November;
1. Pick a slew of unelectable candidates
2. Have them confuse extreme positions with being "bold"
3. Make sure they focus on real issues that too many ordinary Americans are not focussed on.
4. Deploy technology enablers in a way no mom and pop business would consider competent.
Looking great!
9
Bring back the hanging chads!
1
Sigh... the Dems....
Can't run an impeachment...
Can't run a caucus.....
But - of course - totally ready to run the country!
6
Ha ha ha.
FDR the only president that actually ran the country for the 99 percent.
Ronald Reagan: ruined the country as we know it.
GWBush: put a fascist called Cheney in charge for two terms. Ruined the economy and whatever was left of the morality. And that was not just that war in Iraq with pictures of tortured people wrapped in plastic garbage bags.
And it is not even funny!
What an incredible gift to Trump! The chaos,confusion, and stupidity are the basis for lots of campaign ads demonstrating and proving Democrtaic incompetence. Where was the DNC in all this? Just how incompetent and stupid is the Iowa Democratic Party? I wish there had been a major security incident not just amply demonstrated idiocy.
4
How can anyone be surprised that 2016 Hilary Clinton workers created this app? LA Times just ran a story on it. That Buttigieg has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the app developer Shadow, has a former staffer working for ACRONYM... DNC is terrified, absolutely terrified of Sanders.... Best case scenario, damning incompetence by the party that is trying to win the highest office in the world. Worst case and increasingly more likely seeming.... a possible web of influence, scale tipping and possible outright corruption. Tom Perez must go immediately. I'd suggest anyone who was put-off but moved past the 2016 corruption with Wasserman-Schultz and Donna Brazile and the fact thatCNN and many other media outlets (wink-wink) are essentially de facto PR firms for the DNC establishment, flee from the party en masse.... It is finally time for a third party in American politics in the 21st century... the average American voter needs to demand it.
4
There is a golden opportunity here. For decades, I've read about the ridiculousness of the caucus. But the day after, people would shrug and move on to New Hampshire.
Since all of us--voters, candidates, pundits, party leaders--have been messed over by this total collapse and overall bungling, we should finally do something about it. NOW, before we put it away until 2024.
Well, if they had used a Bloomberg terminal, we would have had the results in a timely and accurate manner.
That is how Mike made his billions and how he will be our next and best president.
Someone needs to beat Trump and it sure ain't the idiots on the current menu that is being forced down our throats
4
@Simon Sez I'm not a fan of Bloomberg, but you have to give the guy credit for avoiding Iowa and New Hampshire, which essentially say nothing about electability.
3
Blame the Ukraine.
1
At least it was only stupid and not a matter of cheating as we all expect from the Republicans!
Iowa has finally gotten its just deserts. Hopefully, this will speed the process of getting rid of its completely undeserved position as the first state primary and relegate it to some second tier primary in, say, June.
1
Everyone needs to calm down. There are paper ballot back-ups . Just sit down and count those. And stop spending time pointing fingers. It is too late for that.
The Candidates spokespersons should stop conjecture. No one knows yet who won. And maybe it doesn't even matter with NH just a week away.
Sure is time for a National Primary with paper ballots. Sometimes technology is not the answer to everything.
1
End the stupid caucus already. The first time I voted in the Democratic primary in Texas, they reminded me to attend the caucus. What was that, I asked. It's where you sit in a big, crowded room, and vote again. Why would I need to vote again? It's so dumb. One person, one vote. Not two votes, if you don't have kids, and have time to waste sitting around. So incredibly dumb. As a former Republican, it is my #1 biggest gripe about the stupid Democratic leadership.
1
ay yi yi yi yi......
Republicans tell us the market is so great and only the government screws things up. But this is the private sector for you. Pay for whomever was foolish or inexperienced enough to not fully grasp a project's complexity and way underbid the competition. Creating even a simple app in two months is insanity. Especially if it was for both iOS and Android as seems likely since it was to be installed on people's own phones.
Yet another reason Iowa and others shouldn't be important in the primary process. Everyone should go at the same time.
Also it is ironic that team Trump is talking about rigged when their party is keeping candidates off ballots and not holding debates.
The average American doesn't really give a damn what happen in Iowa last night. Let them take their time and get the votes correctly tabulated. So what if it takes a day or two. What the people need is less coverage and a shorter primary season. Trump too shall pass, take a deep breath, now slowly exhale. We will work to make the world better one day at a time.
1
How could the Democrats have screwed this up so badly? How can they argue that voters should give them the keys to the White House when they can't even count votes? Trump is right. He was the big winner Monday night. What an unmitigated disaster.
3
Pen and paper. Count things. Know basic arithmetic. Make technology help you, not the other way around. Software is not the ultimate answer--good systems are.
I can always count on the Democrats to screw things up. I hope I am still alive in 2024, and if so, I haven't been excluded from voting.
In any case, get Iowa out of being first. Never again.
How many caucus districts are there? I'm guessing fewer than 2000.
There is literally NO NEED for an app that does this. Have ONE PERSON in charge of 10 caucus districts (collect the data) and them ONE PERSON in charge of 10 of those groups of 10, then ONE PERSON in charge of 10 of those 10 groups of 10 and then ONE PERSON in charge of those final 2 groupings.
This is literally too simple of a process to complicate with technology beyond pencil, paper, and a telephone.
As a software engineer myself, I often have to explain to higher-ups why technology doesn't always mean everything will be simpler. I'm also sure the process I described above would involve fewer people than the number of programmers who "engineered" this crappy software. And, it's not as if this saved any time (or will) for a process that happens EVERY FOUR YEARS.
For a state that uses an insane, antiquated caucus system, I can't believe the Dems thought an app would be a good idea.
3
omg: Dunkirk
1
Why does the press always freak out whenever there is a delay in counting votes? Have you ever been to a caucus? It is a raucous, confusing affair. I'm glad they are taking their time to sort it out and count the votes. So what if the technology doesn't work?
We had caucuses and elections for hundreds of years before smartphones. Journalism at its worst.
219
@Carol Friesen The Iowa caucus is a quaint but certainly unique, relic of the 19th century. One could argue that of course there will be hiccups when the 19th century abruptly meets the 21st. This is stark evidence that the two don't mix.
13
@Lifelong New Yorker
Even in the 19th century results from one state would be known and reported in a few hours.
25
Good comment. At least Democrats are human, warts & all. The only to find out if the system worked is to try it out in the field. Which they have. Now fix it! And move on. Makes me think of the chads which gave Bush his second victory.
9
Lifelong Iowan here, and here is my two cents. Caucuses need to die. Iowa should not go first. Technology should be dumped when it comes to choosing our leaders. Good old fashioned paper is the answer for every election, in every state, from now on. No apps. No internet. Just paper.
510
@Jim
You have a point, Jim. If we did paper ballots only, with certified volunteers willing to act as security at every stage of the voting, ballot-gathering and tallying process, we would be virtually immune to outside interference.
Sometimes "old-school" is a good idea...
17
@Jim AGREED! Here in WA State, the Democrat caucuses are entirely organized and run by Precinct Committee Officers who are either elected, coerced or begged to volunteer. Some take their volunteer job seriously and plan carefully for the caucus. Many do not or are just not good managers. Since they are always held on Saturdays, it makes it impossible for members of some religious faiths to participate and difficult or impossible for handicapped. We need Presidential primaries for Dems in WA State!
6
@Jim
Agreed, but x'es in boxes only and no punch-through-cards, please. One hanging chad adventure was plenty.
13
Caucuses are messy even without tech glitches and easily slanted toward a candidate who might not represent the majority's preference. Iowa's process is particularly cumbersome.
Primaries using paper ballots should be mandatory in all 50 states. Where I live, paper ballots for the March 3rd super Tuesday will be mailed out to voters in a couple of weeks. Voters can mail them back, or drop them in an authorized collection box, or go to the polls on election day. The most depressing thing here is how few people take advantage of this system.
2
Just for starters, the writer confuses information with technology. One wonders if the editors even understand what he wrote.
If "win the internet" means anything, it means using the internet to reach and persuade voters. That’s not a software-engineering problem. If Trump can outplay Democrats on Facebook, he does so by using technology and crunching data, not by building apps. If he succeeds, he doesn’t "win the internet". He wins the election. *On* the internet.
Meanwhile, yes, the whole Iowa app debacle is an excellent example of extremely stupid technological dimwittedness. Only people who don’t understand technology could fetishize it, and decide to stake election results on it. Why? Why bother? Speed? So we know a few hours sooner? Please, tell us how much money was saved. Not.
No, not speed, and not efficiency. Hubris. Pride goeth before the fall. The Iowa state Democratic committee is evidently so jealous of their first-in-the-nation status that they’ll spend donor funds on fancy software instead of knocking on doors and building the party.
Thanks.
2
The Democratic Party is a dysfunctional disaster. Tom Perez has been a failure and a new leader must bring order to the chaos if the Democrats want to beat Trump.
7
The media eats up this kind of confusion and chaos. Fox News and the White House occupant love it. Hopefully, all party leaders and state elections leaders across the country will learn from this so that the November Presidential vote is not cast in doubt.
Let's just hope this was the proverbial bad dress rehearsal leading up to a spectacular opening night!
Either this was incompetence or intentional, or a combination of both. Either way it clearly demonstrates the Dems are not up to the task of running the world's greatest power. This is incredibly telling of who they are. What an embarrassment and humiliation. They want everything for free but can't add votes. It is so telling and hardly believable.
1
pretty funny....doesn't Liz Warren have a plan for this? Can't Joe just make the app free for all? Can't Pete use his military and consultant background to hold focus groups etc. Did sleepy joe sleep through it all, it was past his bedtime.
Yes, a disaster. Iowa holds too much sway, gets too much attention, and is almost irrelevant in the presidential process. But given the spotlight, they should have rehearsed this weeks before if not months. People couldn't download the app? Well why in the world hadn't they downloaded it before.
I bet Putin is behind this...
1
It is amazing this is even possible when the world depends on eCcommerce - banking, stock trading, billing, medical reporting etc. etc.
If there was ever a reason to vote Andrew Yang, here is another.
1
Please consider the big picture.
Director Mueller found that our 2016 elections were compromised, and that swing states were targeted. Florida, for example, was mentioned over thirty times in the report. What have Republicans done to safeguard against this type of interference in 2020? Not. A. Darn. Thing.
And yet, Marco Rubio is going to tweet this: [Think #IowaCaucus meltdown is bad? Imagine very close Presidential election. Russian or Chinese hackers tamper with preliminary reporting system in key counties. When the official results begin to be tabulated it shows a different winner than the preliminary results online]
And Don Jr. tweets this: [Tens of thousands of ballots all for Joe Biden being shipped to Iowa from Broward County Florida as we speak. “Don’t worry folks we got this covered” DNC operatives]
What should we infer from this? That Trump knows that election hacking and disinformation is happening in swing states, and that Florida is ground zero. Don Jr. is too dumb to know how to lie well. He’s just like his dad in that he always tells on himself by what he projects into others. The moral of the story is that Broward County Florida is a stomping ground for election interference and if we had competent, trustworthy systems in place right now, it would be investigated.
Marco is in the Senate today because of election interference. Remember when Trump was basically begging him to run for Senate after abusing him so horribly in the presidential race? Yeah.
I would think when Democrats were dealing with a company that called itself "Shadow" they should have been immediately suspect that something might go awry.
"Fraud Incorporated" ring a bell?
2
Everything about this Iowa clown show was wrong. It fed into all Trump smugness and Bernie conspiracy stereotypes. It fed into all messages that the Dems are whiners and just want everything handed to them. It fed into disorganization. It fed in Bloomberg's campaign of only he can get things done. It feeds into high Trump turnout next November and fractured Dem's again staying away. It's so many people of moth paries relitigating 2016. There's nothing good here. Better regroup and move on. Vote 2020.
At this point, the Democratic Party is so tragicomic I can only surmise it is being led by shadow (see what I did there?) Republicans.
1
Maybe less silly fairs and more attention to the really important stuff. Iowa should never be first again!
1
Iowa Democratic Party - thy name is ineptitude! As a critical time in the history of the party the IDP has failed miserably. It is time to end the nonsense and charade that somehow pure white Iowa represents the best example of democracy in action. It does not. In reality, it is just a cheap spectacle, a pretend show run by clueless bureaucraps. Don't blame the technology. This was a people error. The IDP designed an overly complicated process, and used an untested technology, the result is a disaster that may well lead directly to the re-election of Trump.
2
Tech will lead to the death of Democracy! Sites such as Facebook are allowing political information which cannot be trusted and now apps are counting votes.Our freedom is being bartered by big tech.We need to have the assurance of ballots backed up by paper so accuracy can be assured.Staring at “ hanging chads” in Florida was a disaster-have we learned nothing? The answer is blowing in the wind-the answer is Paper-low tech but trusted !
Has anyone considered the possibility that Trump/Russians were behind the system failure in Iowa?
Is the problem the caucus format, the date positioning, the app, or the expectation(s) largely from non-Iowans?
Charlie please stop with the drama
We all learn from our mistakes
Now they can repair and replace, like Reps should
Of done with the ACA
Remember the Apollo program
Learned from failure
Solution: Put big can in middle of room. Give everyone one piece of paper each; have them write name of candidate they want on piece of paper. Everyone put their paper in can. Count the papers.
1
Just let the Party bosses pick the candidate, the Super Delegates will pick Biden in the end. It is his turn.
And these are the people who are supposedly going to run the country? What a fiasco.
2
Just what the democrats needed was to look chaotic as thye bid to take Trump's place as leader of the free world. Trump pounced as did his son Russian buddy and hunter of endangered species. Iowa is not representative America and most folks do not have a day to spend stumbling around a gym ,it is time to end Iowa as first to vote. Trump will milk this fiasco for all its worth being a nasty and vindictive bully anxious to step on people to feel better about himself.
1
Cancel the caucus results and prorate them over the remaining races.
1
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.
5
So now the blue state (urban mega-centers) will demand the too-white Iowans have forfeited their place, and co-opt it for their aim of creating direct democracy which they can control with their numbers and ideological homogeneity.
Why do Iowa people have to caucus? It is the most ridiculous piece of garbage which is carried on in the name of tradition. Caucuses are bad for democracy. It does not allow absentee balloting, it is unfair to the disabled who may have a hard time coming to a caucus. It is totally undemocratic! Iowa and the democratic party needs to get rid of this system once and for all. Just follow what the other 49 states do, normal ballots (either by mail or by going to the polling booth). One person one vote, count them and select the winner. See, that was so easy! If you want to meet your friends while voting, arrange to go to a bar after casting your ballot. Coining a term here: getting Ioweded, building up high expectations only to be terribly disappointed.
2
This situation, much like Jeffrey Epstein's death, will be peddled by the media as an honest to goodness mistake which led to disaster.
Just like the Epstein situation, no one is going to believe you. Of course, in "polite society" and on the air (with the Very Serious People), no one's going to say what they really think is going on.
The good news about all of this is that regardless of what happens Biden is totally toast. He can go back to mumbling in his Wilmington palace and leave the rest of us in peace.
Probably 40 percent of the American public doesn't know what an "app" is or does. That's the disconnect here that nobody is talking about.
The blame doesn't rest with an ineptitude in technology. You have a national committee stuffed with powerful financial interests contracting a private tech company to count votes? What could possibly go wrong? Paper, please. Exactly the same thing happened in 2016, except the app in question was Microsoft. An editorial from the DesMoine Register in 2016 shows how short memories are in the political world: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/caucus/2016/02/03/editorial-something-smells-democratic-party/79777580/
1
Especially after the Senate trial debacle- and that is a real debacle- this is a frustrating beginning for Democrats. Good luck ironing out the kinks. You have a corrupt President to beat. You have a host of good candidates. Whatever else, Sanders is right to warn against this dangerous President. So just get the tech side together, & win it! Win this next election, Democrats!
From reporting elsewhere it appears the app was developed by crony types from the Clinton and Obama camps. Otherwise, do not hire experts, throw some money to well-connected insiders. This kind of thing drives average voters nuts and also feeds the tin foil hat crowd.
Then there is reporting that they refused an offer from the Federal Department of Homeland Security to audit the software- something that should have been welcomed.
I am sure the insiders saw no problem with such an arrangement- using insiders to kick money to political friends- but this is not serving the party or democracy well.
1
The silver lining is that we likely needed a debacle on this scale to kick Iowa out of its primo spot. And let's get rid of NH while we're cleaning house.
3
Are these the people we want to put in charge of the future? I suppose the Sandernistas are crying out that we should tear down the whole system and start all over with a Peoples' Soviet in charge, and Elizabeth Warren doubtless has a plan (or 2 or 3) to establish a cabinet level government department to manage (read: manipulate) all elections.
1
Once again "smart" technology ruins the day. Back to the paper and pencil, please.
“Among the chief fears: The app was to be downloaded directly to the phones of caucus volunteers, making it difficult to ensure the safety of the devices.”
“According to cybersecurity consultants and academics interviewed by the Times, the app was not tested at statewide scale or vetted by the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency.”
Is the Circus being run from the monkey cage??? Please, for all our elections, especially for national governance, give me a simple paper ballot with ranked choice voting. I bet Trump is going to have Twitter fun with this.
1
We have a corrupt president who was just impeached, and the most important thing the Democratic Party has to do is put forward a candidate capable of defeating him in November.
So...
Let's start the process by having one of the least demographically representative states in the country gather a limited number of people to stand around for hours on end in 1600 different places holding little signs that say which candidate they prefer.
Then, to count up who likes who, let's give them an untested app to download on their unsecure phones and have them transmit the headcount over the telephone to a central location, where they will be put on hold for hours on end while the people in charge try to figure out how to count from 1 to 2 without getting confused.
Let's make sure we do this in full view of the entire country, on television, with the corrupt, impeached president and his campaign staff watching. This way we can show everyone just how effective the Democrats will be running this country in the 21st century.
What could possibly go wrong?
2
@Jim
Dear Iowa,
You had one job. Congratulations on being the last "First in the Nation" caucus.
Sincerely,
The American Voting Public
Democrats, and Republicans, should hold their first primaries in the purplest states. The state with the smallest margin between candidates is the one to watch, and it's results will tell us something about that all important, impossible to define, question of "electability.
1
Last night was a good illustration of why I left this bewildered, incompetent party a decade ago. And in the worst case scenario, it comes right before the State of the Union, and before Trump's acquittal on Wed.
The Democratic party can't think but two INCHES ahead of themselves.
77
Ditto. Keystone Kops look competent by comparison.
5
@David H To use a word many have already -- inexcusable. I've had it with the losing Democrats. Bloomberg has my vote.
12
@Joe Arena Let's not forget, in 2012 the Republican caucus in Iowa incorrectly named the winner.
22
From today's other NYTimes article regarding the Iowa debacle:
"The app used by the Iowa Democratic Party was built by Shadow Inc"
"Shadow’s involvement was kept a secret by Democratic officials through the caucuses"
"It was quickly put together in just the past two months"
"And the party decided to use the app only after another proposal for reporting votes was abandoned, on the advice of Democratic National Committee officials"
In addition to the above facts, the COO, CEO, CTO and a senior product manager at Shadow Inc all worked for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016.
Conclusion: No rational person can look at the above facts and write it off as "human error" or "technology breakdown".
This was a deliberate attempt (as was the cancelling of the Des Moines Register state poll last Saturday) to sabotage Bernie Sanders and his recent surge of momentum.
3
Fortunately that app did not control aircraft positioning while in air... The Iowa mishap was just embarrassing and easily remedied, but Boeing may go under because of their 737-Max disasters. The only ones taking a hit are the TV networks that should not turn caucuses, primaries and elections into circuses and horse races anyway. Serves them well!
1
As a lifetime Democrat, I now feel like I am on the deck of the Titanic, without an orchestra playing Nearer to Thee my God. Might as well re-elect the con man now.
5
Sometimes the simplest solution works best. Get rid of caucuses.
They're too complicated. You can't just vote and leave. You have to stay for hours. You can't cast your vote secretly. A bullying spouse can influence your vote. No babysitter? No vote. No wheelchair van? No vote. Room too hot and crowded? Not enough chairs? Explanations unclear? Not enough staffers?
The design process for this app was appalling. But a normal primary doesn't require new technology.
Millions of people all over the world vote in demonstrably fair elections without a smartphone app.
6
Actually, the Dems first big tech test was the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare exchanges with all their initial online glitches.
And they sure aren't enhancing their managerial reputation with the Iowa fiasco.
Doesn't anyone on the Democrats team know how to beta test?
3
Maybe techies promoting their products should stop saying "there's an app for that." In this case the app, apparently, did not work.
1
Who green-lighted this minimally viable product? Clearly someone sold on fast talk who knows nothing about about tech. And thanks a lot Silicon Valley Sleaze for rolling out yet another application that makes huge promises it can’t really code, while making the DNC the laughing stock of everyone.
1
The influence of the internet on elections is overrated. Mostly the internet is an echo chamber for preexisting attitudes of all kinds of voters. Fox, talk radio, local media, word-of-mouth.... form the attitudes that the internet cannot change.
The biggest mistake made by the Iowans is that they didn’t report on Putin’s number of delegates on the Republican ticket, and there’s a lot of them I bet.
I guess we enjoyed the ACA roll-out so much that we wanted to do it again.
1
What a media circus. The front runner is the guy who complained of how undemocratic the nominating process was in 2016, but his real strength is in caucus states? It’s long past time we put important, representative-of-the- party-nation states first and get rid of caucuses entirely. The media could do this. Just drop coverage until Super Tuesday. Let the cry babies cry about bias and broken process. They will anyway.
Look, New Hampshire is no better in its representativeness, Nevada is another undemocratic caucus state. South Carolina may be a little better, but my understanding is that it’s not all that representative either.
Super Tuesday is our best bet. Then next time around let’s put Important states first. California, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania. And for gods sake, get rid of caucuses.
3
If Trump doesn't say something tonight to the effect of 'the Dems can't even get an app together to report caucus results, how can you trust them with the white house,' I'll be surprised. The Repubs are more than tech savvy, they are tech ruthless, recall Cambridge Analytica, Facebook all in Trump, Twitter and chief 24/7, and the first tech showing for Democrats 2020 is an painful belly flop. Good luck to all of us, there is no way to click a happy face onto this.
When this sort of thing happens in developing countries, we generally assume the fix is in, and the system is corrupted. I don't believe that, but this is a demonstration of embarrassing amateurism.
One of the best reasons to get rid of the Trump administration (there are many, I know) is its incompetence. That's a good reason, because it is non-idealogical. But to make the case that we should turf out incompetents you have to demonstrate some competence from the replacement party. This debacle, like the problems with the roll-out of Obamacare, make it easy to portray the Democratic party as incompetent idealists, ivory-tower theorists who can't put ideas into practice. Yesterday reinforces that trope to the American public.
1
For the life of me, why do Democrats continue to associate themselves that has anything to do with Hillary Clinton. The Shadow App used for the Iowa caucus was created by a bunch of folks who worked on Hillary's campaign. The DNC is just giving the Trump campaign more ammunition, particularly when things go wrong. You can be sure that the Trump campaign is going to spin this to their advantage. The folks at the DNC need to be fired and a new breed of folks who aren't tainted by previous elections need to take over.
1
The Democratic party is quickly becoming linked to disastrous technology.
The rollout of the ACA
The hacking of the DNC by lowest-level phishing
Ignoring FBI warnings of hackers
Tens of thousands of "lost" Clinton emails
And now this.
We've got to pull our socks up.
6
More important than the cyber world is actually attracting and motivating voters -- not disparaging and ignoring or insulting them. This is a lesson the Democrats seem resistant to.
1
Do fellow Democrats have any ideal what a disaster this is?
Trump's approval rating now at 49% -- highest ever. Meanwhile a meaningless Iowa caucus fails while Democrats waste millions of campaign dollars.
Almost time to just make the concession speech and realize that America's democracy is deal.
Thank you, Iowa.
"Shadow" is the name of company hired by an American Political Party to transparently collect and assist in tabulating votes? Are you kidding me? You can't make this stuff up. We are all doomed, right, left, middle.
1
Here's a thought: maybe technology -at least qua technology- isn't the issue here. Maybe the issues is using an app designed by a company with extensive ties to one candidate to tabulate votes. Maybe the issue is the fact that one candidate -wildly popular with most everyone outside of the DNC- was closing in on a decisive victory when suddenly, there were "inconsistencies" that no one can actually name. Maybe the issue is the Democrats either inability or unwillingness to learn anything from their total ineptitude in 2016 (or in 1968 or in 1972 or take your pick from any number of baffling, inexcusable failures). This is a joke and so are the Democrats and the news outlets and pundits willing to play along with this charade.
2
PLEASE tell me that this fiasco is the final nail in the Iowa caucus coffin. If Democrats don't learn a lesson from this embarrassing display then I give up hope for them ever to win the White House again.
1
Both Shadow and Acronym self identify on their websites as "Progressive" organizations. Perhaps it's best if my Democratic Party focus more on the competency of their vendors then the bona-fides of their politics. If you look at Shadow's website, it's clear their technical skills are minimal. It's minimal, and, frankly, unsophisticated.
We're at the stage of our national decline where we can't even run elections any more.
1
It's sad how true democracy has to stumble into being, whereas Trump and the GOP's authoritarianism moves like a well-oiled machine. Cruelty and cheating are easy.
155
@Mixilplix: Oh, go on! Up till now Democrats have claimed that the Trump administration was the very image and definition of chaos and only replacement by the Democrats could restore national sanity--and now you describe it as a 'well-oiled machine'?
8
@Mixilplix authoritarianism? do explain.
@Ronald B. Duke For its purpose, which isn't governance, it is well oiled.
1
"The app was to be downloaded directly to the phones of caucus volunteers ..."
Come on! How about putting the software on a well identified fully secure desktop computer. And have two volunteers at each precinct well trained on the use of the software. And those volunteers should have some sort of computer training well beyond playing with Facebook and sending texts on one's own phone.
Democrats running this Iowa debacle simply have no grasp whatsoever of what it takes to create user friendly software and be sure that the users are fully trained in its use. From my own experience using computers since 1980, even each new version of Microsoft Office software has bugs (real bugs, not just complexity that experts can't figure out). It is beyond belief that a brand new application downloaded to personal phones within a few days of use is going to be transparent enough for the average voter.
If Iowa is comfortable with manually counting paper cards and telephoning in the results, so be it. We'll just have to wait a few hours for the results.
The instant gratification sometimes possible with the computer age maybe just ought to wait until a computer business executive can pronounce the software ready to go and average precinct captain friendly.
2
1. Given the stakes, this is absolutely inexcusable. And, I fear, a very accurate demonstration of how decades-behind-the-times the Democratic Party truly is.
2. And in either case, this is a solid reminder that not everything can be fixed with a clever app. Some things, like the fate of our nation, should stick with un-hackable, fully audited, proven technologies.
3. If you *must* use the latest app, then at least try it out on something like some state and local elections first!
127
@AB - It IS being tried in the state level. This is not a referendum on how bad the Democrats are, and you are just adding to the false hype.
5
@AB
Couldn't agree more and will repeat the comment I just left on a similar thread on this subject:
As a former career computer applications software developer, I know well the mayhem that one obscure bug or design flaw in a computer program can wreak. Given the prevailing cavalier "anyone can code" hype, and the overriding pursuit of profit in the tech business, I won't use an off-the-shelf "app" with a gun to my head. The internet is already too fraught with buried landmines perpetrated by incompetent "coders". "Clever" alone just doesn't cut it.
21
@RB This app was reported to be created in 2 months by a startup called Shadow. That's not "being tried in the state level." 2 months is betaware if they're lucky. And they were clearly not lucky.
10
There is so much conflation of issues around this caucus. Issue 1: Some tech failed. (Could have happened to anyone and will as we become more and not less dependent on these modes of collection.) There is more than enough paper trail for this to not be a crisis. Lesson to learn? Don't test this stuff on the day of. 2: Iowa isn't as important as we make it. (Most of us already knew that.) No state should go first. We should just have four Super Tuesdays over 2 months.
3: My biggest take-away is to keep paper in the process. We KNOW outside influences are trying to corrupt our elections through any means necessary and we KNOW that our own president has a vested interest in making us question our electoral processes. Every precinct in every state should have to have paper backups.
The biggest lesson coming out of this is that our President will, once again, try to sow distrust in the actual voting part of our democracy.
233
@Lauren I couldn't agree more! The one thing we can do to preserve our democracy is to always, always keep paper in the process.
Vote blue no matter who! Have a paper back up too!
26
@Lauren The tech failure could not have happened to anyone, because adults responsible for serious processes should be competent enough to know how to test a product before full deployment. You are excusing something that appears, to me, to be quite inexcusable. In my organization people would be fired for such gross incompetence. If that app was not ready then it should never, ever have been deployed. If it wasn't thoroughly tested then it wasn't ready. Simple as that.
6
@Kathleen Agreed, "Vote blue no matter who."
We Democrats of the faith will vote for all Democrats on the ballot. No write-ins, no
sitting out. Only a massive turnout of Democrat
voters can stop Trump.
4
Is this really a fiasco or a pseudo-crisis manufactured by some in the media who need to feed the content beast, preferably with high drama.
Why does an election need to be a made for TV event with results hours after closing polls/caucus sites? I don't care how quickly results come in. I just want them to be right. And this one case is not somehow emblematic of how digitally savvy individual campaigns may be.
The bigger problem is how our system calls for candidates to invest millions of dollars and countless hours in a small homogeneous state so they can narrow the field down to 'viable' candidates.
5
In the last few decades there has been a mad rush to digitize and computerize everything.
When you connect simple things to computers they become unreliable and often difficult to use. There is an old NASA saying, "If something can go wrong it will go wrong especially if it is hooked up to a computer".
So now, I have to read an instruction book to operate a clock, a stove, a radio, a washing machine, etc.
We have gained nothing from computerizing our elections. We need to go back to paper ballots. Everything does not need to be reinvented.
Paper ballots can not be hacked by a foreign government. They don't stop working for no apparent reason like computers do. Every one understands how to use them. Paper ballots are simple and reliable. They don't even need electricity to work!
360
@Richard Fried
Great post.
You and I both know this comment should get more votes than Bernie in Iowa, in a rational world. Paper ballots make all the sense in the world. Tech can't improve counting.
.
But little is rational among the Dems nowadays. Expect the tech world to have some soothing words about how secure their voting systems are.
.
We've all gone insane.
37
As someone working in the industry I could not agree more. So many things have been unnecessarily computerize making them in many cases more difficult than doing them on paper.
78
@West Coaster Not disagreeing; but why do you single out Dems? I would say the Repubs are in worse shape, i.e. irrational to their core.
Paper ballots, with electronic counters, are the best of both worlds. And the counting machines do not need to be part of the internet of everything/nothing.
34
Last night's Iowa problems should serve the county as a warning about situations that might pop up and challenge election results in November.
Paper ballots should be mandatory.
443
@Frances And we did have a paper record of each caucusgoer's 1st preference and 2nd preference (if necessary). So there at least is a paper trail for our caucus results. It was the reporting of results that failed (god forbid that we have to wait for the results). And thank goodness our state's Republican Party chairman, Jeff Kaufmann, issued a classy response (as opposed to our President's tweets) -- "I stand with IDP in ensuring #IACaucus results are correct rather than quick. Accuracy doesn't run on deadlines." And I agree that a different system overall is needed for this phase of a general election. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if our state was no longer "first in the nation" -- the constant criticism of our population being too old, not diverse, why does the Midwest matter, etc. -- was getting tiresome. As a reminder, Obama DID win here in 2008, by the way. So either rework the system as a whole, or, good luck to the next "first in the nation" state. Enjoy your burning spotlight.
19
@Frances We had paper preference forms at the caucus last night. I counted some along with other volunteers.
9
@Michael
Glad to hear that. Maybe it should have been mandatory
4
This entire debacle is emblematic of the dysfunction of the DNC.
You can’t win a national election if you can’t even tabulate votes in a process which the local party alone controls. Who decided that a $60,000 app would be effective or usable-especially when the app was given to many caucus managers 3 days before the
meet ups?
Iowa first caucus is now discredited on grounds other than the bizarre inherently non representative nature of the demographics of the state.
Nice work. Maybe this will blow away this nonsensical process once and for all.
7
This sort of reminds me of the 1952 election (which I just read about, I'm not that old.) It was the first time a computer was used to predict the outcome of a Presidential election. The polls were close between Eisenhower and Stevenson. CBS and Remington Rand, the company who "brought in" the Univac, played it up early on. For CBS it was a gimmick, for Rand it was a real time test. By 8:30 pm Univac predicted by 100:1 odds that Ike would win. Only CBS and Rand held back the results because no one actually believed the computers prediction!
No one complained about the seeming "failure" of the computer. No one complained that they didn't know the outcome of the election until the next day
1
Ohio rather than Iowa should be the first primary state. It makes far more sense that intense early campaigning take place in a general election battleground state. Perhaps this reporting fiasco will be the catalyst for a much needed change.
8
Forget the whole app idea for now. Who really thinks there is good connectivity in all the places they need to report from? This is the fantasy of app developers and people who live in mainly newly built apartment buildings with robust infrastructure or people from plush suburbs.
I work for a school, and I have to go outside and wander around the courtyard to get a signal to talk on the phone. The wifi at my school regularly fails.
Maybe your building was built for this technology, but between terrain, concrete walls, neighborhoods that won't get fiber-optic connections for another ten years, and many other variables, as well as the differences baked-in for poorer neighborhoods, don't think for a minute that digital connectivity is equal in all parts of town.
11
The first rule of using apps is that they break or you can use your phone, so be prepared to have to do things without the app. Also, apps are designed by (flawed) human beings. And they are used by human beings and take time to use. One needs to remain flexible and view apps as tools, not a cure all or something to be overly dependent on. And when working with technology, one should expect for things to go wrong.
This situation in Iowa just goes to show how incompetent Democrats are at running things.
It also goes to show that we are becoming too reliant to apps. It illustrates an addiction to "disruption" and smart phones and an absence of wisdom.
I partially wonder why precinct leaders had such trouble phoning in results. Did they cut their phone staff? They still needed an army to man the phones just in case the app didn't work or people wanted to phone the results in too.
8
@James Sorry, you can LOSE your phone...
The caucus process was relevant in the 1950’s. Not now. November will tell the nation’s preference. This is just entertainment. This summer will be a circus. I am waiting until November to decide who gets my vote.
5
Talking to four farmers in a barn about ethanol subsidies is no way to choose a president. Let's start with a real test of organizing ability and fundraising. The first primary (no more caucuses) will be a multi-state affair: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio all on the same day.
24
@Dr. J
Also, picking a President on who can throw a dried piece of cow manure the farthest or eat the most deep fried tubes of indistinguishable animal parts may not be the best way either, but that's the way we have always done it and we can never, ever change.
I do understand making a mistake.
But for crying out loud, testing the software only two months before the February caucus?
Where is the due diligence and expectation for perfection?
If what occurred last night is any indication of the November election, then why even bother to vote (merely posing a sarcastic rhetorical question)?
The debacle last night wasn't just about "inconsistencies in collecting data" but rather a negative and questionable reflection on the Democratic Party in general.
It's bad enough the Mueller Report was pretty much a bust. As were the months of impeachment inquires and probable acquittal of the president. Then there's the plethora of candidates in which no one has ever been the strong front runner. Now there's the reporting of data nightmare in Iowa.
From the inside looking out, I truly understand why the Republicans think they have all the answers and truly believe the Democrats couldn't fight their way out of a non-existent paper bag.
We have less then 10 months to get things together and beat Trump at the polls. I can only hope this will happen and the first re-start of this process is in New Hampshire.
If things go sideways there, then this election and the Democrats will truly be a boondoggle from which we may not recover by election night on November 3rd.
8
@Marge Keller indeed, the solemn and prayerful parade through the Capitol rotunda last month could have been the Democratic Party’s funeral march. I'm mentally prepared to watch the coffin being lowered into the ground by November. We must prepare for what happens after that.
1
@Marge Keller
Was it really even tested? It seems from all the reporting so far that the “test” was the actual use of the software on caucus night.
The app is just the tip of the iceberg. The whole caucus thing has got to go. And Iowa needs to move to the back. If diversity is the true goal of the dems (which I sometimes doubt) then there is no rational argument against making New Jersey first.
8
I belong to a local Democratic party in the hinterlands of Wisconsin. Our membership is mostly gray-hairs. Some of the aging group is technologically savvy and some like me not so much. Our technology training sessions are slapdash at best, usually with some young guy sent from the central office who has to explain everything to me very slowly. I would suspect that mainly rural Iowa is similar. Expecting "volunteers" with all levels of tech expertise to quickly master some new app in a short time definitely seems like a recipe for disaster.
67
Part of the problem is the result of the news media's (including the NYT) rush to report election results. There is no imperative to have instantaneous results. The process should be deliberate and structured, not rushed to appease the 24-hour news cycle.
The so-called problem is Iowa is no problem at all, except for the talking heads.
13
@Les Bois
Actually this is a serious problem for all the reasons stated in this article. Using apps and online systems for elections is vulnerable to all sorts of interference and erroneous results. A system like that would need to be hyper-secure as it would be one of the top targets for nation-state hackers (the best ones). If a nation state really wants to get in they can in most cases. That means you need very high level (thus expensive) security controls when building the site/app, operating the app and then extensive monitoring by experts. Otherwise our democracy will become an illusion. This was none of those things.
5
@Les Bois: The larger issue is that the entire caucus process is an anachronism that needs to move on. I certainly hope that the good people of Iowa don't do this for the general election. Get rid of caucuses in outlier states and replace them with actual democratic elections. Stop attempting to update a medieval process with a technological bandaid.
6
When I was a little kid 60 years ago they got election results faster than this. There was no internet and no news cycle.
1
They had only 4 years to get the app to work properly. Perhaps they needed to contract it to Google.
6
Yes, Democrats need to find ways to win with the internet.
I suggest they need better ideas to beat Trump, at his own game.
I think Democrats can focus on a new democracy wave in 2020.
The insanity of Trump may give rise to a Democratic response.
For example, they could use songs, like the "Democracy" song.
"Democracy is coming to the USA" (Leonard Cohen)
I encourage the Times to write about a new democracy wave.
"Democracy is coming to the USA"
4
Seriously—who sets up a system wherein people of a certain age, who may not be able to find their glasses in the morning, are required to hunt and peck data into their cell phones?
48
Who sets up an important system and then doesn't subject it to complete testing with the people who will be using the system prior to the event?
5
@Douglas People of a certain age show up and vote. What's your excuse?
Why was an app even necessary in the first place? What was it intended to improve upon? Seems completely unnecessary from start to finish.
35
Iowa remains the first exposure for presidential candidates and 'retail' campaigning. Of course, the caucus voting process should be fun but it's been a farce for the last few election cycles. Where else should this microscopic examination of politicians be relocated?
1
@Richard "Where else should this microscopic examination of politicians be relocated?"
Anywhere the demographic doesn't skew elderly, white and a rural.
1
I'm not getting why I should care whether the reporting system can be "compromised." The only reason the tabulations are being reported night-of by phone or app is for the sake of the media. These results are preliminary and unofficial until the party canvasses the sign-in sheets and caucus challenges are adjudicated. So even if there was an error or hacking affecting reported totals, so what? What is unclear is why the state party has embargoed the preliminary results, unless all of the tabulations are incorrect which seems highly unlikely.
6
Please do not provide fodder for Trump. This is a minor headache, yes. But Iowa results, like Iowa itself, it overrated, and needs to move aside. The real issue is that the Democratic Party is not a monolith, and instead has a huge number of moving parts. The Republicans - under Trump's charm (to be generous) - are by contrast a single monolith, acting in lock-step. This is a strategic advantage, yes, but not in any other form -- not in raw numbers of people persuaded by it, not in terms of historical trends for decades, and definitely not in terms of moral compass and what is good and right for America and the world.
Simply put, the Democratic candidates are offering a level of moral integrity and rightful purpose that the Republicans cannot match by any stretch at this time. That message must be hammered till there is victory in November.
28
@PT
EXCELLENT point. It is super easy to never fail if you just never do anything. Other than tax cuts what is the last thing the GOP actually did other than critique dems attempts to solve problems?
9
If the Iowa results had gone completely smoothly, nobody would care or even remember in 3 weeks. This first state idiocy matters little ... ending the most corrupt presidency in history is everything.
1
The DNC let their supporters down once again. They weren't prepared count votes but we're to believe they're prepared to successfully run a nation.
6
Since when does a national political committee run a nation? And speaking of running things, how about a GOP that took us to the brink of recession before Obama bailed them out, and the current administration, with a trillion dollar debt in a supposedly full employment economy? They are still denying climate change with all,living things in peril.
11
@Kurt Pickard: There was no problem with the vote counting, which was done publicly and with a paper trail. There was just a problem with reporting that will now be delayed one or two days. So what's your problem? And the DNC leadership doesn't run the nation, thank god!
1
Exactly the problem: the GOP can take this debacle—reflecting a small, unrepresentative state that should never be the “lead off” for the Democratic party—and make a perfectly obvious case: The Dems can’t even run an outdated, silly process : how on earth can Americans trust this party to run the country??!!
I hope the DNC wakes up before the next national election and strips Iowa of this ridiculous, unreliable, possibly unenlightening procedure and, for sure, never again able to “go first” and potentially sink the entire Democratic effort.
I write software for a living. It's not easy to write a secure networked program. Writing secure networked election software, which will quite possibly be targeted by state-sponsored hacking groups? Much harder than that. I suspect most election software being peddled to local governments is riddled with hidden problems. It would be wise to keep using old-fashioned methods for the near future until a better process of software vetting is available.
Furthermore, I'd like to point out that it's disingenuous for the Iowa democratic party leadership, which has lost a lot of credibility over the last 24 hours, to so strongly state that this wasn't a case of sabotage. Are they even qualified to make those judgments less than 24 hours after the event? I hate to fan the flames of conspiracy theories, but attacks on election systems are a real issue, and security postmortems, even when executed by the best firms, cannot be completed that quickly. Just because it wasn't an obvious hack doesn't mean nothing happened. I'd be surprised if nobody was trying to tamper with the system.
126
@Alex Middeleer Agreed. I laughed out loud when they claimed there was no hacking. They can't possibly know that at this point. To be clear, I am NOT claiming there was hacking. We simply haven't a clue at this point.
34
@Alex Middeleer
The could know that a hacker could not make it "break" because it never worked period.
File under "why we can't have nice things".
6
@Alex Middeleer
Also, "the hacker" could be the actual software designer/builder.
How do you prevent that???
7
Of course they got hacked. In a few days, somebody will figure out what happened, and the Trump administration will deny any connection. And then gradually evidence will emerge of a link, and they'll say that's fake news. And then more evidence will emerge, and it'll become obvious that the Russians hacked the primary to benefit Trump, but Trump will say "no collusion." You know the rest.
15
@Joe M. you got that right. We all know the drill by now. Unfortunately, it has become as dependable as the rising and setting of the sun.
Calm down. This is one big marshmallow test that is actually biased against the ‘haves’ We can surely survive waiting 24 or even 48 hours for these results. We’ve been conditioned to the immediacy of tech and the hot take. Is the ‘failure’ the ‘failure’ of not feeding needs for immediacy? The votes are getting counted, more data is being collected than before, back ups are in place, human witness abound, and the candidates were all represented. It will make at a good long form story about change management.
58
The Iowa results need to be annulled, not announced, and all evidence burned. The only thing that could make this worse now is announcing a 2-point spread. The only thing, that is, besides Bernie Sanders taking unofficial, unverifiable "results" from some unknown number of caucus precincts and announcing at 2 AM that he had clearly won the caucuses based on this information. The man does everything he can to undermine the democratic process, inflame his supporters, and make it more difficult to walk them back from the edge.
13
@Mike: Why should the Iowa results be annulled? The caucus was conducted publicly with a paper trail to back up the votes. The problems were in the reporting of the results with that hapless app. Wish the 2016 elections in a number of states were conducted with a paper trail. And Bernie Sanders is not the problem, but his "Bernie or Bust" supporters are. Or trolls posing as "Bernie or Busters" here, in order to sow division among Democrats.
10
@Mike this seems dramatic. What seemed to happen last night was, in the confusion, Pete made a victory speech to his followers. The Bernie camp, to quell confusion, simply reported a cross section of their unofficial tally, something they made very clear.
The only thing undermining the democratic process is whoever promoted this broken application to caucus locations (note: Nevada is supposedly using it as well). It has allowed confusion and hash tags that bots online are manipulating. I don't believe any candidate can be happy with the results of what happened last night.
8
Maybe Nevada and other states contemplating using this untested software — particularly without paper ballots — will reconsider!
7
Let’s really dissect what happened. Poorly rolled out software failed. But the voting and counting took place as usual. The major networks were geared up last evening to begin reporting results and couldn’t. Their highly paid news anchors were sitting in front of the camera with nothing to report. Then the reports of potential fraud begins to make its way around Twitter by the Trump gang. Calm down everyone. Yes it’s an embarrassment and once again points to why we should have oversight into the technology that states adopt to count votes. But we will know the results when all the hand tallies are counted, like every other caucus year.
56
@JWyly
I believe this is the DNC not the state. Think of a private entity that is funded by who ever runs the DNC. That right there is the weakness many people have concerns about during a time when so many assaults on our democracy are under way by foreign governments and the Republican Party. There are also interests in the DNC.
I believe the nomination winner also chooses who is in positions of power in the DNC. It would be nice to have some media conversation about that process as I’m not familiar how that works.
It’s imperative democrats work together for an honest count.
1
@JWyly
I agree with everyone calming down. But I would suggest that "dissecting what happened" (presumably with an eye to "fixing" the problems) is not a great use of time now. Let's just dump this strange caucus system for ever, along with IA as the "first state in the nation". Let's move to a regular voting primary with paper ballots (no "apps") and with several days for those who wish to vote early. Also, groups of states voting together (like Super Tuesday) and, ideally, the whole country voting within a single month.
And sure, someone could dissect what happened later.
8
@JWyly But what happens when said technology is designed and deployed by Hillary's top staffers..and what if this delay creates the impression that Biden did well in Iowa..even though he's likely to finish 5th..just ahead of Marianne Williamson?
The Clinton's don't lose without cheating..and this is not beyond their desire to keep the Establishment Large and in Charge...
1
In the interest of time and/or money skimping on training is a problem in government, industry, military, etc. A great product is useless if operation is unknown and can be deadly (737MAX). Armed Forces, U.S. and others, spend billions on systems but go light on training. This results in extremely expensive doorstops.
13
@Chaz
I don’t believe the DNC is part of government.
Did they somehow forget the password?
It was most likely "password", like in 2016.
13
We already have a perfectly good voting system in place. People mark an "X" on a paper ballot and then the ballots are publicly counted and reported up the chain. This system has worked for hundreds of years. There is nothing safe or reliable about using the internet or phone apps to vote and we need to realize it right now.
231
@Keith
They voted by standing in groups. Then someone counted the groups. Is that simple enough for you?
The app was used to transmit results to headquarters.
The results have existed on paper since about 11:00 last night, in every precinct. The failure was in the data collection.
6
@Keith Not withstanding @Tom Meadowcroft's reply, can you not know the great political machines such as Tammany Hall in NYC and the Daley Machine in Chicago regularly corrupted paper ballot elections? Haven't you heard the quote attributed to William Hale Thompson (mayor Chicago: 1915-1923, 1931-1935): when asked by a reporter if he was concerned about his election, he responded he wasn't because, "I have encouraged my supporters to vote early and often."
Paper ballot are not a panacea for a secure, correct election.
Tech has done a lot of great things to improve many aspects of life in the world today, but in acknowledging that it seems that many just automatically assume that it can do everything. Flawlessly. Every time. All this in spite of one story after another about these failures. And people still think we're ready for autonomous cars zipping all over the place. Sorry.
If there's one area that is critical, it is our elections, already in a fragile state due to past events, and in peril with the current president urging on such chaos, all for his own benefit, of course. Simpler, more reliable paper systems, while slower and less glamorous, are reliable and verifiable. We need less reliance on tech and more on common sense.
While I understand the drive way back in the day to bring in more citizen involvement, thus leading to the caucus system, but it's time to take a deep breath and admit it's a failure and a skewed system that does not actually represent America.
For all of its legendary flaws, the nominating convention system at least produced a candidate that the party could get behind in most cases. Donald Trump would likely never have even been nominated under the old methods. We might have to rephrase the old saw to "vape filled rooms" but both parties are too vulnerable to the manipulations of activists and agenda driven people who nominate unelectable and divisive candidates. It needs to stop.
10
This was a disappointing debacle but it is not the end of the world. Some people in Iowa made some colossal errors, but that is not representative of democrats in every other state, who can learn from this and hopefully improve on it.
The media overanalyzes every minute of every day in politics, and we people gullibly pay too much attention to it.
We are just feeding into trump and his followers’ ability to allow a single event to be used as a way to discredit and weaken our side. Many of the comments posted so far are already echoing the negative sentiments.
Hopefully, next month, this will be forgotten and we Democrat’s can continue to achieve our goal, defeating trump, which is going to take a massive amount of WORK.
18
@mt All this happened in the context of the House Managers' brilliant and impassioned speeches in the Senate to brain-frozen Republicans as to why Trump should be impeached and removed. Don't lose sight of the positives!
@mt
The fact republicans directly attack the voting process is repugnant in the extreme.
It's simply terrifying to think these people could be running our healthcare system if they come to power. Can't say we weren't warned.
8
@Burke S. a private company was responsible for this app. Private industry is already running our healthcare system.
1
@Burke S. that is a bit of hyperbole, isn't it, meant to scare? I don't know who you think "these people" are. The Iowa Democratic party ? The Silicon valley? Millions of people are currently on government-run insurance. My brother was kicked off his private insurance plan due to a glitch in his auto pay. He now has to pay hundreds of dollars a month for a new plan that was difficult to get.
1
@Burke S. Yep. Government sites often contract to the lowest bidder. I agree with tax reform and healthcare reform in general, as well as election reform. But I don't want any of these candidates (except maybe Yang) to do it. The "updates" are COMPLETE self-sabotage.
Don't blame the "tech" if you cheaped out on it. There are plenty of good firms and world class engineers who can build reliable and safe products. You get what you pay for.
1
"Both Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. questioned whether the results had been “rigged” or fixed." Very irresponsible. Reminds me of all the irresponsible progressives who keep falsely claiming that the 2016 election was "rigged" in favor of Trump, or who claim, without evidence, that Russia's interference was done with the help of Trump or helped skewed the results. Of course, Elizabeth Warren goes around claiming that the entire economy is "rigged", and she's not met with any skepticism by progressives or the mainstream media.
4
The longer this goes on, the more people will suspect that the Democratic Party grandees are trying to rig the result for the candidate that the party brass favours.
Was there an unexpected win from an outsider that couldn't be tolerated? Socialists do have a reputation for asking voters to keep voting again and again until they deliver the 'correct' result.
12
Well they did rig it it in 2016 with their super delegate announcements making it impossible for Bernie to win. There is no reason at this point to think it was rigged, but many BBC will think that.
2
@NoImSpartacus The DNC is full of "Democrats" who rigged the 2016 election. THEY are the ones who want a certain old white guy to win - and that's Biden.
3
Being a Democrat is beginning more and more like being a Jets fan.
70
@Gary oooo, sneak shot.
BTW: Only the Shadow knows. Bwahaha
Its amazing to me how there will always be someone on these commentary pages who finds a way to blame Mr. Trump for things he has absolutely nothing to do with. In this case, a faulty app that discombobulated the Iowa caucuses.
I believe that this is just one in a series of karmic events that the Democrats will experience in the week and months ahead in response to their hastily prepared "impeachment" of the president and their relentless criticism and ridicule of him, starting on the day after his November 2016 election victory.
What a disgrace.
12
@David H
We have every right to criticize those that attack the election process constantly and seek to undermine it.
1
@Mathias
What on earth are you talking about? Ms. Clinton lost the election in 2016 because she IGNORED several crucial rust belt states where 4 million manufacturing jobs had been lost.
The Democrats might stand a snowball's chance in 10 months if they start to focus on the issues instead of wasting time chasing fantasies.
3
@David H so.... people that "blame" trump for something with which he had no involvement are stretching it..... but conflating the impeachment, which had nothing to do with this election, is ok? got it.....
1
Mmmmm and Bernie was 'way ahead'!!!!....are the democratic and republican elitists going to win? Take the money out of politics or we are doomed...human nature's proven that greed rules, social consciousness is never done by ' he who has the gold rules' and THE self serving synchphants in both parties.
7
Social consciousness and support is slammed as communistic? We need to redo our social commitment ( infrastructure, medical commitment, descent EQUAL schools and while we are 'at it's train transportation) by taking THE MONEY OUT of politics, oh wait !!? Is that why Bernie is winning with out corporate help? BERNIE OR BUST.
Hacked emails, personal servers, dodgy election investigations and now the base idiocy of using untested software. Well done DNC! Well done!
32
You can always count on the Democratic Party to screw up big time. So disheartening to see this.
26
@Nick I agree; this is reminiscent of the ACA launch debacle. 'Sad.
9
Memo to country: don't put this party in charge.
12
@pete alternatively: don't let private industry continue to erode our faith in working democratic institutions.
7
I feel some are overreacting a bit here. After the votes are tallied, we'll have the results, and people will soon forget the taunts from the Trump camp and the confusion we're now experiencing. The next states will take this as a warning, and make sure they have their ducks in a row. In this era of instant gratification, where politics are treated as sport, we need to re-learn how to be patient. Don't contribute to the right's narrative that the DNC is a mess.
112
@geo80 I entirely agree. And a potential silver lining is that this will undoubtedly diminish the importance of Iowa as a player in the democratic primary so more states vote before candidates decide to drop out. In the scheme of things, Iowa has a small amount of delegates anyways.
10
Thank you, Minneapolis! Let cooler heads prevail.
5
The DNC may not be a mess, but letting a small state—one that does not have a population reflecting the USA today—ever go first again is plainly ridiculous.
If the Hawkeyes like their odd, chaotic caucus system, let them keep it.
Just never again go first and splash mud all over the Democratic candidates and party, making it that much harder to make a case that Dems can run the country better than the GOP are now doing.
9
Paper ballots now....nationwide....hand counted and secured.....is the only reliable method.
Computer technology has so far failed catastrophically on an epic scale.
Cheap software, undersized servers, weak security, weak computer code, private for-profit corporations selling this cheap software and their unreliable voting machines with black-box cote counting, 50 separate state standards for voting and voting technology.....this is an utterly broken shameful and corrupt way to run elections.
The fact that America can invest trillions in billionaires but can't come up with a few billion to administer a respectable federally funded voting system for its 50-state republic is a direct tribute to yet another Republican Party 0.1% destructive victory over the people of the United States.
No infrastructure funding, no education funding, limited voting rights, no living wages, not one penny for a respectable vote nationwide.....but plenty of vote rigging and 0.1% welfare to go around.
This country badly needs a revolution to implement simple democracy.
While it is the Iowa Democratic Party that runs the Iowa caucuses and they are to blame for this specific incompetence, it is the decades-long-running starvation of infrastructure federal funding to states that helps cause these types of election disasters.
The country needs higher taxes to fund a decent civilization...and the Republican Party rejects civilization.
Heckuva job, GOP !
281
@Socrates
What makes you think the American people will allow a party that can't run a caucus to have more taxes to spend? The Democratic party needs to demonstrate that it is capable of GOOD government before it will be allowed to create MORE government. Yesterday was a step backwards in that effort.
No, paper ballots are not the answer. Looking backwards is best left to the GOP. Move forward, fix the system, and make the final result better than before, not merely sufficient. "We need paper ballots because we can't handle modern technology" is not the image we want to put forward.
8
@Socrates
This is not the time to be a Luddite. Democrats should not be technophobes.
This problem would have been avoided if the Democrats had taken the time to pilot test the new system. The Democrats should also also make sure that their officials understand remedial math at a minimum. One Times reporter indicated that there was a delay at one precinct because several Democratic officials could not figure out what 15% of 262 is. It's disgraceful that people such as that were put into positions of authority.
19
@Bruce Yes, and a caucus precinct secretary Tweeted results, while on hold for more than an hour due to hotline phone overload. His results were 2 delegates each for Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg, who received 111, 83 and 49 votes (in that order.) How can that be right? Common Sense! --- But more importantly, the Bernie Sanders campaign had their own AP, given ONLY to Bernie precinct captains to upload screenshots of the final tally sheets and track the votes. When the Associated Press started reporting results via the Iowa Democratic Party, those results greatly differed from what Bernie's precinct captains were reporting on the ground. About 25% of the vote had been reported at that point. And then EVERYTHING STOPPED. I think there are issues.
14
If you believe in government, you have to insist on competence in government operations and services.
Iowa was a disgraceful failure and it feeds both the conspiracy theory and anti-government crowds.
21
@Brad Be careful - this is not being run by the "government." Strictly political, run by the Democratic party.
2
The new "app" failed because people could not or would not use it -- most likely the latter. What else is new? "Apps" are for the enrichment or empowerment of whoever is putting them out -- not the user.
14
There is no one at Homeland Security to vet anything. Just some top trump campaign donors doing nothing. Don’t count on anything from the current Administration as the top works for Putin and will do everything it can to taint the election.
14
Because, of course, the Iowa Democratic Party is the only organization that ever released tech before it was ready, leaving its end users to do its beta testing, resulting in a massive failure. I mean, besides Apple.
20
@Mark
You're exactly right, meaning that the Iowa Dem Party had plenty of examples to see the risks of doing just that. That they would botch it so bad and so obviously, in a contest that is so high stakes, is inexcusable.
11
We could be making it easier for everyone to vote. No wonder voter apathy is such a problem. There is a lot of writing about what is wrong, and precious little about how to fix it.
33
"Facts were scarce. Fear, uncertainty and doubt took their place. “Big WIN for us in Iowa tonight,” Mr. Trump tweeted shortly before midnight."
The DNC needs to take control of this rapidly escalating fiasco. I suggest no more Mr. Nice Guy ideas and implementation, but spend the money to hire the top resources that can get the job done, and vet them thoroughly.
I hate to say this, but Mike Bloomberg seems to be the only candidate with a sophisticated knowledge of campaign strategy and implementation. His ads are compelling, his infrastructure long tested.
For God's sake Dems, use fire to fight fire. You're playing to lose, and need to get more ruthless. Otherwise, you're going to be tracks on the road of the president's oncoming fleet of SUVs, on his way to a monumental power grab that's unparalleled.
322
@ChristineMcM - Yes, and part of Mike Bloomberg's strategy was to bypass Iowa. I think this may have been because he is of course in it to win, and he couldn't see much advantage to being part of what with him would have been a group of eight, and then maybe finish third or fourth.
It's very unfair that the seven candidates have had their reputations a bit tarnished by these tabulation problems they have no control over. Even the eventual winner will have the impact of their victory diminished a bit. But Mike escapes all of that.
I should confess I believe Mike would be both the best person to defeat President Trump and also to clean up his mess and get our country back on the road to being great again, so maybe I'm not objective in assessing all of this. But he seems to have a plan to make this all come together; it should be interesting to see how it works out.
37
@ChristineMcM It's interesting you think Trump is out for a power grab when he's done more to clip the wings of the power in Washington DC than anyone in the past 40 years.
He seems pretty clearly focused on reducing the size and scale of Washington and letting the good people of Massachusetts and the good people of Plymouth have more power and control over your own destiny vs. waiting for Washington to solve all your problems (which isn't going to happen).
Even on healthcare, I think he's serious about wanting to keep those pieces of ACA that work well and reformulating some of the minimum requirements with each state particpating in defining what 'minimum' means in order to make health insurance more affordable so that pre-existing conditions can be covered while everyone is required to buy health insurance (mandate at the state level, like you have in MA..the only state to do so..why is that?)
Ignore the noise around the Trump orbit and focus on the signals.
He's not a Republican and he's not a conservative. As a conservative Republican, I'm hoping Pelosi and the #Resistance movement doens't figure out what Van Jones and Kim Kardashian figured out.
The guy is not an ideologue (like Obama). He really does want to make lives better for all of America..and he's delivering on that promise.
That's not too bad for most working class Americans..
I realize his rhetoric is not helpful, but hey..you're from Boston. In your face is a way of life. You should be used to it.
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@Jerry Schulz Bloomberg is 100% Establishment.
I might be misreading the tea leaves, but both the Republicans and heart/soul of the Democrats don't want Establishment.
You know the only thing that should be reported out of Iowa from last night?
Biden got whipped. He lost..big time.
The Establishment lost..big time.
And now the Establishment wants to double down on Bloomberg?
That's not how this works.
That's not how any of this works.
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"Shadow" -- what a perfect name for what we might be an omen of things to come.
If we've learned anything from the meltdown in Iowa, it's that our election systems are at risk of not being able to withstand pressure, be it technical or outside interference. And we know we have a president and a leader in the Senate who think that's okay. They are not moving to protect us.
Iowa has just given us a look into the future. The question now is whether or not the American people are paying attention or looking the other way, seeing it as just another distraction.
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@avrds
“After midnight, The Huffington Post reported that Shadow, a tech company funded by the progressive digital media firm, Acronym, was responsible for building the app.”
Via @TheGrayzoneNews
“Pro-Israel Buttigieg backer Seth Klarman is top funder of group behind Iowa’s disastrous voting app”
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@avrds You're worried about enemies foreign.
This was probably a domestic enemy that struck.
Remember..if you take on the Establishment, they have 7 ways to Sunday to get even with you
Shadow.
Acronym.
HRC.
Biden.
'nuf said.
You're not wrong. The entire system needs an overhaul, with young, knowledgeable people doing the cyber work. Just one more reason we need them.
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Hey, us older people invented technology, just not those doing this. Then our jobs and industry were outsourced to other countries. Let’s emphasize STEM education here again instead of denigrating scientists like this Administration does. Let’s vote for tech savvy people, not 80 year olds who don’t know Apple from Google. Let’s stop having first primaries in states that do not represent who we are.
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@ChesBay
As a software developer who has worked in the business for 20+ years, I disagree. Knowledgeable doesn't equate to professional.
More than 50% of the software developers in the United States have less than 5 years of experience, and the majority of those are people in their 20s.
These are young adults who although they may be brilliant have not worked long enough in the field to become professionals at their job, demanding the kind of rigorous practice that thinks through use cases, testing and security measures that minimize bugs and don't leave gaping holes that be exploited by bad actors. And never put out a "least viable product" (commonly called a 'alpha' release) to be used by the general public.
The answer here is that critical mission software should developed by reputable professionals with an established history of mature development and support practices. Is that expensive? Yes, it is. And if you can't pay for it? Then don't make the jump until you can.
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The word you are looking for is rigor. There are lots of people who can write software at breakneck speeds, while at the same time not wanting to deal with the hassle of industry best practices. Rigor is what separates “coders” from Computer Scientists and Software Engineers. The company or group of people who write this app are neither Computer Scientists or Software Engineers.
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