Clearly the caucus system is a joke. I suggest all states adopt the Washington system of all mail voting. It has been used for several years and works just fine.
8
If Bloomberg was in charge, the Democratic Party would then function efficiently and with accuracy.
I hope Mike wins the primaries.
4
“I do not conduct a performance evaluation of every party chair,” he said.
Clearly, we should
1
This catastrophe is a media creation . We met last Monday to discuss politics and elect delegates to the district convention. We have plenty of time to iron out most of the wrinkles. True, the leadership of the state party is incompetent and should resign. Because we need to win elections this fall. Not because they failed to make every Democrat in Iowa push the right buttons to make a nice headline Tuesday morning. Just tell America several campaigns produced respectable results and will keep going.
@Dan Munsterman "media creation", where are your results?
3
Can anyone explain how a person who worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign can be considered to have a "sterling resume?" The most incompetent, tone deaf, and ineffective campaign in my lifetime? I just can't wrap my head around how they still have any job or business whatsoever connected to the Democratic Party. How do these people manage to "fail up" so often?
18
Toronto has had computerized voting for a very long time with none of the issues common to US elections. I think our method may be of interest. First, our machines are owned by the City. Employees of the City are sequestered for 3 months in a secure facility where the voting machines are kept under lock and key. Over the course of the 3 months the machines are tested for accuracy and ability to handle large numbers of votes. The security of the machines is monitored throughout and up to and during the election. Voters are given a paper ballot which is read by the machines for rapid tabulation. The paper ballots are retained and can always be tabulated manually in the event of machine breakdown. We do not have caucuses. Every vote counts once.
9
The article hints at this, but I’d like to see more reporting on the historical inaccuracies in the caucus — has it been a fraud for 100 years?
4
Not a fraud. But I suspect the math and counting errors seen on the worksheets have been common throughout the 100 years not just this one.
3
Donald.
Now this.
The US of A is now officially a banana republic.
No caps.
Universal suffrage please.
1
"We just couldn't get the data reported"
In other words, the operation was successful, but the patient died.
I doubt we will ever know the true results. Bernie got the most votes and not even by a hair; Buttigieg claimed victory. The tally sheets used were a hot mess, and the state party is saying they can't be changed because they are legal documents.
The state director was 39-years old with good party connections and experience as a second banana, but it was a colossal fail. Maybe we shouldn't be giving that much responsibility to someone without prior experience. Maybe experience matters. We learn good judgment from making mistakes, lots of them.
Wisdom and good judgment are the result of a lifetime of experience. "Smart" is necessary, but it is not sufficient to assure performance when the chips are down. Have they learned their lesson? Have we?
I, for one, would not hand the keys to the WH to someone lacking national experience in office. We did that with Bush II, Obama had only a few years in the Senate, and Trump has none. Are we over it with newbies yet?
1
More votes for President Trump. Pretty funny!
2
“Things sure are great with the Democrats running things!”
...Said no one ever.
3
A pet democratic peeve is the un-democratic nature of the electoral college: a disproportionately advantage to small and rural states. It is a the height of hypocrisy for democrats to use a similar methodology to award the Iowa delegates. Fairest would be to award national delegates in proportion to the popular votes, but changing rules midstream would create more challenges. A reasonable alternative is to round off the state delegate equivalents to the closest percent (taking it out a decimal place, way beyond the vote's accuracy is criminally negligent mathematics!). Just call it a tie between Sanders and Buttegeig and move on. Sanders' supporters are understandably upset. Apart from the unfair disonnect between popular vote and delegates, many of the erroneous precincts that were reported by the NY Times and CNN had errors that favored one of the establishment candidates over Sanders. Declaring a tie and moving on is not just the fairest outcome at this point, it also makes it easier to move past this and focus on defeating Trump.
3
This February caucus was the best run and smoothest organized caucus that I've ever attended in over forty years. It was the largest with over a thousand participants. My caucus chair was properly trained.
Knowing that the caucuses were well run makes the reporting problems even more frustrating.
To all of you non Iowans who insist that Iowa should adopt a primary, primaries and caucuses serve different purposes. The Iowa caucuses are precinct level meetings to select delegates to the county conventions and to submit proposed platform resolutions. Primaries are popularity contests which cannot select county delegates or submit platform resolutions. Something like the caucuses would still have to exist at the precinct level.to select delegates and submit platform resolutions for the county conventions.
The Iowa caucuses aren't designed and were never designed to be popularity horse races for the media. The caucuses are nothing more than a mechanism to select county delegates and draft platform resolutions. The actual number of delegates that any candidate has at the state party convention is not locked in by the precinct caucus results.
The news media would do everyone a service by stopping using the Iowa caucuses as a way to fill up the emptiness of the 24/7 news cycle.
4
Gee whiz...Thanks for the info...
App issues aside, caucus is an antiquated system that disenfranchises a large percentage of the electorate. The requirement to be in a certain place at a certain time, no early or absentee voting, no consideration of shift workers, disabled or elderly people who may not be able to drive at night, excluded over 80% of those who were eligible in Iowa. It's time for the caucus to go the way of the dodo bird.
2
Interesting that this situation is getting FAR more concentrated attention than the widespread voter suppression efforts underway all over the country, especially in battleground states.
6
Interesting that this situation is getting FAR more concentrated attention than the widespread voter suppression efforts underway all over the country, especially in battleground states.
Fire Price and Perez and switch to a primary system!! What a great disservice they have done to the Democrats!!
4
The Democratic chairman in Dubuque County wants a pat on the back?!? You've got to be kidding me!
Iowa has failed the country. Their caucus should be converted to a primary and placed at the very end of the process.
From now on, they should go 54th- after Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
3
We should have a few rotating regional primaries to choose a candidate for President.
3
@David J. Krupp, that's a fair and reasonable solution.
The precincts should simply tally the voters and then send up the results, and then there should have been one team in charge of determine how many delegates they equaled. There were multiple ways to transmit the information - app, phone, or e-mail. Did all 3 fail?? Why wasn’t anyone checking the email, as the NYT claims they didn’t! Very strange! It shouldn’t have been this hard, not too many voters anyway.
Sheesh. Reading over what actually happened, it sounds like they were trying to automate an already broken process. If there are no clear rules on how delegates are awarded, then what's the point of a caucus?
Seems like the app was just a mobile gui front end to a shared spreadsheet. Rather appalling all around.
3
Of course, there are clear rules and always have been. The national media doesn't bother to educate itself, just swoopes in for sound bites.
@Lona
Our understanding was the IDP and the DNC have different SDE percentage math.
That one of the arguments was which one was right, which was used, which will supersede.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/upshot/iowa-caucus-satellite-votes.html?
Can you clarify?
2
Failure to be able run a simple caucus demonstrates exactly why the government has no business taking over the nation's health care systems. Incompetence reigns supreme on the left.
8
David- a government wasn’t running the caucus.
6
I just wonder why there is a defense of caucus over election. One perennial argument is that every vote should count. In a caucus the position in the room where I might be standing could count for candidate x or candidate y. I get the social nature of the caucus - mid-winter evening spent with the community over cookies and kool-aid, but, at the end of the day, the only way to accurately count is with a verified tabulation system. Use a machine, a scanner, paper ballot, some system that can be audited. A caucus, by its nature, doesn't allow this. So, let's scrap the caucus process, and ensure that every eligible vote is counted.
567
@Dave B
Tabulation isn't a good reason to scrap the caucus. You can find ways to tabulate a caucus. Utah Republicans currently hold virtual caucuses. Your position in the room obviously doesn't matter. You're not in the room. You're confusing the appropriateness of caucusing with an administrative problem.
3
@Dave B
What is surprising is that your very reasonable , common sense suggestions have not been implemented long ago.
12
@Dave B There are no “votes” in a caucus. There never have been and it has never been a secret that that is how it works. Many people are just realizing this and insistent their “popular vote wins it all” is how elections work. It just isn’t true. Same with electoral college. All candidates know the rules of the game before it begins and many make them a part of their strategy.
5
Fiasco? Sure. But how soon we forget the disgraceful, disheartening, nauseating,
long-running nightmare that was the 2016 Republican primary season;
“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her — wherever.”
“He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”d
23
As I said before, perhaps Iowans should stick to raising hogs and soybeans and leave politics to those who are smarter and better prepared. Like the Electoral College, the caucus system is an undemocratic throwback that should have been abolished years ago. Keep it simple: count votes, let the majority win.
10
This is a story about who gets to run things, and it is always the same: the white males who pat one another on the back, hire one another, and when they screw up they get hired in another position and screw up again. And again and again. I’ve experienced this personally in the arts, in orchestra management particularly. I’ve seen it in the recent handover of the management of Florida’s Sunpass toll system. I have a suspicion this white male good old boy syndrome applies as well to the management of our transit systems, our banks, our hospitals, and just about everything that isn’t working properly. There's a glimmer of hope now in Finland, where women are in charge, and merit is earned.
15
I think most are overlooking the magnitude of the real issues here. With the proper amount of planning, testing and training - any process can be managed successfully. It takes clarity of goals and outcome, inputs and analysis. It takes robust processes that are well documented and trained. It takes thorough testing and sampling of points for error and vulnerabilities. Contingency processes must be developed AND tested. There is only one chief, resposible for all - not a share responsibility between natiional and local. The ball got dropped here over and over with woefully inadequate testing and trianing. Come on, relying on new software as a key tool still being tested days before implementation? What a recipe for disaster. Everyone now thinks instant grits can be made of every process. It simply can't. Allocate the resources, time and commitment next time and it can be done. We as a nation have abandoned the rigor that we learned long ago to apply to critical processes. It's time to reverse that course. The DNC and RNC should start now developing the process for 2024 so at least then we may be able to start rebuilding the trust of our citizens.
4
I think most are overlooking the magnitude of the real issues here. With the proper amount of planning, testing and training - any process can be managed successfully. It takes clarity of goals and outcome, inputs and analysis. It takes robust processes that are well documented and trained. It takes thorough testing and sampling of points for error and vulnerabilities. Contingency processes must be developed AND tested. There is only one chief, resposible for all - not a share responsibility between natiional and local. The ball got dropped here over and over with woefully inadequate testing and trianing. Come on, relying on new software as a key tool still being tested days before implementation? What a recipe for disaster. Everyone now thinks instant grits can be made of every process. It simply can't. Allocate the resources, time and commitment next time and it can be done. We as a nation have abandoned the rigor that we learned long ago to apply to critical processes. It's time to reverse that course. The DNC and RNC should start now developing the process for 2024 so at least then we may be able to start rebuilding the trust of our citizens.
1
Would someone tell me where is Iowa.
4
Epic fiasco??!! Gee, NYT, maybe you should reserve that term for things like putting kids in cages or having the President make up lies about where a hurricane is going.
Iowa was an inconvenience to the media. THAT'S why you think it was so "epic". Talk about overblown.
3
What did you expect? It's Iowa.
1
People trying to satisfy many stakeholders, trying to take advantage of opportunities unrelated to delivering the principle service on time and according to the requirements, new application of a produce without real time testing to discover unanticipated factors, incomplete planning for contingencies in case of failure, and stakeholders who are able to impose requirements which are superfluous to the principle process. This was a foul out that was inevitable. Fortunately, a little patience and sound reasoning can straighten it out quit well. Nothing to sweat about it. Just do not presume that complicated situations will just work out as intended.
Iowa is not up to the task of being the high profile, first nomination exercise. Lack of functioning technology, lack of representation of the Democratic voter base, lack of representation for those that work at night, and lack of clarity in how votes are finalized all show a process that is obsolete and needs to go.
I am concerned that an application was used that has ties to ANY campaign. Having a corporate officer who is married to a Buttigieg top operative should have been a disqualifying conflict of interest in getting the contract for the voting app to begin with.
If we can't change our confusion as to who is best to beat Trump, at least we can play a fair game where there are no conflicts of interest, and no processes that leave out wide swaths of voters.
3
one element of the caucus system i do like is allowing for second choices. but we do have a voting system that does the same thing: rank-ordered voting. why not take this good element and extend it to a more inclusive process?
8
Why can't we have a single primary on one day (and NO caucuses)?
It doesn't matter which state goes "first." No single state is representative of the nation.
If everyone goes first, then everyone will be more likely to cast a ballot without being biased by prior results. Let the candidates campaign to the entire nation, and let the entirety of primary voting happen on a day in May or June.
This is what a system does when it's interested in actual fair play.
4
This reporting adds some clarity to the chaos of the entire caucus, but how do you clarify chaos? Ultimately there's no one reason why things broke down so badly, and none more than the amateurism IDP officials have relied upon in past caucuses--not always to our betterment. Somehow there has to be more training, more planning, more transparency, and more competence involved to make whatever system--caucus or primary--work.
My Des Moines precinct, #55, represented the chaos and lack of transparency of the larger reporting effort. Over 1,000 caucus-goers were first counted--later reduced by about 200 somehow--by all reports one of the state's largest precincts. Local yokels didn't bother announcing any totals--not for the first or second alignments, nor the SDEs (delegates). Almost all attendees vanished after the first alignment, and I stayed around to witness a process I wouldn't have had much confidence in, had I known what was going on.
Precinct #55 was reportedly the reason why incorrect figures had to be redressed last Thursday in a mistaken report of figures. C'mon Iowa--it's not math, it's arithmetic. All the criticism from outside the state is justified in my view. Fears of outsider interference were nothing substantial, not comparable with the bungling experienced just from reading reporting like the Times'.
1
Most of us cherish the fact that we have a secret ballot. A caucus is the opposite so who needs it? We have been reading and hearing about politicians going to Iowa for two years. Enough! Let's hope the Iowa debacle puts at end to caucuses and is replaced by regional primaries.
6
I feel sorry for those poor volunteers. To me this demonstrates how poorly technology is introduced. Too often it's foisted on inexperienced people without any real training or testing.
It's more a symbol of poor management of technology rollouts than an indictment of the entire electoral system.
8
This Iowa nonsense has been driving or destroying Presidential candidates for decades, despited the state being small and unrepresentive and the outcome determined by a handful of Iowa Democrats able to spend three hours standing around a high school gym. But even worse than this obvious unfairness is the inherently unfair structure of the ridiculous voting process under which a candidate who gets 14% of the votes in all 1700 precincts would have all her votes thrown out -- even though 14% is not bad in an eight-way contest. Worse, most of these votes would be redistributed to stronger candidates, artificially inflating their support while our gal still gets zero. Think this is an exaggeration? Consider a candidate who gets 25 of 100 votes in one precinct, and 14 of 100 in an adjacent precinct for a total of 39 of 200, or almost 20%. In the crazy Iowa system, the 14 are not counted, so the candidate gets credit for only 12.5% across the two precincts. And when the 14 "realign," they may find their second choices are also not "viable" and have to move to a third choice. Cumulatively, this tends to reduce statewide totals for some while beefing up the totals of the top one of two competitors.
2
So, this was an issue and will be straightened out. To use it as a reason not to vote for the Democrats, well, how about when the GOP campaigners in 2016 were comparing genital size? That seems a lot more damning for a party's candidates than technical issues. But that's just me.
4
Having been a Bernie Delegate from Maine in 2016, I’m totally confident in 2020 that — Bernie will definitively “win this thing” if, and only if, he speaks-out and ‘exposes’ EMPEROR TRUMP and this “Damn Empire” (as Bernie would say) which is a Disguised Global Crony Capitalist Empire.
Clearly, Emperor Trump is “acting like an Emperor” as even mainstream CNN Chris Cuomo understands (and said earlier interviewing Jim Jordan) “this Trump is acting like an Emperor”, and as I’ve found in two years of weekly demonstrations in Portland Maine and Portsmouth NH, with my previous and new two-sided demonstration signs, which simply said:
DUMP
EMPEROR
TRUMP
(side 2 under an image of ‘Our’ American flag):
“We can’t be an EMPIRE”
and now my new 2020 signs simply say:
“Our Revolution”
To DUMP
EMPEROR TRUMP
(side 2)
GET ‘WOKE’ &
‘FOLK’ THE
EMPIRE
Which Gets — BUD, MILLER, COORS, and Sam Adams beer truck drivers flashing their lights, honking, giving me ‘Thumbs Up’, and smiling!
“He’s done. Stick a fork in him, and take him off the grill”
3
We need more caucuses! Technology has isolated us and has contributed mightily to the polarization in our country. We need more face to face human to human discussion to cut down on the way in which media communication allows for demonization of those we disagree with. This is the spirit of the New England town meeting that we ought to have more of. I don’t understand the tech snafu. From all I’ve heard Barack Obama’s use of technology was top of the line. Where was that knowledge and tech savvy in Iowa? When will the Dems realize that they have to get their act together to defeat Trump? Was it Will Rogers who said “I’m not a member of any organized political party: I’m a Democrat?”
Not just a "fiasco" but an "epic fiasco," joining "clash, doubt, problems" on the NY Times front page this morning. Are people forgetting the year Santorum lost and then won Iowa over a span of 10+ days, and then disappeared from the race?
Seems a tad glass-half-empty don't you think? Democrats are the absolute masters at self-doubt, hand-wringing, and circular firing squads, and seem hell-bent on blowing this. Let's not. If turnout is high, he gets crushed, regardless of who is the eventual candidate.
3
Iowa was a screw up due to unwarranted faith on an inadequately tested app.
In the scope of things, other than the outsized attention ( because it is both first and bizarre) accorded to this small, homogeneous state which is not demographically representative of the nation, the Iowa debacle is really a low grade kerfuffle, a flub of little significance. Yes, it tallies which candidate can eat the most corn dogs, and the resultant ethanol content of their gaseous emissions. But let’s really put relative performance deficiencies that threaten our Democracy in perspective. The Iowa results are in and will be double checked; the app will not be used. On the other hand, our country is being run by a thug who beat the rap because the jury was stacked wih his lackeys. The Iowa screw up was an accident; the final tally will not lie; the current occupant of the White lies pathologically, if the truth occasionally blurts our of his burger hole it is by accident.
2
@Asher Fried
My apologies to Iowa as corn dogs bark primarily in Indiana. I should have realized that by seeing VP Pence in sitting his ramrod posture at the SOTU.
The Times uses disaster promiscuously. The party will recover from the screw-up in Iowa. The country may not recover from another four years of Trump. Headlines that encourage the idea that the Dems would not be better than Trump or the GOP forget that global warming is ignored by the GOP - Time that the attention grabbing headlines deal with the true crises that faces this country and the wold. You are making a mountain out of that proverbial molehill, but even the moles will not survive another four years of the GOP and its neglect of our world and its true problems. And a few headlines about the threat of fascism by the GOP would be welcomed. I've lived through the Great Depression and WW2 but we have never faced such dangers as a country. We can start to deal with them by showing a sense of proportion.
2
Dear NYT --thank you for the detailed description of the Iowa caucus breakdown --but please, enough with the "EPIC FIASCO" HEADLINES. Look, the Iowa Democratic Party organization screwed up, and you rightly shined a light on what actually went down. Fair enough. But I seriously doubt whether this little screw-up will amount to much come election time.
4
This process has likely been screwed up for many cycles. The only reason it came to light now is because of the extra reporting. Due to the way it was reported, the discrepancies were there for all to see. It's a complicated and out dated mechanism and the DNC needs to say they will not recognize the results from this process period.
3
The hubris of the Iowa Caucus in being first did itself in. For years they’ve disenfranchised thousands of voters who couldn’t make it to these meetings. The appearance of ordinary people turning up was used to imply that the caucus method was your truly authentic democracy. Well, now everyone can see that a big crowd does not make for efficient or accurate voting.
On the Republican side, neither does voter disenfranchisement as the state government is trying to do in Arizona make for Democracy! One is a major screw up in a primary in one party. The other is a cynical effort to kill democracy in the President vote in November. I don’t think The NY Times has even touched that story.
2
When disaster strikes it is far too late to act correctly. Plans are needed prior to that. This requires clear lines of decision
making, competence in all used technology, and thorough simulations done early enough to identify potential snafus.
This failed to occur both in Iowa and the rollout of the
ACA healthcare exchanges. Both were mega screw ups
as a result, and no actual price has yet been paid
by the decision makers at the time.
The amateur wing it and pray mentality (how is it that a CFO is ignorant of spreadsheet usage?) is surely not confined to a small number of bad examples, and
should make it very hard to convince people that democrats
should administer large scale ambitious new programs. Trump will surely gloat and go on and on about this forever.
The indifference to basic data security, transparency, and backup is surely not limited to the Iowan Democratic party. It will be very surprising not to encounter comparable issues in the context of very tight primary results elsewhere.
To a certain extent this is emblematic of a society under
great internal stress that cannot or does not yet know how to organize itself to overcome its deeper structural and psychic ailments.
1
Sure, they shouldn't have screwed this up. But this is state officials in a small state doing something complicated for the first time using a new combination of software and hardware.
Shadow didn't have much time and didn't charge much money.
Am I supposed to be shocked that there was trouble?
In fact, maybe this is a good thing. Republicans are already cheating on voter registration. The more focus there is on election security and accuracy, the better.
3
@RickP Many of the errors they made had nothing to do with technology more complicated than pencil and paper.
@LW Good point. Apparently, they had to do quite a bit of tabulating with pencil and paper.
Some of that was because the software failed and they were reporting things over the phone.
The procedures were new. The managers understimated the potential for error and confusion.
One Party machine, then the other Party machine moves in, then back to that Party machine.
In 2021 I’ll be so glad if we finally have relief and freedom from a Party machine.
2
Tom Perez is not a leader. He is the point that various powers in the Democratic Party pull on to get what they want, and his job is to move according to the pulls. The only thing he will defend is the whole structure of making decisions by the combination of pulls. Hillary and most Democratic politicians are at home with this structure; Sanders threatens it because he wants the party to lead in a certain direction and have a unifying ideology (that the rule of money is a huge problem) rather than a bunch of interests backed by ideas or money.
Perez has the job of defending a system of interests and otherwise not stepping on toes except the toes of those who threaten the system. Many people want this system moved aside so that there is room for a real discussion of ideas rather than the usual propaganda wars. But others want the system preserved even though its presence is liable to get Trump reelected.
1
Yes, Iowa caucuses are a joke. But so is the whole two-year process of selecting the candidates of the two major parties. What other country spends half of a leader's term selecting the candidate(s) for the next term of office? And then the person who gets the most votes in the general election is not elected. Unbelievable, really unbelievable. Yes, Trump is a terrible embarrassment to the Office, but so is the weird process that got him into office.
3
Unbelievable in the 21st century.
1
Bloomberg knows where the weaknesses of the system are and will exploit this knowledge to make a huge surge in March . How the DNC party leadership doesn't realize this is truly a mystery.
More blame for the "fiasco" should be laid on the Republicans who got the number from 4chan and called in repeatedly to jam the lines. Granted, we should be used to and prepping for Republican efforts to cheat, they still seem to have been the real villains here.
4
This article makes it clear that the Iowa caucus is a sham that is strictly for media consumption. Get rid of all the state primaries and have all states that want to have one conduct it on the same day. The present system distorts the individual candidates views and gives a distorted view of the party as a whole.
1
Just $60k spent for the app that they banked the entire caucus on? That is the real scandal. How many millions did the candidates spend on campaigning in Iowa? They cheaped out big time and they got what they paid for. Penny wise and pound foolish. Iowa should and probably will lose their coveted caucus over this.
2
TOM PEREZ: OUT!! What an outrageous and ridiculous show of foolishness. No one tested anything? Did it occur to anyone that the app might send to FaceBook or anywhere else depending on who and what phone was used, what apps where already on the phone, privacy settings, etc.? I am stunned and I will scream it again: TOM PEREZ: OUT!!! I will then ask the New York Times to NOT repeat your previous actions of belittling the Democrats daily up until election while posting Trump on your front page. The GOP dismantling of the administrative state is buzzing along with help from the media. PLEASE STOP IT.
1
Russia can learn a lot from Iowa, Vladimir, if you're listening.
1
The next time someone bemoans the "liberal" bias of the NYT, this article can provide the counter-evidence.
At this turning point in our history, we have to do better.
1
Fire Perez. He’s not your friend Democrats
Tom Perez should resign. A 100% complete abject failure.
It appears the DNC is doing everything it can to derail the Sanders Campaign, just they did in 2016. We have seen Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo and commentators on MSM denounce Sanders for being a ‘Socialist’, which he is not (Sanders has never called for the nationalization of Banks, large corporations); he has proposed plans for education, fairer taxation, affordable healthcare that appeal to increasing numbers of working people and students. As a life-long Democrat, I believe the ‘Epic Fiasco’ in Iowa was deliberately caused by the DNC to rig the primary to insure that Bernie Sanders was not the winner. This begs the obvious question, will any of the upcoming primaries be free of DNC manipulation. If the DNC want a pro-corporate, pro-war candidate, like Pete Buttigieg, why not just appoint their favorite candidate and not waste people’s time with meaningless votes. See- DNC Has Buttigieg Winner of Iowa Caucus Won by Sanders by Stephen Lendman Feb 7, 2020; Link: stephenlendman.org/2020/02/dnc-has-buttigieg-winner-of-iowa-caucus-won-by-sanders
1
To NYT and media in general—keep repeating it, calling it a fiasco, pretending to wring your hands in dismay and you will have given Trump a big media boost. For free. No, you have given it already. Thanks! Nothing better to write about. But it does boosts circulation?
Ridiculous!
I'll vote for Trump for sure.
1
Think this is going to change?
Ha! That's hilarious.
-C
Unbelievable and gross incompetence. As a Democrat this is shameful and inexcusable. IOWA should be put in the back of the link in 2024 and have a primary. No more preening for a year only to embarrass the entire party on election day. What a sickening disgrace. Let's hope this is the final nail in coffin; and fitting Robby Mook would be involved.
1
Democrats and ‘progressives’ blaming their incompetence on Republicans ‘clogging’ phone lines in priceless.
You know, as if the brilliant Lily Tomlin reprised her ‘Ernestine’ character at the switchboard to put calls through.
‘One ringy-dingy... two ringy-dingy...’
2
The DNC and for that matter Buttigeig cannot be separated from the creation of this fiasco for obvious reasons. Heck, they even gave entire districts won by Sanders to other nominal candidates before getting caught miscounting.
Overshadowing all discussions of Iowa’s place in the electoral process is the millions and millions of dollars spent there in the last year by candidates. It might be a stupid way to elect a candidate, but boy it sure makes Iowa media a lot of money every four years.
1
This should merely confirm to people that Ayn Rand was right. A few smart people can make up for a band of idiots. Seems like that former are lacking in this particular group.
1
I think your reporters might want to mention that apparently many of the "errors" in reporting were intentional. See https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/06/the-myth-of-incompetence-dnc-scandals-are-a-feature-not-a-bug/?fbclid=IwAR1qWntGCJjuNP1ANsqt2wgjavxQcwP0Rsc56_p560zl6GtPb8nYDUzLqiw
Thank you, Iowa, for tarnishing the electoral process even more effectively than a bunch of Russian bots ...
1
This is a problem with how we are hard wired. We like to put the hobnobbers, brown-nosers, big talkers into leadership when often there is nothing in behind the facade. Douglas Adams said those who desire leadership positions the most are least suited to do it.
3
OMG, We really need artificial intelligence soon. Human intelligence is not working,America!!!
If you think Iowa is bad this AM it was announced that the Likud party of Netanyahu leaked the personal info, cell phones, political leanings, + of all 6.5 million adults in Israel.
Imagine if this happened in the USA.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-vast-breach-likud-campaign-leaks-id-phones-addresses-of-all-israeli-adults/
1
@Simon Sez
In other words, "We're incompetent, but not quite as incompetent as some others."
3
"a world-famous model of democracy"?? More like an futile exercise in high school Psych 101. Iowa needs to end this stupidity once and for all.
1
The Keystone Cops at work!!!!
The Democrats have demonstrated once again their ineptness!
I can remember as far back as my first national election in 1980 that the Iowa Caucus, when explained (?!), evoked the thought that this thing is easily manipulated and, if I may, stupid in a 20th century election. I haven't seen one explanation for the Iowa Caucus since then that makes one bit of sense. The latest theatrical display of tragic error is yet another political culmination of stupidity in a political era filled brimming with tragic error and stupidity.
"Look, look. Look at this, a Greaaaat new App" ,says salesman breathlessly !
"Ya, like let's use it for the caucuses". "Oh ya ! Right," says ancient caucus Democrat. "Like, everybody has got to have an App. Isn't that what the kids say "? ...
Not understanding a thing, the fools but into it. Disaster ensues
The DNC threw Iowa under the bus... Got a call yesterday from the DNC asking for a donation...bet you can guess what I told them.
1
NYT “epic” throwing out lots of generalizing hyper vent adjectives - sounding like potus’ noise
Reminds me of my test experience at a defense contractor. When the engineers said "it should work" I would reply "If should work and does work were the same, we wouldn't need test people."
6
Epic fiasco, no. The problem is that there is no unified strategy among the candidates. Their ideas encompass a wide range of ideas and iniatives, with many, if not most of them being very costly. The Iowa result is a clear statement that Sanders and Biden do not have the ideas that they want. The Trump campaign has a razor sharp and clear vision for the message that will win the election.
1
The episode in Iowa has given me great confidence that the democrats know how to run a government controlled health care system.
6
@99percent A dumb reply. In my 20 years on Social Security and 17 years on Medicare I have experienced one very minor glich that was corrected immediately. Can't say that about many of my transaction with organizations in the "free enterprise" system.
1
@Jay BeeWis
99percent's reply is not dumb at all. You say that your SS experience has been flawless for 20 years. But social security started in 1935, so the government had 65 years to get it right before you started.
Meanwhile, the rollout of the ACA sign-up website was a dumpster fire. And now we see the Dems screwing up a simple app used to count caucus results for less than 170,000 people. Why would voters have any confidence that the government will be able to get right M4A for 300 million people, which is infinitely more complicated?
1
I'd like all Presidential primaries to be by rank voting and happen within a month of each other, starting with the biggest to smallest states in terms of population. The top vote-getter nationally would be the presidential candidate for that party.
I'd also like each presidential candidate to fill out a test and give their response/views on 150 questions, ranging from abortion to war and everything else in between (climate, taxation, social spending, defense spending, education and so on). The American people would then have the opportunity to take this same test and see what candidate most closely matches their views and would put a damper on what candidate was the most charming, patriotic, rich and telegenic, which has nothing to do with their policy positions.
I'd also like the election season to be less than 4 months long and get rid of the undemocratic electoral college but hey, I'm a dreamer ....
As for Iowa caucus, I'm ashamed for my adopted state messing up so badly. I also think they should get over themselves and agree they shouldn't be first to select a candidate because this white bread middle class state is full of small town and farmers (who have turned very conservative since I left in the mid 90s) does not represent the United States.
5
The Press has magnified a situation into a horrible situation. The Press wanted immediate reporting of results as each network is competing. In reality, we have known for years that the caucus is NOT the best way to get a count total for candidates. Because of all that has happened in Iowa, it has taught us several lessons. Paper ballots are a necessity. Tallying them on a non internet connected device will give an unofficial Total. Those totals can be transmitted on a SECURELY connected line. Hand counting can be done, if deemed necessary. WE DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE AN IMMEDIATE RESULT.
1
Read my lips (okay, Read my Post): No More Caucuses. The only reason Iowa is in trouble is Iowa insists on public "voting," where people show up and publicly announce their candidate in front of employers and clients and the like, and then solicit other people to support said candidate after a one-year multi-million-dollar campaign, only to also require said candidate to obtain at least 15% of attendee support, lest they be disqualified. It's a ridiculous process and Iowa deserves every bit of criticism because it designed an absurd process. That is criticism one -- that the system itself is a joke, where there is no secret ballot and no actual voting, despite candidates spending millions to turn out voters.
Criticism two: Who, actually, has 2-3 hours to vote on a Monday night in February? Rich people. Unemployed people. Older people. Those are the three groups who can caucus. The rest of us cannot caucus.
And criticism three: when you have a set time and day, you incentivize fraudsters.
3
This story is all about overconfidence and incompetence of the locals in the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP). The management of the IDP needs to be replaced with people who are competent.
The number of delegate votes to get the nomination at the Democratic Convention is 1991 (One Thousand Nine Hundred Ninety One).
The number of Democratic Convention delegates that Iowa gets to send amount to 41 (yeah, Forty One). That is about two percent of the number of delegates needed to win the nomination.
Even if one candidate got ALL of the delegates by error (which clearly is not the case), there would need to be a very seriously splintered convention, or a very tight primary race, for such an error to matter. More likely, someone is going to lock up the nomination before the convention, probably by a significant number of delegate votes.
This is a tempest in a teapot. The media have made a molehill into a mountain the size of Everest.
A more consequential question is why do two very unrepresentative states (Iowa and New Hampshire) get the chance to "bump off" candidates, rather than giving that "privilege" to states that are far more representative of the US population?
4
These are the people who want to control every aspect of your life.
Trump is going to win re-election in an epic landslide.
It is going to be HUGE!
3
Tom Perez needs to be shown the door, and clearly the Dem leadership in Iowa needs to be overhauled. It's 2020 and the Democratic Party is in it's biggest fight since the Civil Rights era and it's still a circus. A comic tragedy. Same old Dems. Can't get out of their own way.
5
And we are seriously considering giving health care over to the same Blue Team if they win the election? They can't get a voting App right, how are we going to trust them with 20% of the economy?
4
It was a problem because nobody in the modern neoliberal-run Democratic Party wants to do the hard work involved with campaigns and elections.
“ We have an app” has replaced “ get out the vote”.
1
I fail to understand how Iowa could have hired the state party’s chief financial officer, Melissa Watson. If she didn't know how to use a Google spreadsheet, she was clearly unqualified for her position.
This is reminiscent of Japan's 2018 choice of chief of cyber security - Yoshitaka Sakurada, a man who had never used a computer!
If we're going to win against Trump, we have to stop looking so incompetent. Iowa HAS to be better than this!
They could use an Election Division (which they don't seem to have) at the Iowa Information Security Division https://iso.iowa.gov/services but there ARE competent people in Iowa who could have helped the Democratic Party.
2
Honestly who cares about Iowa? Let’s get going with a large and diversely populated state like California. That would be meaningful. So please stop with these endless stories about what went wrong in the middle of nowhere.
1
California... are you kidding me...
1
I just read how Israel used an election app which exposed the private info of 6.5 million voters. So it would be really great if we stop harping on what happened in Iowa with an untested app. There are problems everywhere in this modern electronic world.
1
the democratic party is lost due to incompetent
leadership and candidates.
2
Once the real primary season begins this will be forgotten. Hopefully it will be the death knell for the caucus sustem.
1
At first I thought wow, the democrats have been hacked!
Then I realized it was inside job - party hacks!
That's what you get for giving the app contract to a group of party insiders who name their company SHADOW.
2
"When it was finally opened Tuesday morning, there were 700 unread emails waiting, with photos that had been sent sideways; volunteers had to crane their necks to decipher the handwritten forms."
Really? There wasn't one person who knew how to rotate a .jpeg?
Yes, the Dems are out of touch...
6
@No kids in NY
Remember: this is the party whose Chairman fell for a rudimentary phishing scam my grandmother would have seen through and whose email password was "password."
3
Hubris. That’s what this is. No wonder that T is reveling over this fiasco. It’s like watching a documentary about a star crossed military campaign. I want to wring my hands, rend my garment, bang my head against a wall, then run down the hall screaming. Get it together, people. Don’t you realize what’s at stake here??? I brace myself every morning when I launch the Times - what horrific new assault on all that’s good and holy has T initiated now? Rush Limbaugh with a presidential medal of freedom? Please, Dem leadership, don’t be incompetent boobs. We need you to concentrate and be on your best game! I refuse to succumb to despair but I feel impending doom. We need to get this creature out of office. Excellent article. Sorry for the rant. I’m just very upset.
2
The Democrats with their failed impeachment, free healthcare for illegal aliens and now incompetence in Iowa have demonstrated very clearly that they have no ability to lead.
3
Iowa, Delete Your Account.
Seriously.
1
This needed one technically savvy and conscious person to organize and run the whole data collecting operation. A single IT person - to overlook it all - who knows software and who would have been aware of each of the problems - before they occurred.
4
I read somewhere that Nevada is going to be even worse, as they are implementing new, possibly faulty digital programs that no one understands.
Informatio technology (IT) is hard. Ignoring the incompetence of the DNC and why we do a caucus in the first place, people are spoiled by their phones, Amazon, Facebook and other IT applications working smoothly. These commercial apps have huge budgets, thousands of workers available and entire infrastructure built. In Iowa, in addition to inadequate testing, workflow wasn't really considered or practiced.
It always amuses me to see people say that a slow or otherwise inadequate app makes them think it's all horrid, ex Obamacare. I usually counter by asking them how their cellphone works. Rarely does anyone know. (It's a mini computer with an antenna).
But everyone seems entitled to hand wringing and pronouncements of doom based off misplaced zeros and ones.
4
Perez and all others involved in the leadership and administration of this caucus need to step down and resign. So far there appears to be no accountability and no transparency. Conspiracies will (rightfully) abound in Iowa and spread to other states until the voting public is given iron-clad reassurances that the process is not rigged.
5
@Will
Likely the big wigs benefitted form a Trump presidency
There is certainly enough blame to go around but I am not ready to let Shadow, the app developer, off the hook. Perhaps not here but in other worthy publications such as WSJ (news) and Politico, Shadow's app has been described as "the app that brought Iowa to a standstill." The story of Shadow is the story of the Democrats' take on crony capitalism, with a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer founding Acronym, the mother organization. In a moment of unusual candor, they correctly named the for-profit company "Shadow," as in operating in the shadows. Well now the Iowa debacle has blown their cover, but surprise, surprise, they are not willing to own up to the full measure of their responsibility. This is the D.C. I know, personally, and this is the D.C. I have come to distrust. Establishment Democrats are long past due for cleaning up their act.
10
The press is focusing on this Iowa debacle as the latest shiny thing.
Fast forward to March 4th, just a few weeks from now. All of this will be forgotten -- there will be new shiny things to pontificate about.
1
There’s an even more urgency to elect a democratic leader..trumps budget proposal is a disaster! Our students are carrying an albatross of loan debt that will weigh them down their entire adult lives.
Trumps kids are trust fund kids so he will never never know the pain.
5
There is a perfect system: One person, one vote, tabulated on paper, with a pencil. The candidate with the most votes, wins.
5
I agree if all states do it on the same day.
The question is:
Can a party run a country when it is even not able to organize a caucus on a state level?
3
@Mr. Newman
The other question being "Should a party run a country when it nominates and willingly capitulates to the whims of a narcissistic, corrupt conman and supports him without question?"
3
You should be asking how Trump made it through the Republican selection process for the 2016 election.
That was a true upset which defies all pundit predictions.
I would venture it would dwarf the Dems current, small-scale debacle.
2
@eheck
That's not fair. I don't think Bernie is corrupt.
As an Iowa native residing in New York City, my take aways from this fiasco are twofold.
First, I can no long offer a straight faced defense of the caucus system nor Iowa's place in line. This isn't born of some misfeasance of Iowans. They are incredibly informed and knowledgeable people and take presidential politics very seriously. They have done a relatively good job of separating the chaff in previous elections and it is a shame their state party has failed them so miserably. The state should adopt a primary and the first in line status should be revoked and randomized.
Second, and more important is the astonishing contempt the Democrat Party at both the state and national levels has for the will of its membership.
They have provided ample evidence that they have no interest in the will of the people if that will is contrary to what the party wants. I don't know how else you cobble together a system where the candidate who wins the popular vote loses the state delegate equivalent total. Between this and the party's open hostility toward senators Warren and Sanders in this cycle, the same hostility we ironically saw after President Obama won Iowa, and the same hostility has gone back for as long as anyone remembers when the people like anybody who wasn't appointed heir apparent by the DNC. Its a disgrace.
I hope whomever wins this contest guts the DNC patronage factory and remakes the party in the image of the voters.
9
I’m surprised there isn’t more outrage at the 4chan trolls who jammed the hotline “for the lulz.” Even if they weren’t doing it to help get Trump re-elected, these trolls certainly sowed more chaos into an already vulnerable democratic (small-d) process.
This is yet another sign that we need to revisit Internet platforms’ blanket denial of responsibility for what their users post. Platforms are enablers, and what they’re enabling has real-world consequences.
5
Is anyone investigating Republican efforts to sabotage the caucus reporting by flooding the phone lines and hacking the app? The fact that many early returns went through smoothly indicates that intervening efforts may have had an effect. Let's not forget that Republicans have an affinity for dirty electoral tricks, from voter suppression to foreign interference.
8
If only the Democrats had some way, some method to count only the popular vote...oh, right, primaries. Sanders wants the popular vote--but in caucuses. You can't have both.
3
Too negative. The race in Iowa was very competitive with candidates with a variety of backgrounds. I loved the race as it was exciting. Apps aside, a great contest for Democrats.
I wish the Times would realize their negative opinions undercut the Democrats chances of beating Trump.
2
So there were problems in Iowa? So what?
If you go with a cat-hearding format, what do you expect?
And why make such a big deal out of it? It's so early in the elections that in the great scheme of things, this is a hiccup.
But it does provide an excuse for people who may not wish democrats well to post an unflattering story to try to sap confidence.
Do yourself a favor and tune out noise like this.
1
There is a flaw in the American character. Given that our colonial environment was necessarily a widely dispersed frontier, self sufficiency was critical to survival.
After a century of “just make do” individual problem solving, a profound distrust developed of any expert who worshiped theory over practice and reason over results. In 2020 Iowa, an entire election process failed for lack of experienced experts.
Non experts in Nevada recommended to Iowa, another frontier state, an untested computer app lacking any track record of reliability. The state Democratic party’s caucus built on unschooled volunteers was left to its own devices unsupervised by state or federal governments or even the national Democratic party.
What this fiasco proved once again is that an American election was once again left to party amateurs who themselves were tainted by a history of previous failures. Two decades on, it is Miami-Dade county all over again.
The take away clearly is this. The process and reliable result of any election are too important to be left to the unsupervised and unskilled offices of local amateur volunteers.
2
Shadow's CEO only lists the following formal education on Linkedin: "St Thomas Aquinas College, BA, History"
Why doesn't the media wonder if a degree in computer science or engineering may have helped produce a more reliable app?
5
What a fiasco the Iowa caucuses have turned into! Time for the DNC to pick another state to start the formal contest for the nomination. Kudos to the Times for an excellent analysis of what went wrong in Iowa.
Kind of about Iowa, the stress & chaos:
Is it just me or does Bernie look poorly again?
I hope he has a doctor on board, checking him regularly, daily, he looks to me like he did before the heart attack - unwell.
1
I think younger voters continue to support him because they have no experience with aging and the toll it takes on a person and his health. Those of us over 50 know how serious his health issues are.
1
This piece is replete with words like "epic," "fiasco," and "catastrophe"-- and thus is almost unreadable. Settle down NYT and help the country focus on the next primaries.
Let's identify problems and move on. Most obviously, the decision to turn any element of our elections to tech "experts" was and is fool hardy. Our elections need to be as low tech and paper based as is possible. Beyond that Iowa is survivable-- in fact, in the general election it won't matter at all how and if they vote for democrats. As far as our overall prospects, action is of course required. Move one is to fire Tom Perez. Move two is to beg Howard Dean to come back, and work not only at the presidential level (which we know from Obama's second term, winning that can be a big fat nothing) and help get dems elected to the senate, and retain the house. After Super Tuesday, the third move is to compile a group of influential democrats (starting with Michelle and Barack) to split up this country and kill the democrats and swing voters with persuasion to vote for dems. I am talking non-stop rallies in all 50 states, with registration of new voters a focus. Fourth-- don't be afraid to use the word fascism, as that's what we need to defeat.
1
Think of all the money and time spent in Iowa and to what end, it is still not clear what the actual results are--simply ridiculous. That money could have been spent in other states that have better recording and reporting methods.
3
I don't believe in "conspiracy theories" at all. But the second half of this sentence from the article seems really, really, really weird:
".....The chief executive of Shadow, Gerard Niemira, was a veteran of the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, where he oversaw tech products like an app the campaign used to take advantage of the quirky math of caucuses and track results in real time...."
Wait. What? In 2016 AND again in 2020, Sanders won the popular vote in Iowa against a candidate favored by the DNC, but lost in the delegate tally by a microscopic margin of less than half of 1%. (4 delegates in 2016, only 2 this time, in both cases out of more than a thousand.)
Okay, so that's incredibly strangely coincidental. Now let's look at that app that Shadow CEO Niemira "oversaw" in 2016 (prior to overseeing this terrible app now in 2020): what on earth does that really mean, an app that "took advantage of quirky caucus math" WHILE "tracking votes in real time"?!
Tracking in real time means somebody's using that app at a precinct (presumably many or all) DURING the caucus, in order to track the votes, but then, WHAT are they doing to "take advantage of quirky caucus math" using that app..... Is any candidate supposed to be able to take advantage of quirky caucus math?
WHAT is going on?
7
You have drowned the real news in details. Here it is in all of its glory, brief, detailed, concise and revealing a tale of implications that go far beyond Iowa. For anyone interested in our politics, this is an absolute must read: http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=MYCrrddo9IR4zShIAgfPlkdjlQwdiuGZ
1
Wait! Not a single word about the sabotage by the GOP? None of this problem with software would have meant anything if the Republicans had not flooded the phone lines to the DNC HQ, making it impossible to call in results.
But not a single word about that concerted effort at election sabotage by the Republicans, New York Times? Not a single word?
Talk about not burying, but covering up the lede!
3
Democrats place incompetent people in low level positions.
Republicans give them cabinet positions.
1
Rotate the primary schedule. If you were first this time, next time you're last.
Maybe some Trump "dirty tricks"? I would not be surprised.
It would be nice to know why the Buttigieg campaign allegedly gave $42,000 to the company that produced the app.
2
Here's a way to make caucuses better: Make people show up in the morning and keep them there into the afternoon, but make it simpler so the results are clear and the administration is easy -- by having them go into a booth and vote with a paper ballot for the candidate of their choice. That's all they would have to do, all day. Or, hey!!! As an alternative, do the same thing, but *don't* make people stay all day. Like -- a primary!!!
@Joe
Oh yes, by all means. Let's require people to spend all day there, so it is even harder for them to participate. It'll end up being like jury duty, where the only people who can participate are postal workers, the unemployed, and retirees.
The insanity of having a solid Red Republican state with a 90% white population conduct the first vote after a painfully and obnoxiously long and expensive campaign is indicative of the incompetence of the DNC, its chair and membership.
The sole purpose of a political party is to win elections. The diversity of a South Carolina or an Illinois or even Florida would make a lot more sense. Now it's on to NH another 95% white population state.
3
The first question is 'why does a state with a smaller population than Los Angeles get the first chance at defining the leading candidates?' The second question is 'why does anyone tolerate caucuses as an undemocratic alternative to allowing people to vote?' In the end, about five percent of Iowa's population (176K) awarded the share of delegates assigned to a state of just over 3.1 million people. The better questions are 'why can't everyone vote on the same night, and why does there have to be a political convention?' The framing of this country around geography is incredibly destructive to any hope for the survival of democracy. Conventions and superdelegates are just instruments of oppression.
86
@MarkMB,
States, to a large extent, can decide when and how they conduct their elections so consolidating all the primaries and caucuses into one day would either require the voluntary participation of states (e.g. interstate compact) or a constitutional amendment.
2
@MarkMB Instruments of oppression! Superdelegate votes have never decided the outcome and we haven't had a contested convention since, jeez I don't even know. The fifties? The seventies? 1960 was maybe gonna be contested then JFK & LBJ made a deal.
As for "why can't everyone vote on the same night",
I assume you're touting a national primary. Well I'm against the idea. In countries with parliamentary systems the party out of power has a clear leader at all times. They pick said leader at their leisure, not as part of an election cycle. But right now we Dems are picking our leader. I don't want a rush job. I want us to take our time and get it right.
Yeah, it's frustrating. We want to battle Trump. Bu first we need to pick our leader. It will happen, we'll have a nominee to rally around. Haste makes waste.
2
@MarkMB actually I am quite ok with Iowa going first because the US is a federation of states and Presidential candidates ought to understand and care what rural farming communities think and not just what large cities like NY or LA where their donor base reside think or care about
6
Caucus? To elect people? Stupid! Next you’ll be telling me that you still use feet, pounds and miles to measure...
9
@Special K
Whether one uses English measure (somewhat modified here in the "colonies") or metric measure does not actually change the ACCURACY of a measurement.
But caucuses are per se undemocratic for obvious reasons, such as the necessity to show up in person, or you are disenfranchised. Clearly, they are also not votes by secret ballot.
1
@Joe From Boston
Actually, the conversion between metric and imperial measurements does pose huge problems. It definitely does change the accuracy of the measurement.
The metric system is more accurate, and that's why 99% of the world uses it.
This stubbornness has real life consequences.
From 1999:
//NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.
The units mismatch prevented navigation information from transferring between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team in at Lockheed Martin in Denver and the flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.//
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
An American disease: proclaim to the world your greatness, repeat claim over and over, believe said claim without much evidence, fail to take care of the details because, well, that's for losers not the great ones, cover up when the rickety machine appears about to fail, deny failure when it happens and then do nothing hoping it will all blow over. That's what got you the financial crisis a few years back, that's what got you Boeing, that's what got you your health care mess, that's what got you a crumbling infrastructure, that's what got you the Iowa caucuses and that's what got you Trump.
Hey, neighbours, it's time to stop believing the myth making machines, develop a little humility, roll up your sleeves and get to work and fix things before it all collapses around you. You should add electoral reform to the top of the list of priorities, ahead of health care, gun control and a fix of the income disparities. Electoral reform would make achieving the others more likely.
Now get to work; we're counting on you!
10
Clearly the Caucus system needs to be abolished, along with the Electoral College. As an Election Judge in Cook County IL I was stupefied by their handwritten notes and tally sheets. Our system has paper ballots as well as an electronic record. The voting equipment comes locked with multiple numbered seals which need to be logged and signed for by two judges, one from each party. At the end of the voting day the whole process reverses. There may still be problems but noting on the scale of what happened in Iowa last week. I hope the other states hold more secure primaries.
4
As an outsider country wise, the whole nomination process strikes me as highly odd. One thing is the utterly strange and undemocratic caucuses (secret votes are hallmarks of democracy as is the equal opportunity to actually cast a vote), but the most odd thing is the sequential nature of the nomination process.
All this does is indeed create "momentum" for early winners in states whose electorates will never be fully representative (no matter state). This will inevitably bias voters in late-voting states. This is a conflation of individual choice and result-based campaigning that only serves to make individual votes across the country being cast from widely different information sets. Moreover, the earlier you vote, the less likely it is that the information is reliable as an indicator for the preferences of the nations' voters. To the extent you are affected by earlier results, you voting decision will be distorted.
It therefore escapes me why the votes are not cast at the same day in all states. Matters are about selecting a nationwide nominee. This should be decided on one day, so every voter has the same information. I acknowledge that traditions are strong, but one should seek to mow out bad ones.
16
Caucuses are nothing but calamities waiting to happen. Their rules and regulations unnecessarily replace the simple act of voting with a Rube Goldberg quagmire, and for what reasons? I've heard something like it's supposed to be encouraging civic participation, but that's just nonsense. Voting should be simple, easy, and straightforward.
With our highly vulnerable and disparate systems across all the states, technical support via electronic tabulation should also be 100% supported by some type of paper trail that is routinely used to randomly audit vote counts to make sure that external tampering by hostile forces is not happening.
7
starting in a place with as small a minority population as Iowa should be embarrassing enough for the Democratic Party even without accounting for the data-reporting fiasco.
The Iowans themselves may be commended for the personal contact they are able to elicit and the questioning they do of candidates can be fine and laudable, but it can't make up for the fact that they are whiter, older, more religious, more rural, etc. than basically the rest of the country. I'm not advocating that my state start either (Minnesota isn't much different, though at least the Twin Cities provide an urban area of sorts) but there must be a small personally-campaignable state that comes at least a little closer to representing more of the country than IA/NH
3
Great reporting on the errors but you ignore the obvious motivation behind them: to stop Bernie Sanders. Well, the establishment may have won that battle, but they lost that war.
11
@Michael
The DNC with their Wall Street donors will never give Sanders a fair chance. Sanders should run as an independent candidate for presidency. Let the Dems hold their rigged primaries and caucuses.
1
by the time the election rolls around in nov. the Iowa caucus will be forgotten and mean nothing to anyone who takes the election seriously.
1
Using a Google spreadsheet? Bad choice, this is likely to be feeding data directly to the data harvesting behemoth.
6
My thought exactly.
@bpedit
And the risk of handing them data that is going to be public imminently *anyway* is... ?
This kind of bureaucratic incompetence hurts the democrats more than trump's diatribes against them. It presents a clear message to the DNC to get the divided house in order if that is even possible given their own divisiveness across their candidate spectrum. This is a recipe for disaster against the 2020 election against carnyman. I'm very afraid that without a charismatic candidate and in the absence of focused DNC leadership the election will be forfeit again.........
4
If there's a villain here, it's those from 4chan, who deliberately clogged the phone lines. They work in the service of Donald Trump. The others involved, ill-trained, showed incompetence, ignorance; mistakes were not deliberate. Their training and preparation for their job being inadequate, their leadership betrayed them. Mr. Perez, blaming and pointing a finger raises the temperature of the affair without any indication that he understands what problems occurred or that he's a suitable leader to help in its resolution. I have long read the Des Moines Register online and find stout resistance in Iowa to giving up caucuses, even to giving up Iowa's being first to vote. State and national Democratic leaders need to look squarely at the challenge they face and do what's most credible in selecting delegates to their Party's convention.
8
People familiar with the successful packing of the Washington Republican caucus in the 1980s see another kind of problem beyond the bugs of new software.
Dear TIMES, please remind readers of that history.
3
According to print edition, "The CEO of Shadow, Gerard Niemira, was a veteran of the Hillary Clinton campaign, where he oversaw tech products such as an app the campaign used to take advantage of the quirky math of caucuses and track results in real time."
Anyone associated with that incompetent campaign, managed by a child, Robby Mook, should be banned from participating in the current campaign. Bill Clinton had warned them to pay attention to the Midwest states that flipped, but in their arrogance, they failed to heed his advice.They are all guilty of political malpractice.
The only smart democrats are James Carville, Paul Begala, and Obama's team. Sadly, they are sitting on the sidelines. Though Schiff was magnificent, the impeachment was a futile waste of time and only served to increase Trump's chances at reelection. They should have simply continued investigations and let the subpoenas play out in court.
4
"Others, desperate to verify results, began telling some precinct leaders to email photographs of their worksheets — the paper forms used to tally results — to a dedicated email address. But for hours, no one monitored the inbox. When it was finally opened Tuesday morning, there were 700 unread emails waiting, with photos that had been sent sideways; volunteers had to crane their necks to decipher the handwritten forms."
So open the photos in an app that can rotate them. Preview and Adobe Acrobat are examples.
4
"Melissa Watson, the state party’s chief financial officer, who was in charge of the boiler room, did not know how to operate a Google spreadsheet application used to input data, Democratic officials later acknowledged."
"Troy Price is an American political strategist and LGBT rights advocate who has served as the Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party since his election in July 2017."
Looks like this is the new 'face' of the Democratic party.
7
ok, so they are bad managers and have no clue about processes and quality control. but they are not venal, and do not propose to blow up the planet. let's keep it in perspective.
3
Hopefully this is the end of Iowa's first state status. The process is ridiculous and the idea they get to be the first state to vote forever is obscene.
Pick the states out of a hat next time to determine voting order. Have five states go in a given primary night and have the process done in less than three months. Make the process quick and give the nominee time to build nationwide in time for the general.
1
An argument for retaining lo-tech land lines? I do.
If the Democrats are the party of the popular vote why are they still using a delegate system.
7
The only epic fiasco is the continued magnified scrutiny by the media. It's over and done. Move on.
1
We are at a point where the only question left is which Democrat will lose to President Trump.
The headline on the WSJ editorial stated it very succinctly—James Madison 1, Nancy Pelosi 0.
The irony of what the Democrats did is they helped reelect President Trump.
Vote for America--Vote Republican.
2
“The state party’s chief financial officer, who was in charge of the boiler room, did not know how to operate a Google spreadsheet application used to input data,” according to this report. At first, I thought perhaps she was unfamiliar with spreadsheets, then re-read the sentence. The “chief financial officer” could not use Google Sheets! If this report is correct, how can the Democrats hope to hold Putin’s electro-trolling minions at bay? How can they respond to the inevitable electronic onslaught of the GOP, even without the techno-Russian boost?
I despair for my party.
[Four Dots Blog]
4
@David Potenziani God only knows how they did the sheet app. Maybe we can find it and take a look for ourselves....
@David Potenziani
"If this report is correct" are the operative words.
Wondering how the NYT missed, or failed to report a very significant fact: Pete Buttigieg is an investor in the Shadow Inc app, and a member of his campaign has just been appointed Director of Voter Protection in the Nevada Democratic Party, who was also scheduled to use the Shadow app.
Sanders was the clear winner and the manipulation of the reporting cannot be an accident. The DNC is once again rigging the primary process by hook and by crook.
All this kerfluffle makes the case for a Sanders nomination. Sanders will restore trust in our government and prioritize people over the big-money interests controlling every aspect of our lives. If nothing else, Sanders will beat Trump and he is our only hope of saving what planet we have left and leave a world that is habitable for future generations.
Money won’t buy clean air and water and crops to grow food. For the sake of all that we love please elect Bernard Sanders as our next president. Our lives depend on it.
6
I attended an Iowa caucus and was staggered to learn the following: EVERYONE gets to see who you vote for! And a powerful college professor proclaimed, glaring at all of us, that 'this caucus is voting for Hilary Clinton'. And of course it did (intimidated students changed their votes.) I literally could not believe my senses. What a rotten system. End it!
7
It's hard enough to chose candidates without having to learn about what app's they are using and why the voting didn't actually refect voters' choices!
The Democratic Party is a shambles. The Dem's need new leadership - younger leadership - at all levels of the party - local, state, and, most of all, federal.
Tom Perez, a Clinton man, currently chairs the Democratic Campaign Committee. He must go. Instead, hire a younger, smarter, man to manage the campaign - someone like Pete Buttigieg whos hould be running for party chair instead of president. Oh, Pete did that and lost to Tom. That tells you how out of touch the Democratic Party is with the young new voters the Dem's need to reach to beat the Republicans!
2
Why caucus? just vote! -- it is really that simple.
Even if you have 1st ,2nd, 3rd choice ballot.
The bigger problem is this --A Socialist or Left of center candidate won't beat Trump.
Bloomberg starting to look better and get some traction..most people don't care if he is a billionaire-- if he made his fortune legitimately-- and he has good ideas.
5
these people want to run the country?
1
these people want to run the country?
Let me get this straight: DNC technology has been entrusted to someone named Atwater?
I hope the rats are getting tested for STDs.
None of this matter's to Bloomberg. Who may just be the party's sole hope in beating Trump.
This way of choosing the eventual nominee, is outdated and ridiculous.
1
these people want to run the country?
1
Stop blaming Iowa. Blame the corrupt DNC and definitely blame the blatant corruption and cheating by Mayor Cheat.
3
I wouldn't expect anything different from the New York Times. This is not the full story. What is the full story is the fact that the Democratic National Committee used the opportunity of chaos which was created by an app that is aligned with Pete buttigieg his campaign and very much against Bernie Sanders. They use this chaos to constantly under report Sanders totals and you constantly Pete buttigieg has totals. This was done deliberately and it by the DNC and others to unfairly impact the election. yes Iowa was rigged and I wish the New York Times would do a much better job and stating the truth
4
Democracies are by their very nature messy but Democratic parties cannot afford to be, particularly when the stakes are so high. In 2016 the DNC was sufficiently involved at all levels to ensure that whatever it took, HRC had the edge over Sanders. Respect for royalty was enforced, leading to the Trump debacle. In 2020 the DNC is playing a different game as no-hopers ( in terms of beating Trump) vie for the candidacy and party apparatchiks stand back in the name of empowering state and local organizations. It is ironic that so many Democrats decry "Corporate America" while the GOP applies effective business processes to ensure alignment, focus and message consistency. Fear of the Family Don may be a key factor this time around but even without it, those who are familiar with what it takes to run an effective organization with key deliverables (typically a public company) have much to teach those who favor the chaos and pettiness so rampant in government, academia, not for profits and other entities with a more "democratic" ethos.
The optics are extremely bad here. The Des Moines register reported that 191 Sanders' votes in the first alignment in Des Moines' 55th precinct were reallocated to Deval Patrick and that 218 Sanders votes in the second alignment were reallocated to Patrick. Patrick actually got 0 votes. According to reporting by Democracy Now!, the same thing happened in Blackhawk County, in which more than 300 Sanders' votes were reallocated to Patrick. The CEO for ACRONYM, whose contractor developed the faulty app, is married to a top staffer on the Buttigieg campaign. For some reason, the votes in rural and suburban counties where Buttigieg was running ahead were reported before Sanders' votes in the cities (Des Moines and elsewhere), despite the cities' votes having been called in first This was reported by precinct captains. Buttigieg declared victory with just 62% of the votes being counted, again, with the votes in counties where he was running ahead being reported first. The msm and establishment Democrats can be labeling those who are troubled by this "conspiracy theorists" all they want, but should instead be sufficiently concerned about the integrity of the process to correct this fiasco and make every effort to ensure it doesn't happen again. People need to have confidence in the process, as democracy depends on it.
156
@N
"People need to have confidence in the process, as democracy depends on it."
But people do NOT have confidence - it's worse than Russians!
7
@N You only know the facts about votes being mis-allocated because the information was made public by the Iowa Democratic party.
Are you really worked up over which counties' results were released first?
Buttigieg took a chance and made a somewhat premature victory claim. He could have ended up with a lot of egg on his face but in fact he's either in first or a whisker behind. So his gamble worked.
Are you claiming that Buttigieg conspired to get a faulty app used? Good Lord! No, you're gonna say you didn't imply that. OK, what are you implying by talking about who's married to who?
Of course it was a mess. Definitely needs to not happen again.
But I'm afraid you do sound like a conspiratologist, especially the vague concern about a marriage.
9
Here's an expansion of that accurate info:
Last year, Acronym launched Shadow, a new tech company to build smarter infrastructure for campaigns. Tara McGowan is Acronym’s thirty-four-year-old founder and C.E.O. In 2012, McGowan worked for Barack Obama’s reëlection campaign, producing digital content; in 2016, she was the digital director of Priorities U.S.A., a super PAC affiliated with Hillary Clinton.
In July, Shadow was paid some forty-two thousand dollars by the Buttigieg campaign—a campaign that also employs Greta Carnes, one of McGowan’s former employees, and Michael Halle, McGowan’s husband.
The complication continues as you drill down. Maybe it's time we all just admit the cherry is permanently popped and start expecting nothing higher.
15
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. The advantage of caucuses is that people need to make more effort. So they are a good indicator which candidates can make people enthusiastic.
There was something wrong with the organization. But the problem behind that was that things were just too complex. Things should be simplified - for example by just asking the caucuses to send in the number of votes for each candidate.
1
"Those errors occurred at every stage of the tabulation process: in recording votes, in calculating and awarding delegates, and in entering the data into the state party’s database. Hundreds of state delegate equivalents, the metric the party uses to determine delegates for the national convention, were at stake in these precincts."
How about some info about how these "delegate equivalents" are calculated? And why don't they just count the actual votes?
4
@Betaneptune
They don't "just count the actual votes" because they're not actually votes, and they're not particularly representative since it's easier for some segments of the electorate to participate than others.
Hence, each precinct gets 'delegate equivalents' based on how many votes there were for the Democrat last presidential election, to be allocatec based on the formula. This prevents things like assigning excessive weight to areas with unemployed students who don't actually have other thigns to do at that time.
@LW - thanks! Sounds like it’s time to change to regular voting, among other reasons.
People seem to think there’s one perfect voting system. Or there’s only one correct way to pick a nominee. It turns out that if you know who you want to win at the outset, you can probably devise a process favoring that result.
Caucuses favored Bernie in the 2016 cycle, so his folks will probably resist changes to the caucus system. Those who dislike Bernie may want them gone yesterday.
Believing Bernie probably had the largest initial pluralities in a multimember caucus field, his campaign pushed for reporting of the initial alignment totals. (This was part of the added complexity this year in Iowa.) But this ignores people’s second or third choices when their initial choice is below the viability level. And people were also supposed to be locked into their first choices, which seems to go against the whole caucus ethos. Not surprisingly, some ‘committed’ folks changed their minds before the evening was over.
Caucuses in small states, even if done perfectly, produce one type of result. Voting in large states or multiple states places different demands on candidates that depend on demographics and the cost of media. Regardless of how the nomination process is revised, there will be ample room for complaints by disfavored candidates, interests, or groups.
My only preference is for a system that picks the best general election candidate who can go on to govern effectively for two terms. It also requires a related emphasis on down ballot candidates in every election cycle.
2
As old fashioned as it may sound, the debacle with Shadow in Iowa proves, if nothing else, it may be time to opt out of digital methods and go back to the by-hand method. Digital recording affords too many ways to fudge the system. It may take longer to count but that's small potatoes in the larger scheme of things.
15
A requirement for a functioning democracy is that the people in charge have to want one. This clearly isn’t the case in this country. Instead of democracy, we have democracy theater.
And we wonder why we have Trump and McConnell.
15
As the person who reported the results from our precinct all I can say is how hurt I am just by this headline. All we were doing was electing delegates to our county conventions and this process has been totally misrepresented and perhaps misunderstood by the media. I am positive that we allocated the four delegates allotted to our precinct correctly. This was probably true statewide.
6
It sounds like the errors were from the top down, starting with the national DNC’s insistence that an untested, Clintonista-designed app be used.
5
@Jane
Your impressions and feelings do not trump hard evidence, such as numbers being reported that are *literally inconsistent with the rules* (such as viable candidates *losing* support in a precinct between the first and the realignment round, which is *impossible* if the rules are properly followed and the actual results reported accurately -- only first-round supporters of non-viable candidates were allowed to change their minds under the system).
1
The caucuses should end. Ditto Iowa’s “first in the nation” status in the primaries. Democrats have enough trouble fielding a nominee without having to cope with this vanity-stoking, exclusionary, antediluvian electoral processes.
8
(1) MR. Perez means well, but he is not exercising leadership. He needs to be replaced with a much stronger executive; (2) I think we all need to disavow ourselves of the idea that the Democratic Party is the party of “smart” people. We are being outsmarted at every step. And now, left to perform on our own, this is the result? First some humility, folks, which would go a long way, and then we call in the dogs of war. The Dems got ‘em but they’re leashed while we keep arguing that we’re virtuous. How’s that workin’ for us?
11
In the case of Iowa outsmarted by themselves. This screwup was the Democrats work from start to finish. The ACA implementation was done equally as well.
3
Caucuses do not allow for a secret ballot clearly because voters are required to waste a lot of time standing around the gym behind their favorite candidate's table. It is a bad undemocratic system that should be abolished.
8
The mere fact that the IDP's chief financial officer doesn't understand how to use a spreadsheet in Google says all you need to know about the IDP and it's leadership.
Even if you've never used a Google spreadsheet before, it's virtually the same as Excel, and what kind of finance person doesn't know how to use a spreadsheet?!
15
@Mike
Yep. That's what causes me to question the accuracy of the claim.
Some here are casting aspersions on the media. Yet, it was Iowa officials who chose to meet an arbitrary self-imposed deadline of releasing results by 5pm the next day — and it was THEY who put out PARTIAL results, with only 62% of the precincts included.
You can't blame the media for reporting what is news.
On the other hand, you can blame the media for emphasizing the “results” rather than their limited nature; parroting Mayor Pete's unfounded, premature victory claims; and publishing big headlines rather than more muted, nuanced coverage with major caveats.
4
Well considering the media depends on sensationalism to maintain its limited readership and viewership they had no choice but to do it. In another 10 years they will all be irrelevant.
Who cares? It's over, they counted the votes, they reached a conclusion: there are two candidates who did better than the others. Campaigns can request a recanvass if they want one. Everyone has moved on to a new primary. Just because Iowa didn't feed the corporate media shark immediately on Monday night, this has to have been a disaster? The caucuses have always been messy and data-loose because they are susceptible to human error 1500+fold. No news there. Throw in new technology and you're always asking for trouble -- but in the end it got sorted out. None of this is a surprise or a scandal.
1
The IDP and DNC had four years to prepare for the Iowa caucuses so there is no excuse for this fiasco. Troy Price and Tom Perez are ultimately responsible and should be fired for cause.
Tara McGowan, CEO of Acronym, should be banned from providing services for any primaries and caucuses due to the conflict of interest created by her husband’s position with the Buttigieg campaign. This relationship speaks of corruption.
Finally, the Iowa “results” simply cannot be trusted. Sanders can and should request a recanvass of any and all suspect precincts. This episode has turned me off to the Buttigieg camp. It indicates to me that they will do anything to win, including cheating.
5
The systems were supposed to be smart, with secure codes. Sadly, the people were not as smart. Can we go back to paper and budget phones?
Damage to the credibility of the Democratic party was incalculable. Can you blame voters for being disheartened?
Putin could not have done a better job.
8
This is unhelpful.
"Epic Fiasco" is a wonderful attention-grabber, not unlike "Total Disaster!" or "Sad!".
There are three important issues here.
1) The entire American election system, including caucuses, primaries, corporate money, gerrymandering, and of the course the college, are killing any chance for democracy to thrive.
2) That things went terribly in Iowa is trivial compared to point #1 above. I think we get it. Let's see if we can walk and chew gum.
3) Enough with the breathless nonsense re dem candidates being at tension with each other. THEY SHOULD BE. Divisiveness is not an indicator of dysfunction, it is a fact of having different policies, and as we can see, there is a wide range of policy prescriptions between candidates.
Could we please get back to business here?
6
@Clayton the USA is not democracy
1
This debacle shows how the Democrats would run this country if they won.
4
@Rich What is Trump’s excuse?
1
No, but it does show why everyone involved with the Hillary campaign needs to be removed, root and branch, from everything in this election cycle. Everything these people touch, they ruin.
3
The Iowa caucus was a minor hiccup. An 'epic fiasco' is what would happen to the U.S. economy if the Democrats ever again - ever - take simultaneous control of the White House and both Houses of Congress.
5
"In the aftermath of the disaster, state and national party leaders are pointing fingers at one another. "
Not the way to win in 2020.
1
At a time when Democrats should be addressing republican trump mess they are stumbling all over themselves and attacking each other.
The country is lost.
1
This should come as no shock to anyone who has watched either parties national convention with it's participants dressed up and acting like acting like they are at a fraternity keg party.
And what's the delusion with Iowa and it's milk white population claiming to be the harbinger of the nation?
I shouldn't speak for anyone else but I get a sense that most folks with more critical thinking skills than zeal for pageantry would an end to these clown car shows.
1
Is bickering over a few votes in Iowa truly an epic fiasco?
The Hindenburg was an epic fiasco. The Boston Molasses Flood was an epic fiasco. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was an epic fiasco.
Whoever came up with the notion the Iowa caucuses were an epic fiasco might want to adjust his or her sense of proportion.
4
@JPHEdmonds I would consider the Hindenburg and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire horrible tragedies, not fiascos.
A fiasco is usually something carefully planned that goes terribly wrong in an embarrassing or comical way. What comes to mind is something on the order of Iowa, or Trump’s reception for the championship basketball team a few years ago where he served cold, greasy fast food.
1
"photos that had been sent sideways; volunteers had to crane their necks to decipher the handwritten forms." Says a lot that volunteers and/or those supervising did not know how to rotate an electronically submitted photo. The GOP has highly sophisticated technology expertise and tools. The Dems can and must do better! After all, most of the tech talent in this country leans strongly toward the Dems.
8
Technology doesn't matter. Brainwashing does. I mean, they've got you using their branding statement.
Real talk: What would it take for you, LS, to quit referring to the Republicans as "Grand Old Party"?
I am really sick of all of these negative headlines about the Dem race while Trump continues to roll back protections for people and the world - and we don't hear about that - or about him setting up a back channel to funnel Rudy's dirt from the Ukraine into the DoJ. What is wrong with the MSM? Those of us who will vote in the D primaries have pretty much made up our minds and this junk won't change it - I am sure the party is cleaning up their act for the next rounds. But in the meantime Trump is getting a free ride because the RNC would not allow any primaries in important states and there is no one reporting on the now one single R who is running against him. Shame on you all. This is what helped him win last time - painting the D's as hapless and dysfunctional. Here's what's messed up - our Senate and our campaign funding models.
4
"Melissa Watson, the state party’s chief financial officer...did not know how to operate a Google spreadsheet application used to input data" -- Someone in Finance who doesn't know how to use spreadsheets?! WHAT ?! That's a serious problem.
6
On the first 2 items mentioned: 1. having to get password input from a cell phone. I don't have internet on my smart phone--too expensive--so i'm out of luck when a new password or verification is sent by cell phone rather than email--some banks offer only one choice. 2. Google shared Docs did not work on my computer, a pc.--there is probably a trick to setting it up.
On the Democrats: They are computer idiots. They don't know what they're doing. Cases in point: Hillary didn't trust changing over her email system as Sect'y of State; The DNC was warned about the hacking but had no one to take the information seriously when the FBI informed them; Spending hundreds of millions on a failed system--they didn't know how to let the contract--they had to be saved by Google to roll out sign-up for the ACA. They are political hacks at headquarters, know nothing about computers, and were more interested in sabotaging Sanders in the last election. Evidently nothing has changed.
The Republicans, on the other hand, with Russian help are experts at using computers to target voters on what they consider to be their most volatile emotional issues--never mind facts, one of them being that social security and food stamps, both supplied by the Democrats, are the only thing to keep some heavily Republican areas going. Plus Medicaid.
We still need to know the campaign data Manafort--a Trump surrogate--turned over to the Russians, and how they used it with their fb data. Knowable.
2
Even when it works right, it's a stupid system. My precinct in Delaware, a caucus state in 1992, had a clear plurality for Jerry Brown, but since we were allotted 3 state delegates, they were awarded evenly, one each to Brown, Clinton, and Tsongas. If Democrats want to uphold the ideal of every vote counting, caucuses need to end.
5
"Melissa Watson, the state party’s chief financial officer, who was in charge of the boiler room, did not know how to operate a Google spreadsheet application used to input data, Democratic officials later acknowledged."
Tossed off with nice neutral understatement as expected from NYT.
Yes, Tom Perez should be fired. The DNC should be headed by a nasty piece of work who is scary effective and that no one likes. If ever there was a crisis that shouldn't go to waste, this is it. They should put Rahm Emanuel to work pronto.
Failing that. Andrew Cuomo is looking mighty bored in Albany bullying small-bore politicos. He'd be my 2nd choice to knock heads together on this mess.
1
It's clear from the way members act, and how they treated the last Presidential Primary, that the DNC is corrupt and couldn't care less about us as voters.
Their condescension makes me want to choke Tom Perez until he admits what I noted above is indeed the truth.
2
“.... but this was an extremely smooth, well-organized caucus. We just couldn’t get the data reported.”
Seriously?? As Vince Lombardi said: “If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?”
I find it amazing a Democratic official made that comment. What an epic fail.
7
This is a horribly-researched and written article. Trump may as well have written it with a Sharpie, for all the missing facts, anecdotal hearsay presented as comprehensive truth, and unsubstantiated conclusions, which it offers.
Many organizational aspects of these caucuses were better than had ever been executed, according to officials I know personally. More importantly, the effects of outside bad-actors, political as well as media operatives, their actions and the effects on amplifying greatly the negative aspects reported, are nowhere discussed.
This report falls beneath the editorial excellence I expect from NYTimes. Shame on you.
1
No mention of the ties between the app developer and Clinton & Buttigieg: tiny, unknown app developer with handpicked staff from Clinton’s campaign, and $40k in “fees” paid by Buttigieg.
This story is a distraction from the wider problems of the DNC.
10
@Robert Ross Biden and Gillibrand had also purchased services from the company. Did them a lot of good didn’t it?
Stick a fork in Iowa. they're done.
2
Not very impressed with any of the Democrats running for President. Bloomberg is a petter choice, but “3 is the charm,” and Hillary should run one more time...and win big!
Trump would love to have HRC run again, thus locking in a second term for him and afterwards, a first term for Pence.
2
@Moe Don’t worry,she is still finding ways to throw the election to Trump.
3
"Volunteers resorted to passing around a spare iPad to log into the system. Melissa Watson, the state party’s chief financial officer, who was in charge of the boiler room, did not know how to operate a Google spreadsheet application used to input data"
Man oh man. Using Google Sheets for this - probably the free personal version too. Not that there is anything wrong with it - fun app for what it does... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HA0R7r2TrHdGrUlpgj7SJsDZ8kYNIq4Pgng8CzeDy8g/edit?usp=sharing
I don't trust the results, and it might well have been fixed. It just stinks to high heaven. If the results were so fraught, why call the contest for Buttigieg? Multiple times? And post it to stories such as CNN and the NYT who are most obviously anti Sanders? I think the split between class and identity has migrated over to the integrity of our voting. We're at the point where to win an election one needs to win so overwhelmingly that it's impossible to cook the results. Is Jimmy Carter available? He has experience with corrupt regimes of wealthy elites trying to fix elections.
3
When you beta-test in real time glitches to chaos result. Makes the Dems seem feckless and incompetent—hope this isn’t a precursor of things to come....
2
Was Robbie Mook and Jon Podesta involved in all of this? Without them and the likeable and incompetent Donna Brazile, Hillary could never have lost to Trump.
3
This is the most over reported, overblown nothingburger of a story. Big deal! So Iowa messed up and results got delayed or skewed. Who cares? 41 delegates of over 1900 needed to win.
The Times and all other news outlet deployed a lot of resources to cover something that didn't pan out. Tough.
Embarrassing for Democrats. Meh.
Move on people.
The fault usually starts with the top......the DNC.
4
It is clear what Iowa is about...and what the Democratic Party in Iowa and the country should do...
1) Fire Perez...
2) Iowa Dem Committee get over all the glitz and do your jobs for the People...
3) Bernie clearly won based on the paper records published by the NYTimes and from any of the numbers that have been published...
Let's move on to the next and the next and the next primary and or caucus...
1
At least - AT LEAST - the New York Times is reporting evenly across Election Parties; Democrat and Republican.
I fear had this been a Republican caucus the Times reported on it would've been derided by the right as "fake news."
How foolish must this nation look to the rest of the world? Our days of being an example of democracy are behind us. And others nations will imagine they were never really there to begin with.
2
Maybe it's time to rethink the wisdom of the "there's an app for that" mode of life, eh?
1
I think Michelle Obama would make a great DNC chair. Tom Perez needs to go.
3
I lived in Iowa many years ago. I can say - the caucuses rules are so complicated that humans often operate on a subjective level. Trying to write code that does so completely objectively is a whole other level, so I'm not surprised that something didn't go right.
I would say in addition that if the DNC hadn't tried to better automate the process, they'd have been criticized too.
From what the Times reported, deployment of the software did not meet basic industry quality assurance and security standards.
2
I know that apps and webs and the internet and all of that stuff is part of our everyday lingo and use nowadays.
But for the life of me, considering how all of our new technology can be manipulated as easily as the old stuff, why not continue to use both.
Iowans are used to their system of voting via the caucuses.
It makes them feel unique in the way they vote.
They should be able to continue to use their old system as a way to cross-check the new system.
Eventually, if the old system is no more viable and useful or needed, then the newer version can be totally implemented.
I simply cannot understand the thinking of political analysts who attach great importance to who came in first in the caucuses. Apparently Buttegieg and Sanders were within a couple of percentage points of each other. So what if one was a little bit ahead of the other.
And this is in the context of questioning the importance of the results altogether, given how unrepresentative they are of anything significant. I have to blame the media for creating the illusion of the importance of these results.
8
@Paul Abrahams
"I simply cannot understand the thinking of political analysts who attach great importance to who came in first in the caucuses"
Because historically speaking, the winner of Iowa receives positive news coverage for winning which builds momentum heading to NH.
In this case, the media spun a false narrative last week that implied Buttigieg "was leading" and was the "winner" of a deeply flawed and rigged election.
The result of this false narrative is that Buttigieg surged in the NH polls by 12 points. This surge should have gone to Sanders as he was the indisputable winner of actual votes cast in Iowa.
But that was the point of this operation "Chaos" wasn't it?
Stop Sanders at all costs.
1
The obvious solution is to give Iowa a clear choice. Abandon the caucuses or face total exclusion from the Democratic primary. The Democratic party is a private organization and excluding Iowa would be perfectly legal. And smart.
2
Yes, with this single, solitary data point, we can continue The Democrats Are In Disarray narrative.
Iowa does not represent the country. We will learn from our mistakes and continue.
7
What I do not understand in this whole process: why not have one voting day, where the Democratic Party chooses it's candidate. By voting.
If you cannot handle that, you won't be able to handle the general election.
5
"Epic Fiasco" - Again with the hyperbole. Everyone got the gist of how the candidates were ranked in the Iowa caucus. And I, and I think most everyone else, including the candidates, are moving on from Iowa's less than perfect math without a lot of angst. A headline like this one is depressingly dismissive of all that was good about the Iowa caucuses - which includes all the stories emerging from endless town halls and pot luck suppers and imbedded journalists that helped to inform the rest of the nation about the candidates. Finally, such a headline is poor thanks to all the volunteers and participants in the caucus who surely wished for a different outcome.
5
@R.
Gist? What's a "gist"?
When one candidate is ahead of another by a 10th of a percentage point that may be due to error - we still don't have the "gist" of who actually won.
Where elections are now being won by mere thousands and or hundreds of votes (like Gov.Cooper here in NC) the "gist" of things doesn't cut it - no matter if it comes with cookies and coffee.
3
@R.
Also, what's with not being able to call something a "fiasco" when otherwise "well meaning people" may have been negligent in their duties and committed errors in math and data entry or may have even went home before the second round of voting and didn't see said duties through?
A mess up should not be forgotten or forgiven because it was committed by "otherwise nice folks".
2
There’s no “big picture” here, just a small and very familiar picture: an ambitious political official undone by his greed and incompetence.
It’s not difficult to organize an open event like the Iowa caucuses. Everybody is watching everybody else. Counts made at the individual caucus sites are endorsed by representatives of the campaign. The central tallying is monitored in the same way. “Security” is guaranteed by the human eye.
An electorate of 200,000 primary voters is comparable to that of a small city. The logistical problems are well-known. The equipment and the skills are readily hired. There’s no excuse for bungling a task this small.
The problem here is that Troy Price and his cronies decided to conceal the process with a totally unneeded app, and ignored (perhaps willfully) the human aspect of the reporting process. There have been multiple stories of volunteers driving results to the central office and being turned away, or of having their communications ignored in other ways. There is something wrong with a counting process that funnels the results through an obscure piece of software written by friends of friends.
The relevant questions to ask about Iowa are not about its whiteness or its smallness or the caucus system or its timing in the political calendar. The relevant questions are about how Troy Price came to occupy the position that he did, how we was able to cause so much harm, and who helped him do it.
5
There is no statement in this article, or from those involved that it was assured that there was not a third party intrusion, which could have been the primary or secondary cause of their failure.
Unless and until then, and it is investigated, how is there any basis to allege it was solely their own human error.
Further, 2016 election this shows the frailty of this type of primary, which at least included Russian, and possibly GOP interference.
In order to viably compete in subsequent elections there should be one national primary, so that the winner thereof will have sufficient time to unite and wage a viable campaign against its opponent/s, especially when the opposition party controls the incumbency as it does here, and employs dishonest tactics.
1
The contention that it is illegal to correct errors of arithmetic, apparently because such corrections would be “opinions”, is ludicrous and offensive — enough to turn many away from the entire political process. As far back as medieval times, provisions were made in legal documents regarding how to handle errors of fact that might be discovered later. There is no reason disclosures signed by the caucus participants cannot include provisions for the correction of errors, in the same way that our tax returns can be corrected for mistakes in filling out the forms.
9
It was one lawyer’s opinion and it was wrong — sad, but it can come down to that. If Bush can get Alberto Gonzales to approve memos for torture from John Woo, there is a legal opinion in which voting math can be corrected. The NYT ought to have gotten a broader release.
1
Too much of a fuss. Sanders and Buttigieg are the winners, so what if they are off a bit here or there. Give the Iowans a break.
Compare this to George Bush's invasion of Iraq and the destruction of the US economy in 2008 and tell me what the word fiasco is supposed to be used for.
What is a fiasco is the inability of Democrats to show how they whip Republicans on the economy every time...Clinton's surplus vs Bush's colossal waste, Obama vs Bush:fixing his mess, Obama vs Trump, more jobs created in last 3 years than Trump's first three....check the record and blow it up into cinematic detail. Tax cuts, a massive deficit, no health plan, no infrastructure. I suppose its fantastic he hasn't launched a war. That's what makes him great for Republicans?
3
@Pashka
It’s because the propaganda machine is strong. The economy for Wall Street is going great right now. The GDP and their personal profits from ownership have sky rocketed under Trump. They don’t have to pay taxes and the IRS has been basically shot down on people who earn wealth from assets.
The wealthy who are few in number and own the assets have a vested interest in floating the economy until a democrat takes power. It doesn’t help that Trump was able to frighten the fed into maintaining a lowering the prime rate signaling full steam ahead for Wall Street.
If a democrat takes office and the the prime rate goes higher it will be seen as a red light to cash out. Many of these people of wealth know each other. The degree of separation is minimal. They basically have a very strong labor union for the rich that bribes and protects their interests at the expense of everyone else. In fact it is one just not formalized like workers have to be.
The beautify if wealth such as this is you have nothing to do all day but organize and play politics.
2
not only giving Iowa this established first-sort, but not addressing the material constraints on participation is more than a flaw. It's a complete failure of democratic principles. And even worse, it is so scripted for Trumpian gloating that you'd think the whole fiasco had been hatched by Russian operatives. Mr. Perez has made an international embarrassment for the Democratic party, and has has positioned it to lose public confidence. This is part of a larger failure: the installation of a two-year campaign season that exhausts candidates physically and financially, and exhausts the patience at attention of the public. Those two-minute sound-bite so-called "debates" are a further travesty. I've been a Democrat my whole life and have never been reduced to such disgust and despair.
5
I admit I was wrong. The democrats do have a sense of humor. I didn’t see it until now.
Running Biden, Buttigieg, and Iowa caucus.
5
I wondered how they would do it but I knew they would. The Democrats are showing this how they will snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory once again.
9
One of the most disturbing parts of the article, to me, was that users on 4chan were goading each other into active obstruction of an election process. Who are these users? And how do we know that some were not located in, I dunno, Russia?
2
" I am not the member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat." Will Rogers.
2
What could possibly go wrong?
Older disabled voters don't attend. There is no private ballot, and you can be influenced by your neighbors -- bribed with chocolate even. Many of the volunteers are older and not computer app literate. This is an outdated system.
Further -- Iowa does not represent the US -- mostly white.
AGAIN WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
3
A bunch of amateurs who can't run a caucus yet they want to run the country?
The Democrats are hopeless and without them Trump would never have been elected. They are trying their best to repeat the the 2016 performance.
6
A 'world-famous model of democracy'? Really? Divide the number of registered voters in Iowa by the number of caucus participants and report that number. Thank you.
3
@Tim Hathaway
Approximately 8.5% of registered voters caucused. (number of caucus participants divided by registered voters.) Conversely 91.5% did not caucus.
Ranked choice voting has pros and cons, but a ranked choice system that attracts such a pitifully small percentage of the electorate is illogical. This does not winnow candidates so much as allow outsized influence to be exerted by caucus goers.
Looks like the Iowa Caucus has been a charade all this time. Something from a century ago. And now they depend on 1,700 precincts run by volunteers, doing accurate math? What a joke.
6
Georgia should be an early primary state. Where else will you find black and Latino voters spread so far and wide across rural counties? And where else will you find Atlanta's urban growth and sprawling, multi-racial suburbs?
1
It's not rocket science, folks. 1 man 1 vote, 1 woman 1 vote. Forget these absurd caucuses and hold a state primary.
2
CNN's mistake was counting on accurate counts from the Iowa DEM election board. Shoulda asked Putin; he had complete results five minutes after the polls closed!
So what’s the bottom line? Are the reported results from Iowa accurate or not?
1
The DNC should abolish caucuses henceforth and forever. They disenfranchise too many working class Americans who rely on hourly wages to make ends meet and don’t get paid if they call out of work to spend hours standing around in a school gymnasium. The process also disenfranchises parents with young children and the elderly who may have mobility and stamina issues. The whole process is rotten. While we’re at it, the first states to vote in the primary shouldn’t be two of the smallest and whitest in the nation.
220
@Dabney L
I thought the DNC had a day but it seems to be the local state that has the say in how it is organized. So it will be up to democrats in Iowa to change it.
I would recommend the DNC not support apps with companies called Shadow that are funded by the Clintons or Billionaire friends and associates though. It’s okay to have an app to assist but you need a paper trail so we can audit it and it should always be audited.
9
@Dabney L
Agreed, switch to primaries but make sure we still put candidates face to face with real people —winnow out the insincere, the maladroit, the boors and the hotheads.
New Hampshire and Iowa serve a useful purpose because they're so small they force candidates to spend months and months interacting with regular voters in family-style restaurants, in living rooms, and Rotary club meetings.
They're definitely cornball venues, but how else can we make sure that candidates get a glimpse into the lives of everyday people?
If the first primaries were held in large states, it would be nothing but $10,000 a plate fundraisers and speeches delivered to big crowds–candidates would be even more insulated than they already are.
8
@Dabney L
I couldn't agree more.
But that obviously also goes for the general election.
Not declaring a day off for everyone, or at least organizing elections on Sundays only, weakens ANY democracy.
I'm pretty sure that this is one of the reasons why there's such a massive gap between polling results and election outcomes in the US, when it comes to what policies the American people want.
As we've seen during the last few years, "putting America first" has a VERY different meaning, according to who's using this slogan: for ordinary citizens, it means passing bills that improve their lives too. For the GOP, it means putting the wealthiest first and telling the others the "trickle down" fairy tale.
The only way for citizens to put America first, is to have election laws that allow them to vote, to start with ...
15
Despite the problems reporting results, there is an extraordinarily clear result from the Iowa caucuses. One in four Iowa democrats supports Sanders. Seventy-five percent of Iowa democrats believe he cannot beat Trump. They don't know who can, but they want that person and not Sanders. This is clear because 75% voted for someone other than Sanders in the first round and his total barely moved on realignment, whereas Buttigieg surged on realignment. Tiny numbers of first votes, tiny percentages of state delegate equivalents mean nothing, yet Sanders is so obsessed with them that his campaign wants a partial recount. Sanders's obsession with these same meaningless tiny numbers from 2016 is what changed the Iowa caucus procedures and directly led to the reporting failures. Let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees. Iowa democrats simply want a candidate who will beat Trump and they know Sanders won't do it.
I voted in the 2016 caucus in MN, it was poorly run, even if it wasn't a disaster. The address on the DFL website for my local caucus was incorrect, luckily those at the address knew the correct one.
It is past time to end the use of caucuses to pick candidates. Despite laws that allow employees to take time off to attended the caucus, many young voters don't know about them. What happened in Iowa should have been expected. Especially with so many candidates.
2
I think most are overlooking the magnitude of the real issues here. With the proper amount of planning, testing and training - any process can be managed successfully. It takes clarity of goals and outcome, inputs and analysis. It takes robust processes that are well documented and trained. It takes thorough testing and sampling of points for error and vulnerabilities. Contingency processes must be developed AND tested. There is only one chief, resposible for all - not a share responsibility between natiional and local. The ball got dropped here over and over with woefully inadequate testing and trianing. Come on, relying on new software as a key tool still being tested days before implementation? What a recipe for disaster. Everyone now thinks instant grits can be made of every process. It simply can't. Allocate the resources, time and commitment next time and it can be done. We as a nation have abandoned the rigor that we learned long ago to apply to critical processes. It's time to reverse that course. The DNC and RNC should start now developing the process for 2024 so at least then we may be able to start rebuilding the trust of our citizens.
2
It’s time to change the channel and begin with states having the most electoral votes: California (55), Texas (38), New York (29), Florida (29), Illinois (20), and Pennsylvania (20).
Leave Super a Tuesday to the rest.
One has to wonder why Tom Perez and the hierarchy at the DNC had to interfere just at the point the number of precincts had reached 97% where there was a virtual tie with the remaining 3% that would have finally determined the outcome? Much like any other election, why did they not wait for a recount after the final results were submitted?
One also has to ask the question is what was the connection between the Clintons, The "Dark Shadow" software that was used for the counting and the $42,000 input to that company by the Buttigieg campaign?
Now we have the legal team from the State of Iowa who claim they cannot change any aspect of the outcome because it would be illegal, hence, there are a whole series of unanswered questions about an election that was a debacle right from the outset to the end and realistically, whose outcome should not be accepted.
9
The history of the Iowa Caucus is interesting in that it was designed to "democratize" the early nominating process by placing it in the hands of citizens and NOT the "party bosses". It had good intentions. It began in 1972, and it was a reaction to the chaotic (and violent) 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. The "party brokers" didn't like it...but it was part of a process to make the Democratic Party essentially more "democratic".
OK that was "then", and now we're in a high-tech world where we expect quick and accurate results. The raising hands and hand-counting votes in a town-hall atmosphere is quaint, but not totally in step with today's expectations.
Why do we continue to begin with Iowa and New Hampshire? At this point, it's probably about keeping these small states "relevant" in the process... plus their small businesses reap the economic benefits of the candidates and the press corp visiting for a few months!
5
Pete Buttigieg will get more delegates though fewer votes than Bernie.
I thought the Democrats wanted to eliminate the Electoral College over this kind of thing.
Will the party demand proportional delegates?
Since the DNC is owned and operated by the riches who would like to pick their candidates, at some point it is inevitable for the necessity to bypass the DNC.
Bernie has won. In the end they denied him a victory speech is all.
16
Numerous obvious errors were made.
Many of those related to software development were elementary: last minute development and software rollout; little or no usability testing with actual end users; little or no training for end users; a mistaken impression that last-minute rollout was a good security measure. Any competent software developer should have been strongly advising their client to avoid these errors and should have insisted on a better approach.
But now the errors seem to include basic errors in even more basic and arguably more important decisions: poor training of caucus staff on the basic vote counting rules; asking central staff to use mobile phones to get login PINs when they'd been told they were not allowed to have their phones with them, etc. This is just basic poor planning.
When problems this numerous, and of this magnitude are demonstrated, it's the management that must be held responsible in the end. People were running this who really did not know what they were doing. How were these persons and the software developer selected?
14
@StatBoy
It's also the responsibility of the media not to report partial results. For example, CNN, following Pete Buttigieg's lead in declaring himself the winner after only 62% of the votes were counted, also declared him the "winner." It was reported later by precinct captains from Des Moines and other cities (e.g., Waterloo), that Sanders was winning in those counties, they had reported the results hours before rural counties (where Buttigieg was running ahead), but for unknown reasons, the votes in the cities were not being reported out. In addition, Sanders' votes in at least two of the counties, numbering in the 100's, were being mistakenly allocated to Deval Patrick, who in reality received no votes. Thus, the press is complicit. The media should not be reporting results until all the votes are counted and the process, particularly as problems were being reported early on, has been fully vetted.
5
The caucuses should be abolished. For years, I have thought it quaint and well intended. Neighbors speaking to neighbors and making their case for a particular candidate. Now that I'm older, I see that the physical process excludes certain participation, including having to sit on the floor and wait for long hours, be present for long hours, be attentive for long hours. Who does this benefit? Younger, mobile, active delegates with no external responsibilities and no physical impairments. And in the meantime, no names are collected to audit the vote counts or certify the results. It's outdated. It must go.
13
I am glad at last to see what the overly complex apportionment sheets look like. Several thoughts.
1. This whole system is more or less a ranked choice vote with a floor of 15%.
2. By doing the 15% cutoff in each of 1800 or so precincts, averaging more or less 100 voters/precinct, you guarantee that candidates will lose votes compared to aggregating the votes statewide and then applying the cutoff. Far too many small units for proper overall results.
3. Apportioning delegates at the precinct level makes for vast amounts of arithmetic calculations (not mathematics), that would be much better done in Excel, not by hand or on a poorly functioning app, but best of all should not be done at all at the precinct level.
4. A ranked choice vote by machine read paper ballots could achieve the desired result accurately and quickly. The only aspect missing would be the "negotiation" for delegates whose first candidate didn't make the cut. I can't see that would be a meaningful loss. The gain could be much wider participation, mail-in ballots and so forth.
5. This clutzy and logically flawed process has no business being the first screening contest in the primary season.
12
@DrKanner - I agree completely with all your bullet points. This process has no business being part of our election system, period. It's far too clunky and complex. I live in a caucus state, and have participated in my district's caucus in every presidential year.
One thing I read about the Iowa caucus, that I didn't know, was that they weight rural votes more heavily than urban/suburban votes. I don't know if that's true, and I realized I have no idea if my state does it that way too. If so, that's just one more reason to switch all caucuses to a straight primary.
10
I have pretty limited math aptitude and skills. In spite of — or because of this fact — I really appreciate your analysis.
@DrKanner - Of course shifting the point from district to state can change the will/intent of the folks in the district.
Of course it's a flawed system; they all are. I participated in the 5 preceding this one experiencing all the horrors of venues too small, or too big; very inclement weather, last minute venue relocation, long delays in process, Bernie Bros, the lure of better things to do, feeling sorry for O'Mally.
All those however can and do afflict, maybe differently, the standard primary used in other states. All this hubbla is over being 'first' up and any other state that gets that curse/honor will be slighted and cursed again for all its warts real and logically imagined.
I'm not against other states getting to do the opener mind you, I'd even prefer that to happen. In fact we should cede to a logic based algorithm to make all these decisions for us and save yuuuge amounts of treasure, no?
The fiasco in Iowa is actually a blessing in disguise. The results from the Iowa caucuses did not make or break any candidate. It holds so much importance because it is the first state to hold its primaries. This little glitch has proven that Iowa which is one of the least diverse state in the US does not get to dictate who becomes the nominee.
6
Yes, it looks like Yang and Gabbard still have a chance. Or were you thinking of someone else?
@William McCain , Warren, Biden, Bloomberg?
Look, the Iowa primary was extremely interesting, and not the blight on democracy the brain-dead media jumped on. The many candidates who are highly qualified have no easy winner ... and any real discussion leading to a singular choice would not only not be easy, but indeed would be questionable.
Iowa reflected this .. and in my opinion did a superb job in introducing this situation. The actual numbers are all but irrelevant.
4
Nothing beats paper and proper training. The basics are time-consuming but at least the results will be as accurate as humanly possible.
But in any event the caucus system has got to go. Elections, even preliminary ones, should be fair and transparent. So, primary systems where voters can cast their ballots during many hours giving everyone the opportunity to cast a ballot, must be the rule.
3
Bernie won the Iowa caucus. State and National Party officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to bury the truth of that victory. He’ll win the Democratic Nomination unless the Party succeeds in rigging it against him. If that occurs many people, like me, will not vote for the Democratic nominee. We will either sit out or vote Green Party. We will not “vote blue no matter who”.
13
Kali,
I understand your passion but your non vote is a vote for Trump. And a reason why discouraged Sanders voters voted for Trump and got him elected in 2016.
Are you ready to allow that to happen again and accept the consequences of four more years of a Trump administration?
I certainty hope not
@Kali - I support Bernie, but refusing to vote if your chosen candidate isn't the party's choice is the same as voting for Trump. This country can barely afford another year of Trump, let alone another four years.
And in your wrongheadedness you will bring us 4 additional years of Trumpism. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face...
" ... a full accounting of these inconsistencies could alter the outcome ...."
Who cares at this point? Iowa is a microscopic drop in the bucket of national convention delegates, and it doesn't make a bit of difference whether it's Sanders or Buttigieg who won by .001%.
The thing to work on now is a complete revamp of the nominating process. No more caucuses, half a dozen regional primaries, done. If a retail state or two at the beginning of the calendar really matters, pick a dozen and rotate them.
But, above all: no more caucuses, no more Iowa primacy.
4
Two thirds of registered Iowa Democrats didn't participate in the caucuses. That cannot be a good way to show preferences for a candidates.
3
The caucuses are fine. People who are interested in the Presidential race meet, talk, and then choose the person who seems best to them. That's democracy in its purest form. But democracy was always messy, which is why the Founders chose a Republic as our form of government.
The app didn't work and the volunteer workers, who aren't expected to be experts on tech, couldn't fix the problems. Reporting the results isn't the problem of caucuses. We can have caucuses. The Democrats must figure out a better way to report the results. That app wasn't it.
One last thing. Republicans did their best to help make this event something they could describe as a fiasco. It is called 'dirty tricks' and it was supposed to have gone out with Nixon. Republicans continue to treat elections as games they can play to win at all costs. It's not. It's serious business. A known unknown is the extent to which the dirty tricksters had Russian money to play with.
2
The entire caucus process has been deeply flawed from the beginning and the new reporting requirements just exposed the flaws. This is true, not just in Iowa, but in caucuses in all states.
The Iowa caucus involves over 1600 sites. At each site, a volunteer staff must not only count one set of ballots, they must count, divide to get percentages, compare those to a threshold, count again, and apply another formula to get the state delegate equivalents.
It is not surprising, it is inevitable that mistakes would be made. When only the final result was reported, the mistakes were hidden. Now that the volunteers must "show their work", we can see how sloppy the process has always been.
It is not an indictment of the volunteers; they have done their best. It is not an indictment of individual candidates. It is an indictment of caucuses themselves. The process is rotten and designed to fail.
6
@midwesterner - First of all, there must be an accurate count of all participants, then the math must be done to calculate what 15% of that number is (the threshhold for viability). Once people have sorted themselves out into groups based on which candidate they support, those with a non-viable first choice must quickly select a second choice. As we saw with the woman who'd made Pete her second choice, only to discover belatedly that he's gay, too many people don't know enough about their second choice to make an informed decision.
1
At least 50% of the comments here do not understand the problems in Iowa.
The problem WAS NOT THE CAUCUS SYSTEM. The problem was GETTING THE VOTES TO THE CENTRAL TABULATING LOCATION.
The problems occurred because an untested approach to transmitting information to the central D Party location was used. It was poorly designed, untested, and violated many principles of system design. When amateurs design data collection systems, you get a system that does not work.
11
@George Tyrebyter - The app problem was significant, but it also helped expose problems inherent in the caucus system itself. Caucuses are complicated things, and they're run by volunteers. Most voters don't understand the caucus system they're participating in, either.
The Iowa fiasco showed that in some cases non-viable candidates were awarded delegates. It showed that the wrong number of delegates were allocated in many instances. It showed that, although if you've chosen to caucus with a viable candidate group, you're not allowed to then switch to another group, such switching did take place after the fact. And we learned that rural votes are weighted more heavily than urban or suburban votes. This whole system is disastrous and needs to be replaced by a primary. I say that as someone who participates in my state's caucus every time one is held.
6
Iowa caucus mess might be a process bottleneck but not necessarily a reflection on the election winning potential of the Democratic party. Why forget that even without popularsupport Trump managed controversial win through the electoral college.?
3
@Prof. Jai Prakash Sharma we live in the smartest country in the planet (supposedly). Am sure these geniuses will figure out how to run a clean democratic election. We are sorry the world had to witness a Republican Party siding and abetting a president and covering up his high crimes and misdemeanors. But we are but all corrupt like him.
2
Just goes to show why regulation of our economy is so important. The assumptions made about the phones and the codes and the app all encouraged by correlative personal experience unrelated to facts are the real problem here.
The Democratic party must be brain-dead. They gave out the app on Friday and told the volunteer captains to "play with it" over the weekend. What kind of training is that? What kind of management is that?
They flubbed in 2016 and now again. Why am I beginning to feel that the vote is rigged? All the candidates should be challenging the outcome as who knows how the ranking might be affected?
Toss out the Iowa election or count every vote. Anything less is a travesty that will hurt the party as a whole. The DNC only cares about getting the results it wants and doesn't care how much damage it creates getting it. This is hurting party unity, which really should be their first priority.
9
The source code. As early as July, the national party proposed contracts requiring their access to the codes. Iowa party officials rejected that.
That seems to also be a factor in all of our election voting machines. I go back to theNYTimes report on Pennsylvania’s last election in the fall; odd results, questionable numbers changes...and that was, new, software.
Couple that with recent articles on AI algorithms now being used for many other critical parts of our police, judicial systems. Garbage in, garbage out.
Patent protection for source codes, or, reliable voting systems. Another cog in the capitalism v. ....fairness debates.
This is one state. A primary. Republicans may be laughing now, but come November, both parties had better work together to convince us- we....the public..(you know, the ones you’re supposed to work for, represent, value)...are actually having our one, easily counted vote, counted accurately. Sheeesh....
4
@Jo Williams I agree.
When political considerations are used to make technology decisions, you get idiots doing things they are not qualified to do. When electronic voting was first considered, EVERY COMPUTER PROFESSIONAL said that direct electronic voting was insane. 30% of the states chose it anyway because they wanted to look trendy or something. Now, 30 years later, most states have figured it out.
Why become an expert if some politician chooses the system that his brother runs?
2
The D.N.C.’s kind of hanging us out to dry,” said Steve Drahozal, the Democratic chairman in Dubuque County. “Instead of saying ‘Good job!’ to the local volunteers, they’re disrespecting a lot of grass-roots organizing that was done.
I would like to hang both the DNC and Iowa Democratic officials out to dry. Caucuses should never be part of the primary process again. I will never know if my candidate, Elizabeth Warren, had all her votes tallied correctly. Her candidacy has faltered since Iowa based on her third place showing. Now one rural, white state, that doesn’t even vote Democratic half the time has perhaps fatally damaged her candidacy based on inaccurate vote counts of a sliver of Democratic voters who have the time and means to spend two hours between 7 and 9 on Caucus night. Perez and Price should go as well as the whole DNC. Bernie and his Bros are right to complain.
3
@Mary Beth - Do you understand that the states determine whether they'll vote by primary or by caucus, not the political parties? If the GOP had two candidates for president, then when they voted in Iowa, they'd also vote by caucus. (Check out the 2012 GOP fiasco in Iowa).
@MegWright. the DNC gives Iowa, NH and two other states an exemption to hold their primaries before March SuperTuesday thus giving them outsize, unreasonable influence in the primary process. They are ultimately responsible for this unfair system. If they can give them an exemption, they can take it away too and penalize states that insist on holding caucuses instead of primaries.
Going forward perhaps Iowa always gets to vote last. By which time hopefully they can’t cause any more damage?
I lay all this at the feet of Bernie Sanders, he and his people spend way too much effort undermining their fellow Democrats. Isn't he still suing the Democratic Party over his perceived slights from 2016?
The Iowa Caucus: 1972 -2020
It came, It entertained us and misled us for 48 years.
RIP...and let's hope Iowa keeps it that way.
5
Okay, my fellow Democrats, we have made our ration of errors for this cycle. Let's learn from our mistakes (top lesson: always have a paper trail), figure out our ticket and move forward as expeditiously as possible to accomplish job number one, removing Trump and trumpism. The world is counting on us, not just our nation.
2
Hold on, the caucus debacle in Iowa has nothing to do with the state and everything to do with the DNC. They're the ones running the show.
7
The hundreds of articles and countless editorials this newspaper ran on alleged Russian meddling with our elections were a dangerous and counterproductive distraction.
The real problem is not the Russians. It is our own incompetence, in this case of the Democratic Party. The notorious app, which was apparently difficult to install and buggy to use, is one example; the lack of a functioning call center to act as a backup is another.
You'd think we'd have learned our lesson from hanging chads. Apparently not.
Unfortunately, it's not clear there is time to fix things in time for the coming November election.
6
To any compsci. professional or organizational change expert, Iowa looks to have gone shockingly pear shaped. Any change to a mission-critical operating system (such as an election/caucus or flying the Boeing 737 Max), requires highly tested coordination of the people processes technologies involved in execution.
Changes to people processes technologies, highly tested and debugged.
Not thrown over the fence by a neophyte company, Shadow, promoted by the remnants of Hillary Clinton, who probably still thinks it’s a great idea to run a private email server in her home.
5
Good grief . . . take a deep breath and calm down. This is a minor issue in the larger picture. The media are playing right into Trump's narrative.
4
I don't get it. What's wrong with a good old fashioned primary? Go to your polling place. Cast your vote. Count the votes. This is a no brainer.
1
The caucus is inferior to a straight vote for the purpose of counting individual votes. It is implemented in Iowa to get around the requirement that NH have the first primary. In this way, it is a ruse that can no longer be supported.
No surprise the leadership was in over their heads. The system was too complicated for them to understand much less engineer success by whatever means. But the hubris and phony optimism going into it is no inexcusable.
The real solution is nobody goes first and everyone votes at once in every state. That gives the underdog candidates a fighting chance to present national issues and present a national mandate.
2
Iowa results aren’t important enough to warrant week-long coverage. Enough already!
4
Need ordinary *ranked-choice* voting. Get it done, Dems.
4
Bernie 2020...nothing else to say...the result will cause a tremendous victory for Bernie today.
3
Why the big fuss about problems with the Iowa democratic caucus? Iowa is a red state and always votes republican.
1
"The state party’s phones were jammed. Users on the website 4chan had publicly posted the election hotline number and encouraged one another to “clog the lines.” The party’s volunteer phone operators also had to deflect calls from television news reporters in search of caucus results that were hours overdue."
This is straight out of the Trump playbook. Dirty cheating is Trump's brand.
9
First in the nation, last in accountability.
1
They’re event really. They made mistakes and didn’t have the results in time, but it wasn’t really a crisis!
We live in an age when we want things yesterday. Everything has to be right on the dot.
And the media specialize in sensation to sell their meaningless and soulless and unethical journalism.
Sensation is the norm! Everything is “historic.” We claim to live in “historic” times! Somehow, we think those who lives earlier lives in less noteworthy times.
Mistakes were made, but the real problem is our impatience!
2
The right to vote and have your vote counted is the essence of Democracy. I saw the interviews with some of the Caucau leaders who paid no attention to the process and were proud of it. The idea of an ap when faced with the photograpin at Johnston Middle School tells me that the Ap was never going to work with that bunch of old folks, I'm 72, I expect I couldn't do it either. Paper, paper, where's the paper? I expect it's been a bogus result for years.
3
No more caucuses.
4 Regional Primaries - South, Northeast, Mid-West, West - one per month, order rotated every 4 years.
If we must......kick it off with Iowa, NH, Nevada and SC on the same day - this provides good regional balance and states where retail campaigning is possible.
3
Inclusion does not work when things have to work and must be accurate. This is the Dem's fatal flaw in every aspect of their party today. They allow anyone to be involved and worse, allow them to run things! Sorry Democrats but merit is way more important than ones identity or their feelings... Get it together and stop pandering to the fringes. Its killing the Party and the Country.
2
Wait...I can hold my phone to a scanner and conduct any financial transaction efficiently and accurately but voting is this backward? We have the technology to make this right. The old excuse Russia might hack the results does not wash. Voters should be more concerned about the corrupt Democratic party filled with corporate and establishment players forcing their will on the results. Now a paid Buttigieg staffer is in charge of voter integrity in the Nevada caucus? And the stink of Clinton operatives is all over the app. We have more to fear from the DNC than the Russians.
9
@Kathy Bannon in fairness, our financial transactions are hit with fraud and hacking on a regular basis, to the tune and estimated $25 billion in 2018. Banks and companies have decided that refunding your money is easier and cheaper than doing a deep investigation into individual cases of fraud. I had to be refunded twice in 2019 on fraudulent charges. Financial transactions can be refunded, but not votes. What happens if 130 million+ voters cast digital votes on Nov. 3rd, and 1% (1.3 mill) are impacted by fraud, but disproportionately in states such as Wisconsin and Michigan? What if it takes months to sort that out? I get where you are coming from, but banks have the luxury of time and cost assessment in dealing with transaction fraud, we don't have the same luxury in our elections.
Technology is not always the fastest and most accurate solution. Humans fail. Humans code apps. Apps fail. Beta testing is important. Disruptive bugs still slip through beta testing. And, as we know from other companies such as Boeing, tech can fail in enormously ruinous ways due to mismanagement by those on the top who demand deliverables but don’t understand the intricacies of coding and engineering. It is time for Iowa to nip this in the bud and have do-over vote with the system last used 4 years ago. That gives them another 4 years to beta test the app. My question is why use an app at all? However speedy and accurate a tech solution could be, there is no way to guarantee that it won’t be hacked.
1
Followership at its best. Certainly not leadership. There is not and has not been any clear cohesion or set of principles guiding what is merely a cabal. The party is not a party.
One wants to return us to a more stable path, not such a bad idea given how far off the rails is the nation. Another wants to remake a prosperous economic system into unproven socialism. If it were not for Trump, would you vote Dem?
1
I don't see it as such a fiasco. There were no hanging chads with a one month delay. The cell phone app should have been beta tested. There was volunteer help. What can you expect? The party was satisfied with the results. I kept hearing Bernie saying he was burned but he will always say that.
2
Yes, the Iowa Democratic caucus was an epic fiasco. And we never would have learned how badly was the fiasco until reform rules were implemented for 2020 by the DNC to make the delegate allocation more transparent. After that, the overseers failed badly to check that the process was done correctly even apart from the poorly tested and instructed app. Stepping back, this is a tempest in a teapot. In the end less than 5 national delegates net is at stake out of a total of nearly 4000 pledged delegates at the Democratic national convention. Very likely the Iowa caucus has always been this bad on caucus night, to say nothing of the very undemocratic manipulations done at the two later stages of the Iowa delegates selection process. How many people know that Ron Paul, who came in third in 2012, sent the most national delegates to the Republican national convention? And the caucus night winner was declared to be Romney but that was corrected two weeks later when it didn't matter to Santorum? The Iowa caucus should be buried after 2020, never to rise again.
5
Results in Iowa are a clear reflection of the national insanity of Democrats. In the article, it was stated that "security concerns were used to deny Iowa the training opportunity." In the USA, the Putin stupidity of the Dems has made them into complete chuckleheads. Rather than testing the software and the entire process, they considered security of the system more important.
Beyond stupid.
Security comes from a well-designed process that has been tested. And the main issue is that here, like in all political issues, amateurs who do not understand computers, data entry, or remote systems design, manage, and run the whole thing.
12
The 4chan users who tried to jam the phone lines should be pursued and prosecuted for interfering with an election. What is wrong with these people? Cowardly and malicious.
13
A party of diversity giving huge sway to two states with much older, much whiter demographics is insane. The DNC must step in and fix a broken system. IA and NH will always put their dates on the calendar earliest no matter how far up you push super Tuesday or other more representative states so this must been done top down by the DNC. We are already saddled with the anti-democratic electoral college (barring an unlikely constitutional amendment) but a political party should not commit self inflicted wounds of this magnitude just to serve quaint old notions of "retail politics".
3
Seems perhaps the fiasco in Iowa worked according to plan. The “results” and the way they were rolled out prevented Sanders a victory speech in Iowa and raised the viability of the new preferred DNC candidate.
5
I have a very old idea. Vote by mail or in person. Have a paper trail if voting by machine. Why is Iowa so obsessed with caucausing? It's a romanticized version of democracy when in reality, it is incredibly undemocratic. By the way, this fiasco should put an end to Iowa being the first.
4
Yes, Sadie, vote by mail of a paper, scannable ballot (with dropoff at a local collection center as an option) is a perfectly well proven method, in use in any number of states now. It's simple, it allows a voter time to research candidates and measures on the ballot, it's machine countable, and it leaves a paper trail for recounts.
It's mind-boggling it's not the national standard.
1
Dems better get their act together. It's getting late.
2
Tom Perez: the problems come back to you. You have failed to provide the leadership our party is, literally, dying for. Please tender your resignation and let us try to right this ship before it completely capsizes.
8
The Iowa Caucuses (IC) are a form of ranked choice voting (RCV). If there is less than 15% of support for a candidate in that caucus (that pool), the people who wanted that candidate have a choice to either "re-allign" themselves with another candidate, or throw in the towel.
Mayor Pete won because he was second choice, a compromise:
First Vote Final Vote Total S.D.E.s
Candidate Votes Pct. Votes Pct. Votes Pct.
Buttigieg 37,596 21.3% 43,274 25.1% 564 26.2%
Sanders 43,699 24.7 45,842 26.5 562 26.1
Warren 32,611 18.5 34,934 20.2 388 18.0
and there were people who threw in the towel:
First Vote Final Vote Total S.D.E.s
Candidate Votes Pct. Votes Pct. Votes Pct.
Candidate Votes Pct. Votes Pct. Votes Pct.
Uncommitted 1,000 0.6 1,451 0.8 4 0.2
Other 159 0.1 205 0.1 1 0.0
(Source: from the graphic "Here’s how Democrats voted in the first and final rounds." NYT
RCV will give us leaders and laws that we didn't really want, but were better than the alternative.
Remember how the IC worked in realigning votes the next time someone tries to sell you RCV.
"The problem, however, is that RCV is so convoluted that few voters know how to maximize their influence over the process.." Source: Bangor Maine Daily News
2
No hanging chads. Yes paper back up. Let’s not get too upset. Let’s do criminalize attempts to interfere with elections’ process. Let’s call it treason with prison as punishment.
3
Failure in Iowa, probably going back years, can be attributed to the Democrats’ failure to follow the KISS principle. Keep It Siimple, Stupid has, seemingly for years, given way to an arcane system that muddled raw results because of needlessly complex formulae for turning them into delegate allocations. The fault lies chiefly with Iowa Democrats more concerned with publicity than process—and also with the national party for a failure in oversight. Democrats’ attacks on Republicans for electoral cheating lose credibility when they can’t even get their own results remotely correct.
6
Wow. What an insane system; archaic and byzantine. Yet somehow Iowa clings to it because it’s.....folksy or some such nonsense?
Step into the 21st century, Iowa. Heck, step into the 20th century. This is a nations embarrassment.
Between caucuses, the electoral college, and the wildly unrepresentative nature of the Senate, it becomes more and more evident that our democracy is kind of a joke.
6
“‘The D.N.C.’s kind of hanging us out to dry,’ said Steve Drahozal, the Democratic chairman in Dubuque County. ‘Instead of saying “Good job!” to the local volunteers, they’re disrespecting a lot of grass-roots organizing that was done.”
In other words, the operation was a success but the patient died.
2
I find it laughably ironic that the New York Times is yelling "failure" in headlines and pursuing each and every glitch that they can to showcase incompetency in Iowa.
The biggest complete failure in the Democratic Party process is without a doubt a media and a national party both of whom were singing full-throated arias to diversity and inclusion, and together set up a culling process that has resulted in eliminating all the black candidates, all the Hispanic candidates, and all the governors. What we are left with is two "front runners" (based on 176,000 ill counted votes that they tied on) one of whom is a mayor of a college town with no appropriate experience, and the other of which is an insurgent who is not a Democrat to begin with. They lead a field that has two senators who are truly qualified but "lagging", a vice president who is truly qualified but has been successfully knocked out by a corrupt Republican president and his loyal dogs in the Senate, a panoply of millionaires and billionaires with no appropriate experience, and one representative who believes that the U.S. started the Syrian War through it's surrogate al Qaeda.
That's the real failure, heaping on Iowa is a distraction from your own mess, media. Debate after debate with no foreign policy questions, polling popularity contests and funding popularity contests heavily biased to media figures and internet swarms.
The internet hollows out all institutions. The press enables it.
4
And you want to hand the government of the largest democracy in the world to these incompetent people (read: Democrats)?
1
I understand the frustration with the Iowa first-caucus system. It is a tradition that has outlived its usefulness by decades.
However, I'm equally concerned about calls for a national primary day, or something like it. That would heavily favor one or two types of candidates - billionaires who are able to finance their own national media campaigns (think Trump, Steyer, Bloomberg) or candidates that are essentially fundraising for president in perpetuity (like Sanders). Under that system, you would likely have no candidate Obama, Buttigieg, Booker, Harris, etc. Lesser known, less wealthy candidates would have no way to compete in a national primary that takes place on a single day.
The main objectives of primary reform should be A) give a more diverse range of states the ability to go first, maybe on a rotating basis and B) shorten the overall length of the primary campaign, which will in turn reduce the amount of money needed to fund the primary campaigns.
4
If anything can go wrong it will. The simple truth is that Iowa made the process too complex. It's past time that they go to a one person one vote system and award the delegates to the person who gets the most votes. Voting could be done by mail in ballots distributed to registered democrats only.
4
Imagine if we just went to a system in which every person got one vote.
How will parties choose, you ask? One person, one vote.
How can we count it? In Washington state they mail us our ballots and we send them back. Thanks to King County and Kim Wyman, no postage is required.
Meet the candidates in separate bipartisan Town Halls.
Is there a reason we don't do it this way?
4
My guess is the vote counting and reporting in Iowa has always been an inaccurate mess, but without having to show any worksheets, the parties just accepted the final numbers as good. Now, the workings of the sausage factory have been exposed and few think it is acceptable.
9
It seems clear to me that last week's Iowa caucus disaster should be the death knell for this archaic method of allocating delegates. I watched some of the process on TV, and was somewhat shocked to see officials attempting to "count" votes for a given candidate by pointing to individuals who had raised a hand in support of a given candidate; after being "counted" each individual was supposed to put their hand down; however, there was so much noise and chaos that the process had to be repeated a number of times. Considering the importance of this first in the nation delegate selection, perhaps Iowa officials should consider abandoning the caucuses in favor of a primary that utilizes voting machines.
2
Repackaging an arcane product, faulty software, lack of testing, passing the buck, denials and coverups... What happened in Iowa reminds me of the stories I've been reading about Boeing and the litany of errors that led to the Max airplane crashes. The "crash" we're going to see in this situation is a Trump win in 2020.
1
At some point the US needs to consider whether or not it wants to live in the 21st century. Irrationally clinging to antiquated and arcane systems is not representative of a country that landed on the moon.
The US needs to standardize voting systems, incorporate reliable technology and modernize.
Caucuses are an affront to democracy and unavailable to a significant portion of the electorate who doesn't have 2 hours at night to trade horses.
3
One thing I would like to see is that which states go first, second and third in primary voting be on a rotating basis. No state should have a monopoly on being the "early" state.
Second, lesson learned, the Iowa Democratic leaders were to busy grandstanding and not taking care of their business. Whoever is going to go first better get their ducks in a row instead schmoozing it up.
Third lesson learned, if you are going to implement a new system of recording votes, you better give your IT contractor enough time to work out the bugs and train everyone.
3
Wow! So much worse than we thought. I would rarely agree with Weaver but he’s correct...the results of the past 100 yrs are suspect.
So discouraging for all the party & campaign volunteers. I’m sure this will be the last Iowa Democratic Caucus.
3
A lot of this seems to stem from the fact that no one had basic professional computer skills. It is one thing for the volunteers to lack those skills, but someone needs to have them. This is an issue that many of us face in hiring: apps are great tools, but a newly developed app is akin to a laser level insofar as it vastly improves your ability to use other traditional tools - it does not replace a hammer. App development should not be the be all and end all, and having new technology created does not mean you are done. You still have to practice, prepare and have your backups, and be well versed in those backups.
1
Drop this state-by-state, region-by-region primary system. Every state votes at the same time, but maybe giving them two or three days voting window. The winner wins the nomination.
1
This was a disaster and casts doubt that the Democratic Party can accomplish anything at all, despite the outlandish promises of its candidates, particularly Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. It is time to convert the outmoded Iowa Caucus System to a primary election. The Iowa Caucus is no longer quaint. It's completely dysfunctional.
2
Why has Troy Price, Dem. State Chair, not resigned? An establishment hack. And while we're at it, Tom Perez hasn't exactly shined in this chaotic moment for Dems competence. Perez was imposed on the progressive wing of the party by Obama and the Clinton crowd.
Keith Ellison would have been a better choice.
No way to start an election year.
Bernie winning the most votes and yet fewer delegates says it all.
8
This article says absolutely nothing about the process that took place over the last week. Unlike all previous Iowa Caucuses, this one had a paper trail created. Unfortunately, that paper trail was mailed in from most of the 1678 caucus sites across the state. The officials and the volunteers took that paper trail, as they came in, and individually recreated each of the 1678 caucuses, from start to finish. Yes, a few caucuses weren't run by the rules. But, with the paper trail, a proper winner of those caucus could be determined, by recreating them. As far as Sanders' claim that previous caucuses have been run incorrectly, he is absolutely false. The numbers that he claims were "calculated" for the last "hundred years" we're indeed calculated. But, that's all that was done with those numbers, in the past. Those numbers weren't recorded, because they didn't have anything to do with the ultimate goal of the caucus. So, reporting this, like this article does, is disgusting.
1
What kind of people want to serve on political party committees? I would suggest that they're self-centered egomaniacs who don't want the responsibility of being actual politicians answering to real voters. If your idea of fun is sitting through hours of boring meetings so that you can appear on national TV and tell everyone how great your are, then you might want to look at this job.
See you at the awards banquet!
1
All of this is why Bloomberg should win the nomination.
3
At least the Russians and the Ukrainians were not involved. That is the good news. No outside interference. Too difficult to intervene in the flawed caucus process. I can see why Bernie is still mad after 2016.
1
Tom Perez has got to go. We need a serious executive running the party.
5
"..the state party’s chief financial officer did not know how to operate a Google spreadsheet application.."
What a wonderful reminder that the Democratic party is full of incompetent people who wouldn't survive five minutes in the private sector.
Where do they find these people?
3
When the glory of your position in line outshines the sincerity of your duties you get the Iowa Caucasus.
1
"As caucus night gave way to a week of finger-pointing, some local Democratic volunteers expressed anger at what they saw as efforts by national party officials to blame Iowa for the mess." Who else would you blame for this fiasco? I know, blame another state that has never had election problems. Yeah, blame someone else for the incompetence exhibited by using an antiquated system just to get bragging rights to have the first vote.
2
Was the 4chan activity criminal? Is it possible to prosecute that interference? If so - let’s get at it!
Enough is enough!
8
The choice now is clear: on one side we have a mob of disorganized wannabees with good ideas but unable to implement them and on the other side we have a mob of well disciplined political mafiosos, terrorized by their bosses, well organized but with no ideology except for blind support for the top don. We face a bleak future!
5
What other country starts their campaigning two years before the election and milks, milks, milks it to death until everyone is 'sick' of the internal bickering, boring speeches, cringe worthy debates, back stabbing, endless 24/7 speculation, polls and more polls and more polls. Media frenzy, opinion after opinion on who said what, who's paying for what. Candidates publicly denigrating each other for TWO YEARS+ is extremely counterproductive and a losing strategy. Is the choice for voters going to be, "who is the least worst of the lot"?
The critical problem the US is facing: FASCISM. That's what's looming. That's the real fight at stake. Not medicare, not immigration, not the economy, not minimum wage. Repeat: FASCISM. Get it together democrats or it all goes down the tubes..
6
It pains me to say this as a devoted reader, but The Times reporting on this is difficult to trust. The full extent of the problems in Iowa are still not known, indeed. The article claims that an analysis was done by The Times, showing errors in 1 in 6, or over 283 precincts, yet later says that, after reviewing the data, at least 10%, or 170 precincts, "appeared" to improperly allocate delegates. Which is it? We are never told what data was analyzed or reviewed. We are also told that the precinct worksheets are, for some unexplained reason, "inaccessible". Then what actual data was reviewed and, if that data is trustworthy, why is there not a precinct-by-precinct breakdown of the errors in those 170 or 283 precincts showing which candidates benefitted from the errors? The article studiously avoids this. How can democracy function if the worksheets are classified?
Here's what we know: In 2016, Sanders won the popular vote in Iowa yet mysteriously "lost" the state by a whisker to Clinton with no paper trail by which to check. In 2020, a top aide for Clinton is head of the I.D.P. The shady C.E.O. of Shadow, Inc, is also a vet of Clinton's 2016 campaign. Even Clinton's 2016 campaign manager is involved in Iowa's 2020 election security. And, bust my buttons, in 2020, Bernie, ahead in the polls, again wins the popular vote, yet a guy with ties to Shadow, Inc, experiences a dramatic swing in completely untrustworthy results, declares victory with an inaccessible paper trail.
9
I have exactly zero sympathy for Steve Drahozal of Dubuque and his precious volunteers. They elected the self-important Troy Price and suffered the state party office to be run by a bunch of incompetents. As a result of their poor decision-making, they've humiliated and embarrassed Democrats everywhere. To whom much is given, much is expected. If the nation permits Iowa to "go first" and have such a lop-sized influence on the selection of the nominee, then they bloody well have to make sure they can run the caucuses and report the results promptly and accurately.
5
TAKE THE MONEY OUT OF POLITICS. PASS A FAIR AND BALANCED NEWS LAW. GIVE PEACE A CHANCE VOTE FOR BERNIE.
5
@rupert even as we speak big donors are flocking Pete Buttigieg Biden Amy Klobuchar, they openly shamelessly take money from corporates celebrities anyone.
Like trump took from Sondland and we know how that ended.
2
The simple solution to the Caucus system in Iowa is to eliminate the quaint caucus system and switch to something akin to the Hare proportional representation system where voters get to choose their first second and even third choices. But using a secret ballot where they can truly vote for whom they want without revealing to their neighbors that they are either a flaming socialist or a deplorable racist bigot. If their first choice does not get get enough total votes to pass a designated threshold that candidate is eliminated and their second choice is added to the total of that candidate, etc. That way everyone's vote counts and outlier candidates still have a chance if they are in the running after less popular candidates are eliminated. Your boss doesn't know whom you voted for and you still can get someone you voted for even if they were not your first choice. Everyone (almost) is happy. The system has been working satisfactorily in enlightened democracies around the world.
2
The Headline of the NYT article should've been related to this statement at end of article. Why wasn't it at the beginning?: "There are criticisms they can make, but this was an extremely smooth, well-organized caucus. We just couldn’t get the data reported.”
1
That's like saying, "We put the engine in the car, we just forgot to put gas in it". Sigh. I'm embarrassed to be a registered Democrat.
3
The idea that this "fiasco" can be explained away by "poor planning" and "human error" is absurd. What happened in Iowa was designed to happen. The concept of "sowing confusion and chaos" to achieve a political goal is not new. In fact, it happened in Iowa just four years ago. Evidently, the NYTimes has a short memory:
From Iowa 2016:
"Technological breakdowns and reporting snafus were actually one of the many problems that plagued Monday’s Iowa Democratic caucus"
"They paint a picture of a state party that was wholly unprepared for the 171,517 Democratic voters who chose to participate, and failed to provide proper training for the hundreds of new volunteers expected to staff the caucuses."
"Much of the blame for the Iowa chaos is being laid at the feet of the state Democratic party and its leader, Andrea McGuire"
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/how-iowa-democrats-couldnt-handle-a-two-candidate-race-218934
The ultimate goal and end result of the intentionally planned "chaos" in the 2016 and 2020 Iowa debacles is clear to anyone who has any critical thinking ability:
Stop Bernie Sanders at all costs.
5
So... Bernie definitely won Iowa in 2016, right? I mean, it’s pretty obvious. And very bad.
A credulous, uncritical tech-utopianism has infected the culture.
2
Why is this "EPIC"? To me this was a glitch that was recognized and corrected - unlike the foreign interferences of the past.
1
Why is the Media so preoccupied with this? Buttigieg got 14 delegates and Sanders 12 -- they need 2,000 to win. If it took 2 months to get results, who cares? Iowa is not representative of the country and caucuses are not democratic. Maybe go back to more reporting on Hilary's emails while the Russians steal another election.
2
Setting aside issues with whether Iowa should be first or whether they should use the caucus system, my primary concern is RELIABLE VOTE TALLIES--especially now that we know other nation states are tampering with our elections.
Over 10 years ago, a NYT story reported on research on the most reliable voting methods conducted by MIT and several other top tier universities. According to their broad meta-study, the most reliable method was an OPTICAL SCAN PAPER BALLOT. This minimized the opportunity for software bugs and hacking of results, and it allowed for paper verification of results.
As one who used to work in software development, it is rare to release any product without bugs. I cannot comprehend why states continue to move toward electronic voting, unless they actually want the vote to be inaccurate.
At a minimum, the Iowa Democratic Party should have retreated to a paper system as soon as they knew there were problems with the new software ap.
9
@Mary Kirk, yes! Optical scan paper ballot-by-mail, with at least two weeks in the voters' hands before the deadline. It's simple, effective, and well proven now in any number of states. Why it's not the national standard by now is a national failure.
2
This is a positive for the Democrats. With no clear winner and no clear front runner, the chances of a brokered convention are increasing. That’s when delegates can select Bloomberg as the nominee. He’s the only candidate in the field that can beat Trump. He’d get the Democrats, most Independents, and many disgruntled Republicans. Thanks, Iowa!
3
Not all innovation leads to good outcomes. Leadership rarely takes responsibility in the age of technology. Love how the DNC helped make this happen.
6
How exactly did the DNC make this happen? Please be exact.
1
Why is the Times picking on Iowa because the Democratic caucus count was screwed up? It is a relatively easily correctable problem. I don't recall any such hand wringing in 2000 when the Florida presidential vote hinged on "hanging chads," and the Supreme Court intervened to tell us we had elected war monger, George Bush.
3
@jwljpm if you don't recall the hand wringing, along with the screaming, yelling, and protests in 2000 over the "chad" issue then you must have been living on a deserted island at the time.
1
It’s good that the NYT reports on this. Other states need to be on top of their game. I always thought that caucuses only made sense in rural sparsely populated areas. Now with modern reporting methods and communication primaries are the way to go. Caucuses require a lot more manpower and interaction by the party to pull off. So if you want it organized you need a certain amount of paid staff or experienced volunteers to run things. Still I’m sure they salvaged what they could and the numbers are reasonably accurate. Iowa screwed up but it’s time to move on. We know who ranks where and besides bragging rights nothing really is lost.
2
In Iowa the curtain has been pulled back on an endemic, institutionalized, and undemocratic process in their caucuses.
I’m afraid we also saw an undemocratic unfair process in the DNC for the crucial primaries of 2016.
Party bosses, Party captains, Party operatives. PLEASE, no more.
17
The most telling lines defining the disaster spell out distrust between the national and state Democratic organizations.
"In July, according to the email, Kat Atwater, the D.N.C.’s deputy chief technology officer, proposed language for vendor contracts that would give the national party access to source code, and allow it to test apps and other products used by the state party.
Iowa party officials rejected the proposed language."
Demanding access to source code is not uncommon when paying for customized software - that is a deliverable. The problem is the Iowa state party ostensibly paid for and owns the code, not the national party with its ties to the Clinton campaign.
3
What happened in Iowa has no impact on my opinion regarding our national elections. This generalization is an attempt to vitiate the significance of the failure in Iowa. The message here is that Democrats were poor planners and administrators, and created a set of rules that could not be implemented and were poorly thought through.
3
The UK held a vote of approximately 24 million people some two months ago. The results were counted and reported in approximately 12 hours. They used paper voting, no reliance on "technology" other than reporting. How hard is it to count a few papers? Iowa tried to count a few hundred thousand votes.
8
@Tony N
The UK probably didn’t have corrupt elements of a particular party trying to tilt the results...
3
@Tony N In the 1980's I worked at some elections in Mississippi where we had paper ballots. The ballots were gone through one by one and the votes called out by one person. Two people had tally sheets to tally them, and we had to stop periodically and make sure they agreed. The door was open and anyone could come in (quietly) and make sure there were no shenanigans. We were done in the wee hours and the ballots were there in case anyone wanted to do a recount.
Sometimes more technology isn't better.
2
@Laura
The UK has a similar system. You can see it at work here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uk+vote+counting&t=ffnt&iax=videos&ia=videos
I was in Iowa for the caucus. It's a wonderful time to listen to every candidate, shake their hands, get a photo. It's valuable for the candidates, obviously, as they build an organization and deepen their campaigning skills. I worked for Klobuchar, and she has developed into an outstanding candidate thanks to Iowa.
The problems with Iowa are demographic and economic, and the chaos of the caucus is simply a manifestation. The urban centers are prospering, rural communities are dying. I was a precinct captain that had 150 participants in 2008, 35 this year. People have moved or died.
Caucusing is just ranked choice voting except you do it in a gymnasium and vote with your feet. We should all be doing ranked choice both for primaries and for general elections!
9
What this fiasco highlights is the insanity of allowing Iowa to play such an outsized role in the nomination. We should stop this nonsense by implementing a schedule of just 2 or 3 "Super Tuesday" style dates during which every state would hold its primaries.
6
"Epic. Fiasco. Disaster." These are all words chosen by the reporters. I'm beginning to think reporters' expectations are too high in general. In the grand scheme of things, broken caucus software barely merits a yawn. America is built on buggy software and hardware: the self-driving car that drives itself under a semi and slices off its passenger's head; the rocket that thinks it's somewhere else; the plane that dives itself into the ground; the voice-control software that broadcasts private life to the whole world.
3
From my point of view here on the ground, the Iowa caucus “crisis” seems to exist largely in the minds of the media. Most people shrugged and moved on. To my mind, a much more real story connected with it was the deliberate election interference that happened when someone published the state call-in numbers on 4-Chan, and volunteer right-wing operatives proceeded to jam the lines. That is far more newsworthy, a warning of genuine danger yet to come to democratic elections in this country.
12
And this is with a LOT of Dem humans in the loop trying to make sure the data is secure and accurate. Imagine how easy it must be to hack into a computer where no one actually examines the fidelity of the data before or after it’s transmitted for final tally further down the data chain!
Between the Iowa Caucus and the impeachment, the Democratic Party lost the election. I’m a Democrat who just voted in California by mail and I think Trump won last week.
6
Exactly.
Who won the Iowa Caucuses? Donald Trump, unfortunately.
2
An “epic fiasco”?
It was a debacle and a wake up call to do much better, but Iowa is only one of fifty states and 1/50th does not make a whole.
If N.H., hopefully, runs smoothly, or, dare we hope, well, will the headline be, “an epic success for the Democratic Party”? And thus will the ones working to elect trump not be given further talking points by headlines such as this?
The media love to analyze every tiny minute of every day, as if the importance were earth shattering.
Just the volume of articles written each day scrutinizing every word uttered or done in this nominating process exhausts me and makes me want to tune out.
Except for trump possibly getting re-elected, I can’t afford to do so.
But media, please stop making the propaganda from the trump side easier to write.
3
Michigan - which has been a blue state for years - flipped to Trump last election. So did a few other blue "strongholds." The inadequacy of the Dem leadership to not have the forethought to change the primary calendar to begin with one of the states they lost last time around is just mind boggling astounding. All we hear is how the election is about beating Trump then we see absolutely no new strategy or game plan to actually accomplish this. The DNC has had its finger on the scale for so long they don't even realize that the nation as a whole has moved on from their antiquated game playing and the results will not be pleasant. Time for both parties to be shelved and give the power back to the people - one vote per citizen, no super delegate silliness. Power to the people!
8
If they cant even get this right than how do they expect to get elected?
4
To put things in context, let's remember that American elections have usually had a "shadow" element. But it is now high-tech.
For example, according to Robert Caro, LBJ was elected to the US Senate by ballot stuffing. (See here for NY Times reporting on it: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/11/us/how-johnson-won-election-he-d-lost.html)
Similarly, JFK's dad pulled a lot of strings to get his son elected to the Senate. Seymour Hersch has written about it.
2
It seems the Iowa Farmers were ovewhelm by this new technology.We should get rid of the Electoral College, and simplify
the process and have a popular vote so that every vote counts.
This would eliminate things like Trump.
5
@Independent1776 and eliminate the opinion of smaller states as well. Don't change the system because you don't like the outcome.
Hand marked, hand counted paper ballots. Communicate the results by phone with Red and Blue witnesses at both ends. No computers or software to hack, or break down. All e-voting systems are corruptible and sadly, are corrupted. This is an emergency. We must demand no more "Fake Elections". Simple and fool proof. A real election will dethrone the Red dictators.
4
Reading about this comedy of errors in Iowa only reinforces my belief that President Trump will be re-elected.
If the Democrats can’t run a state caucus, how can we expect them to run the country?
The Republicans may be just as incompetent, but they’re better at concealing it.
2
It looks like using a pencil would have been handy.
4
That's from a Democratic party official about refusing to change math errors:
“Any judgment of math miscalculations would insert personal opinion into the process by individuals not at the caucus"
Now 2+2=4 is a personal opinion.
9
Reminds me of the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Is this how democrats do things? Good ideas, terrible implementation?
2
Tell us about the Republican health care plan.
I see a lot of readers want to cover their eyes and ears to this. As much as you dislike it, it would be nice to know how this screwup REALLY happened so it doesn't get repeated. I commend the Times for digging deeper.
6
The caucus math worksheets are abysmal! Handwritten tallies scratched over with pencil? Really? The entire healthcare record system disallows ANY scratch outs PERIOD. Mistakes must be clearly crossed out with ONE single line AND initialed by the winter in order to remain visible even AFTER the correction is written. This criteria is mandatory for ALL healthcare workers in EVERY discipline including surgeons, doctors, nurses, and nursing assistants etc..
This methodology is also the gold standard for electronic records. Mistakes are always visible and legible on computer rendered printouts.
#abolishcaucus
12
It was a software problem, not the Democratic Party problem. Get some perspective, folks.
1
I can not blame the candidates for the poor design of the program used. My wish list in a president is one whom is strong in character. Intelligent, honest, has a great deal of integrity, puts country and citizens well before party lines, and one with moral turpitude. In other words, anyone other than the egotistical, lying dolt we have currently!
4
@An Independent American
Andrew Yang is who you are looking for.
How long is this hand-wringing foolishness going to continue. A bad piece of Python code in an app has taken over the NYT banner headline. This is exactly the 2016 journalistic mentality that gave us Trump and the current political disaster.
Snap out of it. Our republic is under daily assault by the GOP, Australia is up in smoke, Antarctica is warmer than San Francisco and this is the dead-horse you continue to beat? You're better than this.
2
investigating how it was managed for years sounds like your job but the press was too busy fetishizing quaint provincial customs
1
Okay, NYT – let’s sit down, take a deep breath, and relax for a minute. Yes, there are lots of flaws in the way the Iowa caucus was run. Yes, there are errors and inconsistencies in the reported results (there probably always has been). Yes, the Iowa Democratic Party is appropriately embarrassed by the way this worked out (or didn’t).
But the bottom line is, we know what we need to know – Iowans support Pete and Bernie in approximately equal numbers. Joe and Liz were both disappointed. Amy is still alive.
Whether Bernie should have been awarded the same number of delegates as Pete, or maybe one more than Pete, doesn’t really matter. Except in the minds of the media. And in the minds of the candidates, who desperately want to declare “victory” in a contest that shouldn’t be worth much more than a four-paragraph story in the Times.
Everyone whines about Iowa’s spoiled-brat, hold-my-breath-until-I-get-what-I-want attitude about being the “first” contest. And then the media, none of whom have apparently ever dealt with a bratty child, proceed to treat this contest as “critical.” And the Times needs to do an “investigation” to reveal why one candidate or another might have received one more (or less) delegate than he deserved.
Sadly, we’ll go through a similar process on Wednesday, dissecting results from another contest that really shouldn’t matter.
I know you need to fill the pages of the paper (or the web site), but PLEASE, NYT - get a little perspective!
4
@Gary
"Iowans support Pete and Bernie in approximately equal numbers"
Bernie won the first alignment by over 6,000 votes and the final alignment by 2,500 votes. One need not be a mathematician to see that these are not "equal numbers".
Your incorrect statement shows the power of the media in manipulating public perception.
This election interference by the media is directly responsible for Buttigieg being the recipient of the Iowa bounce and jumping 12 points in the NH polls.
In effect, the media is thwarting the will of the people.
2
The DNC's job is to ensure a fair, impartial, and democratic process for nominating a Presidential candidate.
Both Price and Perez failed in Iowa and both should be held accountable so we can move on.
Some aspects of this that really stink:
1) They had a year to plan for this caucus and should have had the technology tested and the volunteers trained long before January. Instead it appears they rushed this technology. Perez is responsible for this.
2) Shadow, Inc has a history of failures. Why were they chosen as the app developer? Perez is responsible for this.
3). How do you run an impartial caucus while hiring a software developer for reporting and calculating software, who is under hire by one of the candidates? Perez is responsible for this.
4) How do you run an impartial election while refusing to correct basic math errors? Price is responsible for this.
5) Reporting errors from the caucus sites, what the heck. Iowa's digging in and refusing to correct these discrepancies and the DNC is allowing it. Price is responsible for these failures.
Of course plenty of democrats are mad at Sanders because he asked for transparency. But now we see what is under the hood of this mythological first caucus site.
15
Conservatives are really good at changing the news cycle. Why is the NY Times droning on about this story. Iowa will get their results together in the next few weeks. It's time to move on to New Hampshire and beyond.
1
A one day, national primary, is long overdue. The current format creates a defacto “electoral college” effect giving certain states disproportionate influence in the process.
6
Novel idea: do away with staggered state primaries and caucuses that place undo importance on individual states that do not represent the country as a whole. Make Primary Day- where every registered voter for their party votes their top 3 or 5 candidates and ranks them. Aggregate those results- and we have a nominee. I know- crazy to think we could do something efficiently in this country where politics are involved.
12
@Chris I would be for 5 primary days with 10 states each so that it would give a chance to a lesser known candidate to make up some ground against someone cash rich like a Steyer or Bloomberg. If we only had a 1 day primary, that would give quite the upper hand to the cash rich which wouldn't necessarily be the smartest or best candidate.
Maybe we should have presidential primaries on the same date for all states. Maybe they should also all be open primaries - there are more independents (41%) than there are either Republicans or Democrats (about 28% each). Might find the best candidates that way. The current system is pretty flawed. US Citizens certainly aren’t benefiting from the current arrangements...wonder who is?
6
Clearly there is a high level of disfunction and chaos in the Democratic organization in which we have put so much faith to defeat Trump. The only good thing about the debacle of the Iowa caucus is that it is the first primary event of the year and reveals the level of the problems within the party early enough that hopefully they can be addressed and remedied, before more damage results. I'm not entirely hopeful though given that they have had 3 years to prepare for the coming election primaries, and now have almost no time to identify problems and fix them. The irony is that we have been so obsessed with protecting the elections from Trump's interference that we may have undermined the credibility of our own election primaries. Time for an emergency change in leadership. This is a perfect storm.
4
Just further proof that the system of antiquated caucuses needs to be ended. It is quaint and historical, but has no place in modern elections.
States that have primaries do not have this problem. This is the 21st century. It is past time to update our electoral system. From automatic enrollment for all citizens, to instant voting, to the elimination of the electoral college. The past 3 years have been proof of how badly the system has been compromised in all aspects from gerrymandering to inadequate voting facilities. To get all worked up about the Iowa caucus is to concentrate on the symptom, not the disease.
7
Our systems up and down are designed to be rig-able by those that hold the puppet strings.
When transparency is introduced, the rig-ability is exposed.
Therefore either the systems remain opaque and our politics rigged, or we move to a true democratic process. One person, one vote and the winner wins. No electoral college. With paper ballots and an audit trail.
We need a revolution in our politics.
We have never had a true democracy.
16
Caucuses are a bad idea for so many reasons.
First, they require people to spend hours on a specific day to vote, and this isn't feasible for many people who might have to work or have other obligations at that time.
Second, just the fact that it requires people to spend hours in a confrontational environment where you're more or less forced to defend your voting decision to people you probably have never met before can be daunting and offputting to many people who would prefer to simply cast a ballot to have their vote registered... like in...normal elections.
Third, it tends to be a pretty complex process, which nobody is really a practiced expert in since it only happens once every 4 years.
Fourth, with the local caucus officials who also support their own candidates, being in charge of handwritten tallies of the results there is real potential for voter fraud during the reporting process.
When I had to caucus in WA in 2016 (hopefully the last time I ever have to do it), it was pretty obvious to me how error prone the process was, with the potential for local interference in the counts.
I'm VERY glad the WA Democrats moved away from caucuses this year, and hope they're never brought back. I'd strongly suggest all other states get rid of them too.
22
Price is typical of so many party officials, an aid riding the coat-tails of senior politicians who is then given management responsibility for the first time. More experienced people would have taken a more incremental approach, but this guy didn't know what he didn't know. These elections should be under the control of neutral government officials like state and county auditors who are full-time professionals at this.
12
I agree with Peter. The media should give up on its obsession with Iowa and New Hampshire. Believe it or not, there are 50 states in the US. But in a presidential election year, you wouldn't know it. We are losing sight of the big picture here. The candidates need to stop fighting each other and unify in their effort to beat Trump. But it's not just about Trump. It's about all the Republicans who banded together to cover up the truth. They need to present their differing ideas without attacking each other and may the person who Americans identify with take home the prize. But they also need to remember there are other states. I wish they would consider other voters more. But hey, I'm just a Democrat in a red state.
14
If we could turn your red state blue, it would go a long way toward making things a lot better.
Enough with Iowa. Forever. Now let's move on from having the candidates focus on New Hampshire, too. Isn't it possible to find a smallish early state that's more demographically representative of this country?
5
If nothing else, this report indicates frustration among Democrats with the party’s national leadership is only going to get worse now that Iowa has peeled back the curtain. The narrative of smug insiders oblivious to their own incompetence is going to provide the GOP with endless talking points.
The fact that this is happening while the most corrupt administration and political party in US history is consolidating its grasp on power is catastrophic for everyone.
The Democratic establishment successfully defended itself from Howard Dean and his attempts to make it a 50 state party. It has resisted efforts by progressives to reform itself while it does its best to starve them of resources and block their candidates.
But the idea this proves there is no difference between the parties overlooks a key dynamic. The GOP embraces its corruption and is fully united behind Trump.
The Democratic candidates need to meet and issue a joint statement on the fiasco in which they all agree on a mechanism to resolve it. They also need to make clear that Iowa is the exception, not the rule.
One more thing. It’s better this happened at the start of the primary season while there is still time to recover.
Iowa isn’t the only state where the Democratic State establishment needs a wake up call; compare and contrast what’s happening in Florida with Virginia, where the party has made huge gains.
It’s not rocket science: lead, follow, or get out of the way.
6
Under reported has been that apparently 4chan devotees deliberately tied up the phone lines. This is the kind of uncivil behavior that fouls democracy, and it generally comes from just one side.
11
And they are going to run a country, right?
Besides, we are not fooled. We know this was all done to keep Bernie off the TV the night of the caucus, which he won handily as we slowly found out, as usual, after the damage was done.
And then of course it was time for the bogus re-canvassing just as the votes were finally being tabulated, because Perez doesn’t have the decency to resign.
Let’s see what kind of chicanery the DNC comes up with in New Hampshire. They are not really afraid Bernie will lose; they are afraid he will win and all their plutocrat and corporate donors and highly paid consultants and media celebrities will actually have to pay taxes, like us peons.
Tge DNC: looking for new and innovative ways to lose elections. Ask Presidents Gore, Kerry and Clinton.
5
@Ignatz Farquad Sometimes Bernie folks are really, really exhausting.
Bernie has had plenty of spotlight, continues to have plenty of spotlight, and is in great position to take the nomination. Last go-round it was not "taken" from him in any sense of the word, as Clinton simply garnered far, far more votes. In fact, its amazing that a private party let him run at all, with an entirely fair shot at gathering its nomination, when he isn't even part of said party.
Constantly spinning conspiracy reminds me of another candidate and his followers, and trust me, the comparison isn't flattering.
1
@bp
Maybe you should read Donna Brazile's book:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/06/donna-brazile-book-shows-real-cancer-eating-at-democrats-commentary.html
"A paranoid is a person in possession of the facts." William Burroughs.
2
@bp
Well perhaps you should read Donna Brazile's book:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/06/donna-brazile-book-shows-real-cancer-eating-at-democrats-commentary.html
"A paranoid is a person in possession of the facts." William Burroughs. A conspiracy theory is not a conspiracy theory if it's true. Then it's called: a conspiracy.
And as far as the old canard goes of him not being a Democrat - well he's more of a Democrat than anyone else running. He's an FDR Democrat. You remember FDR? Familiar with him? President from 1933 to 1945? The Democrat who was elected 4 times in giant landslides because he did things for people - not corporations, not plutocrats.
So it looks like the Iowa caucus has never actually reported good results. Thanks for that Bernie 2016! Now maybe it is time to look at other contests that used archaic and labyrinthine rules to keep voters out of the democratic process. Here’s looking at you New York Primaries.
4
@Hypoteneus I lived in NY for years and could never vote in a primary because I refused to "join" a political party. Because I would not toe the line and join and give credence to the corrupt parties, I, as a citizen of the U.S., the supposed hallmark of freedom, lost my right to vote. How can people stomach these parties which trounce on our basic right to vote???
2
Admittedly, it was disconcerting to see results delayed over several days last week. And the app was obviously not adequately tested or vetted. But the national tantrum that was displayed on msnbc was hardly necessary and injected too much skepticism and panic among viewers and also among participants. This is democracy, folks. It’s not neat or always timed to meet an evening broadcast schedule.
4
If this mess isn't an indication that the caucus system needs to be abandoned for the rational, one person one vote, I don't know what other signs and wonders are needed. Nationally, paper ballots seem to be necessary until electronic voting machines and tabulators are deemed accurate and tamper proof. Surely the wizards of Silicon Valley can collaborate for the good of the nation. In the mean time, the press is taking advantage of the chaos: conducting coronations of a few and consigning other delegates to purgatorial status- after one null and void primary.
3
Project management failure at every step. And, now an unwillingness of leadership to take responsibility. “No excuse” is the first phrase Americans should be hearing. President Obama made this point years ago about initiative. Did the party forget it?
3
No, the epic fiasco was the failed impeachment, which was measured in Moscow and Beijing as having a magnitude of 8.7 on the political weakness scale; the Iowa debacle was an aftershock - actually, a series of aftershocks, since some of the primary candidates can't shut-up about it.
2
I am sorry Iowa. In the year 2020 you are hardly indicative of the way the great majority of Americans think, especially the democratic half of this country. I ask one question, if the Iowa and NH primaries came much later in the year, if they came around in April or May, after states like New York, Florida and Michigan had voted, exactly how many member of the press would cover them, and how much news would they make? So far Bloomberg has done everything right, including skipping the self damaging debates, and bypassing both Iowa and NH.
4
"did not know how to operate a Google spreadsheet application used to input data"
This one statement says a lot. In this day and age, how can someone in a public office not have the basic technology skills to input data on a spreadsheet, be it Excel or Google spreadsheets? It's not like they were being asked to build complex mathematical models; it's just inputting data! This is a complete failure of leadership on the part of the Iowa Democratic Party and the DNC to hire the right people with the right skillsets.
Troy Price should have spent more time working on the organization of the caucuses than posing for glamour shots with the presidential candidates. I hope his name gets sufficiently tarnished that he never works in another political organization again.
Abolish the caucuses and replace them with primaries. The last picture in the article is very revealing - most of the people there are older white folks; these are the only ones who can afford to spend hours at a caucus. Do you think a young parent with 2 toddlers is going to have the time to sit in a gym for 3 - 4 hours? By keeping the caucuses around, the Iowa Democratic Party is disenfranchising large segments of the population.
17
As we continue to face the risk of meddling by Russia and other foreign entities, it's clear that depending on local organizations and volunteers to manage elections is at best inefficient and at worse foolhardy. For all their good intentions, elections are too often handled locally by a group of technologically challenged individuals who in this case seem to have functioned in silos with little to no communication. Advice to login with a smart phone when smart phones aren't allowed?! A CFO who doesn't know how to use a Google spreadsheet, which is essentially identical to Excel?! No testing or training on an app that was developed in a short time for not much money?! Common sense tells us that this was a recipe for disaster.
7
"The first signs of trouble came early . . ."
Except that they were able to perform a recount, and thus THIS count has legitimacy.
Now let's talk about the REAL fiasco when it comes to voting, ie, Donald Trump and this GOP's horrible tactics when it comes to actually voting during a bona fide election.
3
Why not a good old fashion bank of fax machines to collect the paper results? Businesses have relied on facsimiles for decades. We used fax machines at a can plant I worked at in college to collect daily production totals, and it worked 100% of the time. The average age of volunteer caucus workers aside, an “app” is still complicated for even techies at times.
If I was Tom Perez, and the fate of my parent corporation relied on what a subsidiary (Tom Price and the Iowa Democratic Party) did or did not do, you can bet I would have been “hands on.” What a fiasco.
4
The people (like James Carville) who assured us that a moderate candidate like Hillary Clinton is the answer to Trump, and handed him a victory, also shaped the DNC makeup by putting people like Tom Perez on the top. And we get another fiasco. But still they are trying to scare us that Bernie is the problem. No. Bernie is not the problem. You are the problem. Elect Bernie/Warren and add Pete as VP and we have a great ticket. Stop listening to these Clinton/Carville camp and do the right thing.
6
3 years of blaming Russia for Trump’s victory, it is going to be hard for the American people to believe the Democrats’ Primary isn’t a rigged process. Who is to say this delay isn’t someone going in and manually adjusting every vote to get the correct outcome? It doesn’t have to be Russia, it could be a Dems powerbroker, a Republican wanting an unelectable candidate, China wants to replace Trump, or a lone disgruntled worker.
When you delegitimize the democratic process for so long, it is going to be hard un-delegitimize it. Whoever won the primary and presidential elections are going to be tainted by the legitimacy question.
4
All campaigns have an opportunity until noon today to demand a recount. I have no idea, absolutely none, why Sanders would not do so. Tactically, strategically, it's the right thing to do.
But Sanders is not a fighter, despite coming back from a heart attack. In 2016, he created a movement, and after he lost he could have put that movement permanently on the map. Instead, he offered lukewarm support for HRC, and then slinked away.
Sanders is in the grip of the sophomoric illusion that you can't attack your opponents if they are Democrats - but that's the only way you win. Who are you not going to attack if not your opponents? You think you'll win by the weight and beauty of your ideas and arguments? The problem with that notion is, all the others think their ideas are beautiful and worthy of victory.
Sanders’ one opening is that the Iowa caucuses were rigged against him, just like the 2016 election was. Nobody can prove one way or the other, but at least asking for a recount in Iowa would lend a patina of legitimacy to such a claim, which would energize his supporters. And saying nothing to not make waves with the DNC is a loser: the DNC will again do everything in their power to make sure Sanders does not get the nomination.
Mr. Sanders: first you must beat your opponents, before you can beat Trump, and that includes the DNC. Some days, you have it backwards.
2
I think we can agree that the Democratic Party is not ready to take control of the WH or Congress. 2020 is going to Trump and the Democrats will have 4 more years to get their act together.
3
Either the Caucus means something and is valuable to the process or it isn't. Other than the Dems embarrassed in front of the whole world, what is the consequence to the process? Seems like an incredible waste of time and resources. I watch the candidates on Youtube and various screens. Why do I need Iowans? It's clear which candidates get coverage and which don't, who is anointed and who isn't. AM I missing something?
Oh, and 60Gs for an App to run something like this Statewide Frat party is about what it would cost to operate and secure the IT systems in a supermarket. And counting caucus votes is not much different than checking different cans of soup at the queue, usually performed by a high school student or part timer. At Home Depot one can bypass any human contact.
2
Republicans think Iowa is an epic fail because they conveniently forget how Trump forced hundreds of thousands of government employees to go without a paycheck 6 weeks because he was throwing a temper tantrum over his $9 bilion wall Congess refused to fund. Anyone remember that fiasco? They told him no and he declared a national emergency anyway. There is none so blind as they who will not see.
So sick of Iowa, the caucuses, and the state’s undeserved importance in the primaries.
I wish some state that is more representative of the general diversity of the US (Florida, Texas, California or New York) would step forward and go first.
The whole system is a mess, and I lay blame squarely on the Iowa DNC “leaders.”
5
Iowa is not the problem. THe DNC and Tom Perez are. He should never have been Chair. They have botched this entire campaign from before it even started. Where was the emphasis on taking back the Senate? Where was the push to winnow the selection process to managable? Where was the effort to use debate time to hear in depth candidate positions? Why did the DNC ever abandon the 50 state solution? The Pubs have had a long game and are doing quite well. We just look like we woke up - still in our pjs, hair all a mess, sleep in our eyes asking what day it is. And we are supposed to be the nerdy smart ones...makes me want to cry.
2
Maybe one of the terrible scoundrels from the billionaire class can develop a system that accomplishes adding up totals so that the all-seeing, all-knowing visionary elites at the DNC can get on with making our lives better.
2
Iowa was an embarrassing mess, but it's passed and it's time to move on to preparing for a focused defeat of trump along with other members of his party. There is so much to remind voters of. Remember the wall that Mexico was going to pay for....well, what about golf trips to Florida every weekend, what about Access Hollywood Tapes, the list goes on forever! The president has so much horrible baggage that needs to be aired to remind his base just who he is and just who they are. The democrats by being a mealy mouthed bunch is not getting them anywhere except dividing them more.
1
Not clear why the Trump campaign jamming the phone lines is not being looked at as a violation of federal law.
1
Besides these reporting issues, the more we understand the Iowa caucus system, the more bizarre and open to manipulationand it seems. Why don't they just junk it and have people cast secret paper ballots as in most normal elections?
1
Two takeaways:
The Iowa and New Hampshire Caucuses are meaningless.
Tom Perez and the DNC are ineffective.
2
The Iowa caucuses should bill the Trump 2020 campaign for an in-kind contribution.
It works just like the US healthcare system.
1
"Troy Price"
This person doesn't know enough about tech to be allowed to use a TV.
The tech consulting firm he hired made a fool of him, I see it all the time after 20 years as a programmer: Non-tech admins with big egos thinking they are smart enough to manager tech consultancies. Instead the techies eat their lunch!
Keep this guy away from ALL further tech management. Just let him go back to glad handing donors.
1
The mess surrounding the Iowa caucus doesn't shake my confidence in the American electoral system, but it increases my doubt that the caucus system is efficient. However, I will say that new and supposedly improved voting machines being installed in many states are making me nervous. Are poll workers being sufficiently trained to use them and to show voters how to use them?
The Primary season is a long season. In many ways it is analogous of a football season. You have the preseason, then the first games. The first games are sloppy, there is a lot of rust to knock off. A loss in the first game brings sports talk radio crashing down on the team that lost, there is doom and gloom and much nashing of teeth. By mid-season the team begins to really get into the swing, and then comes the playoffs, when the field narrows to a handful of teams and our attention is concentrated. When two team are left we have the championship match up, which pits the two most polished, best coached and most resilient competitors against each other. And when the championship game is played, believe me, not one person, not even the biggest fan remembers that loss on opening day.
4
It should not be a surprise that the system failed. The party leaders in Iowa were trying to change too many things at once. If they wanted more transparency of the numbers, they needed to just change that. The added counting complexity is further complicated by American's generally sad ability with math. Just the viability calculation may be too much for some people. In addition, I'm sure counting people in a room has some cat herding issues.
However, if everyone filled out a card like they were supposed to, then it should be possible to go back and count the cards that each participant filled out. You'll still have issues if someone got the viability calculation wrong, but the results of the vote should be clear.
1
Caucuses should be replaced with primaries period. I believe that they would have been but one of the Democratic candidates thinks that they work in his favor so they stayed. It is time for the DNC to grow a backbone and take caucuses out of the presidential primaries and take a look at the order of the primaries themselves. Lots of improvements need to be made in the primary system. This disaster in Iowa was a clear indicator that the time has come for some change.
10
The Caucus system has been obsolete for decades. Now, this severely outdated system has caused a significant and embarrassing political conundrum that makes President Trump's reelection even more probable. It's time for Iowa, and the other states/territories who caucus, to surrender that antiquated procedure and conduct regular primary elections like the rest of the modern world.
8
The Iowa Caucus last week demonstrated everything that is wrong with Democratic electoral politics. The state is overwhelmingly white. There are no large urban centers in Iowa. The population is older. Iowa is hardly representative of all Democratic voters.
Then we have the debacle itself. No result totals for three days, and we've now come to learn that the Iowa Democratic Party is certifying results that still include mathematical mistakes. Iowa has an outsize influence on our election results, and thus it has an equally important responsibility to "get it right." Their voters have an incredible electoral advantage over the rest of us, because their votes give disproportionate weight to a candidate who may have little national appeal, but will be, nonetheless crowned "the winner" should he win the Iowa Caucus. And perception is everything in politics.
That the Democratic Party in Iowa, with such a small number of voters, could not complete a simple mathematical process reflects terribly on not only Iowa, but the rest of the us.
And this disaster of a primary process has given Trump an argument to deny legitimacy of the November election, as he may cry "rigged" should he lose. Iowa Democrats, sadly, have hurt the rest of us at a time when we least needed it. And the problems they've created were all self-inflicted. None of this needed to happen. Iowa should never again be permitted to go first in the primary season.
11
@Roland Deschain
It might be a better system -- to judge where the voters' sentiment is early -- to have a primary or caucus in at least three distinct areas of the country. Let's do the West Coast, the MidWest and the East Coast. Choose the most representative state or even roll the state so that each election the primary states are different. Then democrats could get a better idea of where they really stand early on. Super Tuesday comes too late.
All this mess is further proof that politicians, particularly Democrats, are incapable of managing modern business processes.
Perhaps real business professionals should be in charge? We have reached a point where only a few understand software applications, and if faults crop up they never seem to be on hand to fix them. Changes in anything need excessive real time testing before they are ready. Have we forgotten the Obamacare enrollment? Another fiasco managed by Deomocrats and we are now talking of National Heathcare!
6
Troy Price, in 2016, was a HUGE Hillary supporter and openly didn't like Sanders. If the DNC knows the director has such a big bias, why have them in charge in the first place? Why not an independent auditing firm like Ernst & Young or something?
Because of all the incompetence, it opens the possibility that this was done, on purpose, to help define the winner the establishment wants (i.e. not Sanders).
When Iowa knew they were going to have the first caucus (since 2016!), did they think that the public would have the actual results from the New Hampshire primary before them?
13
Say what you will about the disastrous reporting of results from the Iowa caucuses, but if you are from one of the 14 states in this nation that uses direct recording electronic voting machines without a paper trail, you wouldn't even know that your vote had been properly recorded or that it hadn’t been criminally manipulated, and, unlike in Iowa, there would be no way to verify it.
20
The caucus system always seemed to me like choosing sides for basketball in middle school.
This article reinforces the unreliability of new technologies, but the words that really popped out to me and were casually dropped into the account were that 4chan and other conservative outlets had posted the number of the Democratic offices and instructed their listeners/viewers to call and "flood the lines", which they did.
At what point do we admit that election tampering has reached new and disturbing levels that we're just discovering, and ACTIONS need to be taken against those abusing our First Amendment rights in order to cheat?
There are two areas where free speech ceases to exist, the equivalent of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded venue when there is none, and what are described as "fighting words". How does Fox and their similar allies not fall under these categories?
Anyway, step back now and watch the Democrats tear one another apart trying to level blame at their fellow party members, instead.
5
All this mess is further proof that politicians, particularly Democrats, are incapable of managing modern business processes.
Perhaps real business professionals should be in charge? We have reached a point where only a few understand software applications, and if faults crop up they never seem to be on hand to fix them. Changes in anything need excessive real time testing before they are ready. Have we forgotten the Obamacare enrollment? Another fiasco managed by Deomocrats and we are now talking of National Heathcare!
2
Let me be blunt: Tom Perez needs to resign. He knew the complexities, convolution and challenges of a caucus. And he didn't prepare for it? And he let an untested app insert itself in a middle of what is already a messy voting process? And the Iowa wing of the DNC leadership should also be replaced. Maybe this whole Iowa caucus should be abolished. Let Iowa join the Primaries as 32nd or 42nd State in the primaries election line. How about that? I like Iowa. I have lived there. It is changing rapidly, but when it comes to caucusing it is stuck in the 19th century.
5
A Chief Financial Officer who "doesn't know how to operate" a Google spreadsheet app? That's embarrassing and concerning.
10
DNC should eliminate caucuses as a means to pick delegates.Amazingly, the delegates are not finally picked in Iowa until the spring. Whatever those social events parties were in Iowa should be of no consequence. Regional primaries should be the only acceptable means for picking delegates with six or seven regions and a different one first every time.
Why is that so difficult?
Picking Iowa and NH first assures that the Democrats get skewed results.
More importantly how does an independent and avowed socialist like Bernie get to capture the DNC primaries every four years? Is he qualified to be the voice of the Democrats?
I am highly disillusioned by Democrats "not ready for prime time" performance in dealing with an epic battle that can easily determine if our democracy survives.
They flubbed the impeachment and gave Trump higher ratings while letting McConnell call the shots. Why was the Mueller report and its conclusions not central to the articles of impeachment? If the Dems wanted witnesses at the trial, hand Roberts subpoenas to sign or call the witnesses to testify in the House. Protest by Senate Democrats was too polite- walk out if necessary.
Democrats brought a toy knife to a gun fight.
All this mess is further proof that
politicians, particularly Democrats, are incapable of managing modern business processes.
Perhaps real business professionals should be in charge? We have reached a point where only a few understand software applications, and if faults crop up they never seem to be on hand to fix them. Changes in anything need excessive real time testing before they are ready. Have we forgotten the Obamacare enrollment? Another fiasco managed by Deomocrats and we are now talking of National Heathcare!
This fiasco plays right into R hands. It's bad enough they are rigging ballot boxes & purging democratic voter rolls coast to coast, our own party helps them thru gross mismanagement.
It's bad enough we are stuck with a con man as president, but the opposition Dems shoots themselves in the foot on the first outing gutting any confidence we can get rid of the orange monster.
My 13 year old kid writes APPs so it is inconceivable to me that the entire democratic party is so feeble. With leadership like this, why bother to hold an election?
1
Iowa had a mere four years to get their act together for this primary, yet the caucus system was a truly epic fail in every conceivable respect. If we keep putting Iowa at the front of the line and we keep giving Iowa more chances with its idiotic caucus system, we'll get what we deserve -- which is to say, squat.
To add insult to injury, Troy Price, Iowa Democratic Party chairman, said after the fiasco: “We are conducting a thorough independent review of the process, and it would be irresponsible for us to rush to judgment before that review is complete". The likelihood of this "thorough independent review" being any more thorough, accurate or timely than the review that should have been done by him and his team of the vote tallying system prior to the Iowa primary is between slim and none, at best.
Let's dump Trump in 2020, but let's dump Iowa, too. And for that matter, let's dump Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who took zero responsibility for this dumpster fire, claiming it wasn't his job to evaluate any party chair's performance. If not your job, Mr. Perez, then whose?
3
Probably what we have in front of us is pure chaos, something that surely the Republicans would welcome and, with a little help from Russia, better equipped to manage to reach their own benefits. Democrats, wake up!
Let's all agree that mistakes were made and the results were chaos. How the media have taken to reinforcing Republicons' blanket condemnation of Democrats based on what happened in Iowa is a bit disconcerting, though. It's the same "if it bleeds it leads" jurnalistic mentality that gives President Asterisk so much free publicity in his direct appeals to Republicons and his supporters.
1
A drastic overreaction. Like saying that every Presidential election is tainted because there were hanging chads in Florida in 2000.
1
Trying to affix blame regarding the foul up in the Iowa caucus results is a futile exercise. The system itself is far too complicated. Transparency is an impossible goal. 81,600 numbers to be generated and allocated.
Think about it. 1700+ caucus locations; 99 counties; 16 categories to record= 14 candidates+uncommitted +other;3 numbers collected First Vote, Final Vote, total SDEs-state delegate equivalents.
Do the math: 1700X16X3=81,600 numbers : to be allocated among 99 counties. 2152 total SDEs are then allocated to the 16 categories resulting as of Friday in 9 candidates receiving SDEs and 5 candidates receiving delegates.
2
The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Good Heavens, media - get off the cellphone and Twitter and wake up in the real world. So the reports on the Iowa caucus results were delayed due to technical glitches in a new "app." Heaven forbid it was 40 years ago when it took DAYS and sometimes WEEKS to count votes and ballots and tally everything up. Get a grip already.
2
This was not an EPIC fiasco, NYT. Iowa is only one state trying out a new system that happened to have a bug that caused some problems. Stop trying to sell more newspapers by sensationalizing something trivial the way you sensationalized Hillary's emails and helped get Trump elected. You're better than that.
3
Yes, it is epic. Whoop-de-do. Unmitigated disaster....dogs and cats are now living together, etc.
What is it, actually?
Nothing. A nothingburger.
Iowa is water under the bridge. It messed up, lost its 15 minutes in the limelight, and we're on to New Hampshire, then on from there.
This nomination will be decided sometime in the future, probably after Super Tuesday. Until then, we move on.
3
DNC Chair Tom Perez should resign or be fired.
9
How can Democrats run the country if they are so incompetent that they can’t run a caucus ? The Democratic bosses are handing the election to Trump. What’s wrong with the Democratic Party, they have become a joke ?
2
And these people think they can run a country better than trump?
2
@Sang Ze, the little toe on my right foot could run this country better than Trump.
5
This idea that timing was an issue is laughable. 'We didn't have time to get the app vetted and tested so it could be placed on the apple & Google stores...."The DNC under Tom Perez had nearly 3 years! Even now, WHERE ARE THE VOTER REGISTRATION DRIVES? Why hasn't the DNC been using the weekly Trump outrages to sign up new voters literally since the first march the day after inauguration? If the DNC had signed up 15-20 million people by the next election, it would be a landslide for the Dems. What is Tom Perez doing?
5
Epic fail? More like an epic myth that voters in one small state represent America.
7
At this point, I think selecting a candidate at random might work better
"Epic Fiasco"??
Don't think so. An epic fiasco for the Democratic Party, as well as the entire world, would be losing the 2020 presidential election.
3
If Perez isn't fired the entire election will be tainted.
4
Is it possible to move beyond this? At a time that Democrats really need to focus on what is important, it seems that the Times is only interested in drilling on about failures. What? Nothing to report on? Let's just criticize these problems to no end until we lose the next election, and then you'll have four more years of Trump and more disfunction. I suppose it will be good for business.
2
@Mark, it's the media that can't get past this story. They're doing exactly what they did in 2016 - sabotaging the 2020 election for their own personal jollies and to gin up declining circulation.
2
The worst part is it reminds people of 2016. And Bernie's populist attack is getting worse. For every "we need to stick together," there are about a hundred "all the others are infidels for accept donations money from non-believers."
Trump cultivates his base and the progressives cultivate their base, so who should the moderates support? The nothing burgers like Gabbard?
@Bos, if moderates can't figure out whom to support, they haven't been paying attention over the past 4 years.
@Bos, do "moderates" need to be told whom to support, really?
Regarding Mr Price: "He had been an aide to two former Iowa governors and a top figure in both President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign in the state and in Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 run." The DNC and Hillary the Bernie hater are still at it. Until we change out these Clinton boot lickers 2020 will be just like 2016.
4
I worked as a Election assistant in our recent Fedrral election here in Canada. We opted for the paper ballot which requires understanding how the process works. ID, someone vouching for you, destroyed ballots. changes in the voters information etc. Lots if forms. Took a class plus reading material which we all had to read and become familiar with. Some of the electorate criticized that we were using paper ballots. biggest complaint this is the 21st century why still a paper ballot. My response. You can't hack a paper ballot. That usually shut that argument down. Yeah we were finishing up until 1AM but it only happens once every four years and it is a fundamental part of how our democracy functions so embrace it.
1
@Susan This has nothing to do with the problems of Iowa. The issue was transmission to the central location, not recording of votes.
1
My prediction: when the post mortem of the 2020 fiasco is done (and it won’t be by any branch of the US DoJ, though possibly with assistance from military, media, and tech industry investigators), we will know that the GRU was the culprit. Failed app, social media incitement — all hallmarks of Russian shenanigans.
1
@MikeG Clarification: "2020 fiasco" refers not just to the Iowa caucuses, but to the entire 2020 election cycle, which will make 2016 look like a minor glitch.
1
Not the sentence,"The Iowa Democratic Party released a list of 92 precincts on Sunday that it said were flagged as problematic by three presidential candidates — Mr. Sanders; Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind.; and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts." The writers highlight the positions of Warren and Buttigieg, but not Sanders, giving him only a "Mr.". He is an active Senator. Please be consistent - it gives the impression of bias.
2
An important part of this article:
"Users on the website 4chan had publicly posted the election hotline number and encouraged one another to “clog the lines.”
Clearly, if they were doing this, they were also very likely pinging and flooding the Democrat's servers rendering them unusable... hence some of the problems with the app.
If this is the case, this is far more important than any "incompetence" on the part of The Democratic Party. This is precisely what we have been discussing since 2016; interference in our elections. We even impeached a president for it.
NYT- 4chan's involvement in this is- and who it users are- is a story worth covering.
10
One can try and blame the DNC all they want. It’s not up to Tom Perez to “run a performance review” on every state chair. The DNC also doesn’t run a “national primary”, it runs a “national nominating convention”. it has to trust that the state chairs know what they are doing. It is obvious in this case the Iowa chair — not individual Iowa Democrats — is at fault. Haphazard barely begins to describe how he’s done his job. Worried more with being the name on the marquee, he apparently left details to others while he sat around with Democrat celebs. No, I don’t know the intricate details of how my iPad works, but someone somewhere does. To not figure out what system you are going to use to report data until September of last year is irresponsible.
Punishment? Well, again, the DNC doesn’t control that. What it can do is seek to violate Iowa state law and schedule five primaries for the exact same day as the Iowa “event” whatever that will be in the future. (Apparently, Iowa state law says they will be the first in the nation primary). Next time, no matter what happens, it will be an open primary for both Rs and Ds in Iowa.
Iowans can try to turn this back on the national party. Not this time, friend. YOU own this. Admit it.
“As the caucus date approached, more updates came.” (to the app)
Last minute changes before the launch of an app will just about guarantee problems.
And this is the party that expects us to believe they can run a country? Lots of luck with that. Trump 2020.
In this age of proliferated paranoia about the "Deep State" and the "shadow government," using an app created by a company called Shadow Inc. certainly was a stroke of public relations genius.
2
I wonder if the national Democratic Party recognizes how much legitimacy it lost.
Hillary lost the election because of Russian interference? Nope. Incompetence.
Trump interfering into Ukraine? Nope, investigating, because the tools of government- held by Democrats- are incompetent.
Iowa is Democrat dysfunction on full display. Are we really going to turn this nation over to them?
In related news, Joe Biden actually called a woman in NH who asked about the Iowa caucus fiasco ‘a dog-faced pony soldier.’ No, really. Stick a fork in Joe. He’s done.
This Iowa fiasco was indeed a systemic failure. But it's not just a state party that failed, it's the present party system.
It's time to acknowledge that the American political party duopoly serves citizens poorly. Activists like caucus-goers aren't sure whether they're wasting their time. Voters have to resort to shenanigans like tactical voting: we have to game the system to make our instructions known.
It's time for a set of changes intended to weaken the stranglehold of the two political parties on the process. Guys like Perez should be obscure bureaucrats, not stars. Two suggestions:
In the state of Maine, they use ranked-choice ("instant runoff") voting. Mainers can vote their true preferences without "wasting" their votes. For example, a vote for R. Nader would not become effectively a vote for G.W. Bush.
In California they use non-partisan primaries. Voters all get the same ballot with the same names. The top vote-getters move on to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. This cuts down on the practice of rigging partisan primaries by running extremist candidates.
Measures like these, by weakening the professional political industry (pollsters, consultants, paid canvassers, opposition researchers, TV adtime buyers, and so on) make campaigns cheaper. Cheaper is better for most citizens.
It's time for some changes. Read this : https://www.hbs.edu/competitiveness/Documents/why-competition-in-the-politics-industry-is-failing-america.pdf
1
The news media needs to get over it. The Iowans have. Most in the country are waiting on NH and what follows. Yes, it's click bait. And this rehashing is meant to help the media darling, trumpy.
2
People on 4Chan did what? And who did what with the posted number?
1
@Doug Payne
Exactly. Who are they, and why are they not being charged with federal election-tampering laws?
"Mr. Perez said he was not responsible for what state parties and their leaders do. “I do not conduct a performance evaluation of every party chair,” he said."
Yeah no. That's justdoingmyjobism[1], which hasn't flown since Nuremberg. Your subordinates, especially your immediate ones, NEED to know how to do their job, or how to quickly learn to do their job, before taking it—and to NEVER send a creepyphone to do a REAL computer's job.[2]
Perhaps you can step aside. Ellison can manage, and better.
Or at the very least, don't obstruct Bernie if he's in the lead.
[1] Yenno how the janitors and entry-levels are Just Doing Their Job, the managers are Just Doing Their Job, and the C-suite's all I Can't Tell Them All How To Do Their Job? That.
[2] Phone camera evidence is good, mind, but sideways scans—like vertical videos—are invariably Doing It Wrong.
1
This is one of the reasons society and this process is messed up...STOP focusing on this and MOVE on....life is short...!!!
My first voting experience was in an Iowa caucus while in college there. I would not really call it voting. It was five people in a small room arguing for three hours over three delegates. Each of the three candidates received a delegate. Not representative of the vote in the room, but the on,y way we could end the process. I change the channel every time the Iowa caucus is mentioned every four years because I know from experience it is a colossal waste of time and energy. Sorry Iowa you need a primary and to relinquish this stupid need you have to be relevant by having a caucus so you can go first.
"This was an extremely smooth, well-organized caucus."
No, Mr. Drahozal, it was not.
As somebody who builds software for a living: for Pete's sake, don't decide to trust your entire process to software before you know what you're doing, you have the time and money to do it right, and the time to test it. And by test, I mean you, as the customer, going through and trying the software out end to end.
The app of course was the headline for awhile, it hearing the fact that they changed the system to require 2 Factor Authentication, without considering the fact that volunteers weren't allowed to have the 2nd factor (in this case, their phone)? Hearing that one of the honchos couldn't figure out how to use Google Sheets even though that was apparently part of the process?
We can't blame this on software developers, or volunteers. It's bad management.
15
@C Very true. Some locations in rural areas don't have good wifi signals, so that should have been part of the plan, also. If the caucus location is at a school, for example, have the Iowa DNC set up a secure router there for the day. It seems they didn't consider that either.
2
@C
Reminiscent of the Obamacare Exchange rollout. No end-to-end testing. No one project manager responsible for the entire project. Training slipshod.
An "F" in project management.
1
It's time to return to the technology of the 19th century--plain paper ballots with the candidates names on them with a box the voter can check off next to the candidate they want. It only takes two seconds to vote. It doesn't get any easier than that.
4
Enough Iowa caucus bashing. I have twice worked as a volunteer poll worker in Maryland, including once as a polling place co-Chief Judge, and monitored the activities of an Ohio polling place as a candidate's campaign worker. Iowa failed because it lacked elections professionalism. Maryland and Ohio maintain professional staffs that work year-round to build, verify and maintain an elections infrastructure. This professional staff also trains the volunteers who will conduct the election. The Iowa caucuses would have succeeded if the state had such professionalism.
2
It was a mess, but the press focus on the process in a small state like Iowa, which really should have limited bearing on the decision as to who would best lead the party in November, is a distraction without substance - one of a continuous stream of them. I remain far more concerned about election integrity on the national level and, dare I say it, policy.
3
The swamp in Washington is directly attributable to the Iowa caucus. The latter is the first step in a process that is supposed to clear the swamp.
The first step is an acknowledged failure; the swamp remains.
Let me be blunt: Tom Perez needs to resign. He knew the complexities, convolution and challenges of a caucus. And he didn't prepare for it? And he let an untested app insert itself in a middle of what is already a messy voting process? And the Iowa wing of the DNC leadership should also be replaced. Maybe this Iowa caucus should be abolished, and we let Iowa join the Primaries as 32nd or 42nd State in the Primaries election line? How about that? I like Iowans more than Iowa. I have lived there. It is changing rapidly, but when it comes to caucusing it is stuck in the 19th century.
5
Interesting that this situation is getting FAR more concentrated attention than the widespread voter suppression efforts underway all over the country, especially in battleground states.
3
@Jasoturner what exactly is voter suppression? I don't consider asking someone to have have an ID voter suppression
Clearly neither the state nor national democratic party committees are competent nor fair enough to run primaries. The leadership should be removed at both levels.
Beyond that it is high time we hold people criminally accountable for interfering with anyone's vote. The calls to jam phone lines are akin to preventing people in line from voting. Those who participated in that effort should be arrested.
Beyond that... well voting, counting votes and providing proof are EASILY done. It is not rocket science.
1
Here’s a novel idea. How about we have system where there’s 1 vote and whoever wins the popular vote gets all the delegates. Seems simple and straight forward. The smaller areas shouldn’t have a more weighted power to award delegates.
At a time when so many of us (myself included) already have deep concerns about the validity of our so-called free and fair elections, this compounds the problem. Not only do we have to worry about Russia, and other state actors, interfering, we can’t even trust the systems within our own country. The EC is unfair and obsolete. Gerrymandering it way out of control, AND we have to worry about Internet hacking, Tribe Trump mischief, misinformation, etc., etc. How can this be so difficult? If we’re going to survive as a representative republic, confidence in our voting system must be restored. The inequities need to be fixed, or we may end up with another revolution. When a minority of the population is able to hold all the power all the time something is amiss.
I attended what I thought was a well-run caucus. Couln't have been more surprised at the ensuing chaos. It is so sad that the volunteers who were hard-working and efficient can't , at least, receive kudos for the time and energy they put in. This fiasco could have been avoided .
2
Ths fact that the backup plan failed to phone jamming by Trumpers needs to be realized along with making sure it can't be a factor from now on. Though the old fashion way of counting pieces of paper takes time it is a sure-fire way to avoid all the different ways social media can, and will influence an election where there is no restraint on cheating. We are embarking on what I feel is the most important election of all time to save a democracy threatened by corruption.
1
Finally, it is out in the open! This is how digitization works. We all live with it. The first version just shows the flaws not only in the design concept but also the limited original thinking behind it. Everything is much more complex than anticipated. Now things got formalized, already the paper sheet design is messed up.
Setting the programming rules then exposes that in the past many people have misunderstood the rules and somehow came out with something plausible instead. The new, formalized rules then suddenly appear much less plausible (although logically correct) and are mistreated again.
All flaws would come out in the open during proper testing. Including the programmers' and the testers' limited understanding of both the intended procedure and the programming. Therefore, the less talked to the potential users, the better for them.
On the receiving end, the users have past experience with flawed programming, as well as with failure to understand any program's demands. They therefore are eager to avoid any new tool they get and instead work around it, at least for the time being.
From a user's point of view, this disaster is a typical case of an "elite" forcing something upon "ordinary people". As said, this is what everybody experiences every day. But because we are so good at working around it (and hiding our failures), the decision makers usually do not get a proper feedback. Well, here it is!
2
Everything is linked to the "electoral collage" system.
That's the reason why we need to "reform" the Senate. The problem with the senate is it’s non-representativeness. Make it a body of 100 senators elected by proportional representation. Everyone rates a slate of parties on a scale of 1 to 10, and the parties with the most high ratings get the most seats in the senate, but parties with a bit less support still get seats. This means the House of Representatives would have to get wide national support for a bill to get it through the Senate. It would be very useful to have a “house of review” that can kill off bad ideas that manage to pass the lower house.
For a nation that beats its chest about being the world’s beacon of democracy, we sure don’t do ourselves a favor by the revealing the system of duct tape, clockwork, and string that tabulates our votes. During the Florida Recount in 2000, former President Carter compared our system to that of a banana republic. If there was ever a wake-up call for nationwide electoral reform — processes, procedures, and technologies — that was it. But slept through the alarm. We know Republicans aren’t that interested in increasing the volume of votes, but the lack of Democratic efforts to reform our systems is heartbreaking.
1
One of the most disturbing comments in this article is that of Mr. Perez, who placed the lion's share of the blame on the state party. "Mr. Perez said he was not responsible for what state parties and their leaders do." “I do not conduct a performance evaluation of every party chair,” he said. This approach to a multi-level vote-tallying operation spanning all 50 states in the country's most important electoral process beggars belief. Mr. Perez's approach is akin to a military general at headquarters in war-time stating that he is not responsible for what his generals do at the front.
From the caucus level on up, the Democrats are -- or should be -- responsible for professional, accountable and trained operators in the field, from the state party leader on down. And the responsibility for Iowa's debacle starts at the top -- with the DNC. The fact that the chair of the national Democratic Party appears not to realize this simple chain-of-command scenario, then I am not hopeful that the Democrats can get its act together this year.
2
The real issue is that local officials in Iowa are so disconnected from their constituents that instead of creating temporary jobs, they spent $$$ on an app. Not everyone lives in the same bubble we live in. Most days I reconnect the printer for my older colleagues.
Lay off Iowa. Some problems happened but the nation did not collapse, not did this occurrence cement Trump in office for another four years.
The fact that they took the time to get the result count right is the primary take away.
I do agree that too much focus is placed on Iowa and New Hampshire. Some changes are needed.
Lay off Iowa. Hi after the obsession with apps and doing everything with your phone. I'm most in favor of paper voting. No hacking there.
1
Seems like Democrats across the country want to take the first in the nation caucus away from Iowa. I do know one person that understands the importance, and made a promise that as long as he is President it will stay that way...
I am surprised at the vitriol pointed at the Democrats. Does anyone really think the Republican caucus was run anymore correctly in 2016?
This counting process has been done behind closed doors by both parties in the past, so there was no way to assess the accuracy of the count. The only reason the Dems pulled back the curtain was because Bernie whined after 2016.
Thank you for this excellent and unsurprising story. As someone who works with my state party on the regular, I can tell you the hands-off attitude and hiring Hillary-connected vendors is emblematic of our closed system. When Hillary was running in MI, her folks wouldn’t listen to anything anybody on the ground had to say. After the election, they took all of the locally sourced info - never to be seen again. After Trump won, Michigan had hundreds of small groups like Indivisible popping up. The Dems should have sent organizers to as many meetings as they could - that was their army right there - but, nothing. The Democratic Party is a club. They don’t organize at the grass roots level. They don’t care to. (And don’t even get me started on the UAW/state party unholy alliance). I hold our state Dem party responsible for Trump’s win here. 6,000 more votes for Hillary could have carried my state - and neither the MI Dems nor the DNC could be bothered, they just left it on the table. And who is leading the ship for 2020? Same folks. (Why do you think Berners burn?)
2
It's clear that no trial run for Caucus night had ever been conducted. This is appalling. I've done data entry systems for remote data entry. We trained everyone on several occasions. But problems still arose. You cannot go live without testing.
Did Tom Perez say he does not do performance evaluations on every state party chair? Then what, pray tell, is his job exactly? The Democratic Party has inherited the responsibility for naming one of the two leading candidates for election to every office in the country. And its national chair feels no responsibility for ensuring that the process includes all eligible voters and records results accurately and with a solid audit trail?
I do not give Republicans a pass on this either. They have done more to corrupt the process of our elections than any other organization, at all levels.
If nothing else, the past couple of election cycles have brought the need for a thorough overhaul of our nation’s election system to the blinding light of day. Americans who have worked hard to make their voices heard through our election system are tired of being duped by big money at every turn.
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I'm sorry that the news media were disappointed that they couldn't make a quicker call despite all hands on deck.
And I suppose it is too bad for one or two of the candidates that they weren't propelled forward out of one small state in our nation as the heir apparent to a capriciously awarded crown.
But was what happened bad for democracy or the democratic party of evidence of the "epic meltdown" media is now gleefully reporting in search of more scintillating distraction from the important business at hand?
I'm not at all sure.
There are lessons to be learned here about software-writing and back-up systems, perhaps. But, for all it's faults, the Iowa caucuses did NOT themselves suggest that our election integrity is at risk or that the democrats are an irretrievable mess - suggestions which is sure to earn clicks, but dangerous. Media should do some soul searching about what news is most important as voters head forward.
Unbelievable. Here we sit at a time of deep concern over the legitimacy of our election process, the country governed by a president who believes anything goes when it comes to tampering with election results, and we can't accurately count and report the votes of 176,000 people in Iowa. Even worse, is the response to this fiasco --- pointing fingers and denial.
These quaint, arcane systems --- caucuses, the Electoral College, hundreds of different voting systems --- have got to go. Nothing is more important than our elections, yet here we are, 20 years into the 21st century, executing this with the equivalent of a string and soup can communications system. I can have 6 cans of my favorite coffee on my doorstep tomorrow morning here in the New Mexico desert, but somehow Iowa cannot deliver a handful of numbers to Des Moines. Maybe we should have Amazon run the Iowa caucus.
Of course, this convoluted system suits some political factions just fine. Presidents are elected after losing the popular vote, preferred candidates become front runners with phantom delegates. And Trump is just getting started.
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Caucuses are embarrassingly antiquated. Their persistence appears to be an amalgamation of sentimentality and stubbornness, and are wildly convoluted, inaccurate, and non-representational. Caucuses are worthless in the 21st century. Instead of inventing a clunky app to shoehorn this process into the present day, we should use what's been a tried and true method for decades: individual voting booths and hand-counted paper ballots. Not only would that be more accurate, it would allow greater voter participation, and would take less time than a bizarre, agrarian version of Red Rover.
Further, we need to find a new pair of states to kick off our presidential primaries. States which have a population composition that more accurately reflects the real diversity of our nation. I know that Iowa loves the "tradition" of being first, but as with so many "traditions" in our nation, we carry them forward beyond the point of usefulness to the point where they start doing real damage. It's the 21st century. Time to evolve.
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As someone that owns a technology company, my first thought has always been this:
An app that runs on mobile devices, and has to be able to accurately tabulate the results of a somewhat complex multi-round voting system, and then communicate those results securely to a central location, during a critical few hours when the entire nation is watching Iowa ... for ... $60,000? SERIOUSLY?
It would take more than $60K just to do proper business requirements and functional specs for something this critical to the primary, let alone build it, do QA/UAT testing (which was clearly poorly done, if done at all), and robust security testing.
I mean, I know there are other people on this discussion board that likely do enterprise-class software development - has it struck anyone else that $60K is not only cheap, it is bizarrely, ridiculously cheap?
Further ... I cannot even remotely imagine delivering an app to a client with instructions to users saying "if it freezes, close out of it and log back in". This clearly means it was not close to being ready - especially for such a high profile night.
Why did no one notice the dozen different warning signs that were clearly apparent? This is software development 101.
And they did this in a nation that has some of the most high tech brilliance in the world.
Could a robust, secure system be developed to do this? Absolutely! Could it be done for $60K? Not even if it was done at cost for criminy sake.
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AS usual, the corporatists want to massage the vote to deny the people someone who actually represents their interests and not that of the billionaire class: Bernie Sanders.
...and this is the party that thinks the government ought to run even bigger things, like healthcare. Not shocked that this process was a disaster.
Doesn’t give one confidence about the Dems running the government. This is an echo of the Affordable Healthcare roll out. Maybe it’s time to start focusing on the important stuff like making things work, rather than ideological identity politics
Amazing how requiring Iowa to release intermediate results and raw numbers allowed reporters at the Times and elsewhere to rapidly discover how slap-shod a job the party was doing. A little bit of data transparency unearths a system full of carelessness and incompetence. These errors have probably been happening for decades!
This suggests we need the same transparency across governments and agencies and industries. Imagine if the MTA had to release raw data on expenditures. Or if the medical community needed to provide a public database of all cost of services. Or if the real estate industry needed to keep track of all client interactions aligned with income and demographic information. Suddenly it would be very hard to cover up inconsistencies, data entry errors, human biases, incompetence, corruption and graft. The numbers would be on full display for anyone to check and probe.
One person, one vote. What’s so difficult about that?
Same for the electoral college. Goodbye!
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Nice Iowa caucus yarn. Credibility, however, is nil. The actual votes were the issue and the ramifications are much clearer regarding damage to the Party than the purposely delayed results.
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As Will Rogers said, "I'm not a member of an organized political party. I'm a Democrat."
Will Rogers was right. Iowa proves he still is.
The caucus results are the reflection of the quality of the candidates.
Socialism is already causing a tremendous damage to the Democratic Party. They should get rid of sanders, Warren and Ocasio-Cortez. Before it’s too late.
Democrats get back to the center!
Reminiscent of Florida in the 2000 Presidential election, especially Broward County. How history would be different...and for 2016, how the world we are living in might be quite different!
The DNC should approach any primary with expectations of failure somewhere and the need to be resilient. It may be time to jettison caucusing.
A fortunate outcome of the Iowa debacle is that we probably won't be forced to listen to the opinion of various Iowa waitresses, etal. for weeks on end next time.
Iowa and the DNC had 4 years to prepare for this. Thank goodness the NYT is finally explaining that this is not about the failure of "an app". This is a total breakdown in management, professionalism, leadership, and most of all project planning. Clearly, Mr. Perez is in the wrong job, as is the chairman of the national DNC. Our next election may determine the fate of the world! To depend on an untested, bug-ridden "app" with no user training, practice, documentation of planning is utter nonsense. The sooner Iowa goes to the end of the line, along with its antiquated "caucus" the better.
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"Epic fiasco" is exactly why I'm unwilling to trust energy, education, health care, welfare, you name it, to the Democratic party.