Whatever the shortcomings in Iowa's caucus apparatus, it is clear that one aspect of its

[Atticus]

failure will undoubtedly be used as a weapon against Democrats everywhere. The greatest sin of the Iowa Democratic party was that it failed to provide the "horserace" data that that talking heads had planned to report, discuss, analyze, compare and distort for days. Robbed of that grist, they are now giving life to unsourced conspiracy theories and speculation about "spiked" results and "fixes".

They are so desperate to fill minutes of their fractured news cycle that they have actually given several to Krystal Ball. "Must watch TV---NOT!"

[Bettie]

1. I'd guess that ANY primary at this point

would provide the same kind of non-horse race data. There are too many candidates for it to narrow down all that far at this point.

I suspect that in later primaries, Bloomburg will also throw a wrench into the works, since he has unlimited money.

On the positive side, all of our candidates are sane, functional adults.

[genxlib]

3. Please stop

Not everything is about Bernie.

The constant sense of conspiracy is tiring and not helpful.

[Wounded Bear]

4. Indeed! nt

[Atticus]

5. Are you making pickles? 'Cause that's a crock. nt

[moondust]

6. Not at all surprised.

A caucus may not have major problems if there are only a couple viable candidates. But with this many candidates and 1,678 Iowa precinct caucuses plus 99 satellite caucuses around the world, there's liable to be chaos and confusion at many if not all of them. Plus with everything being run by volunteers I'd probably be more surprised if it didn't run into multiple problems. I would guess that many of the volunteers running it are retired folks who may not use their cell phones (if they even have one) for much more than making calls; expecting everybody to download an app and use it to relay results was probably not the best idea.

I think television's demand for immediate results in the "horse race" has largely driven efforts to keep speeding things up first with voting machines and now apps. Some countries apparently still use hand-counted paper ballots and the results may not be known for a couple days. Good for them.

Welcome to the Age of Disinformation and Dysfunction

[cwydro]

7. The hosts must be really busy with all the primary posts in here.

Do they no longer have the big red stop sign before you post?