New York Times - 'A Systemwide Disaster': How the Iowa Caucuses Melted Down

[denem]

‘A Systemwide Disaster’: How the Iowa Caucuses Melted Down

DES MOINES — Sean Bagniewski had seen the problems coming.

It wasn’t so much that the new app that the Iowa Democratic Party had planned to use to report its caucus results didn’t work. It was that people were struggling to even log in or download it in the first place. After all, there had never been any app-specific training for his many precinct chairs.

So last Thursday Mr. Bagniewski, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Polk County, Iowa’s most populous, decided to scrap the app entirely, instructing his precinct chairs to simply call in the caucus results as they had always done.

The only problem was, when the time came during Monday’s caucuses, those precinct chairs could not connect with party leaders via phone. Mr. Bagniewski instructed his executive director to take pictures of the results with her smartphone and drive over to the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters to deliver them in person. She was turned away without explanation, he said.

“I don’t even know if they know what they don’t know,” Mr. Bagniewski said of the state party shortly before 2 a.m. on Tuesday ....

“When you have an app that you’re sending out to 1,700 people and many of them might be newer to apps and that kind of stuff, it might have been worth doing a couple months’ worth of testing,” said Mr. Bagniewski, the Polk County chairman.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/us/politics/what-happened-iowa-caucuses.html

So Polk, the largest county, had made a (unilateral?) decision, not to use the app before Caucus night? And after the phones failed, their executive director was turned away at IDP HQ? That is a clusterfuck all right.

[Kablooie]

1. The app was thrown together in the past 2 months and was only released a few days ago.

If you are in programming you know that this is an absolute guarantee for disaster.
The company is connected to the DNC.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

19. Yes, and in my experience, over the years, software

is so much less reliable than in former years. Don't think it gets delivered anywhere near bug free. Last installation I worked on took a year to debug once it was installed at user site.

Why I knew that if we had any hope whatsoever to install anti-fraud software systems to protect against any tRussian interference in Nov. we would have had to have had the $$ and analyzed and selected vendors in 2017.

[Perseus]

32. Correct, and it is so easy to hack

You can have dormant code changing the results as people vote, then deleting itself at the end and no one would know.

Voting should never be done through software, it has been proven time and again that it is just to easy to hack and change the results.

I am convinced that, regardless of the cheating republicans did in 2000, that with paper ballots Bush would have never been president, and neither this creature.

Before the 2000 election the president of Diebold promised "to do everything in his power to help Bush become president.", when you hear that you know there is going to be cheating, and I always ask myself why Democrats, knowing the cheating IS coming, don't seem to do anything to stop it. Yes, the republicans are cheaters, but Democrats also have fault for not doing enough to stop it, they know its coming, why not try harder to stop it?

Two things must be eliminated, the "Electoral College" and computers in elections.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

38. Yes, all true! I have been meaning to go back and read

The election protection legislation sent to McConnell. It struck me then that just saying we passed something but they let it die just wasn't acceptable as an excuse. It was true "think outside of the box time and we didn't think outside the box. And then I can't stop the picture of Mueller imploring us to do something.

Back when we might have had a chance to install anti-fraud software I thought...why not do something totally off the wall. Have a national telethon. We'd get the best performers ever. A telethon to raise $ and awareness that Republicans will not approve funds to protect our election so we are going this route. You could really play up the emotion of it all... Russia stealing our votes! Play Lee Greenwood song.

[Sherman A1]

2. Sounds like a Cluster F

To me.

Well Done there folks!

[gab13by13]

3. Too bad Ellison screwed up,

Perez isn't the answer.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

28. THIS!! BRING IN KEITH!!

Bernie/Elizabeth or Elizabeth/Bernie 2020!!
Either way, they're stronger together & can't be bought!!
Jump on the Bernie Bandwagon & join The Revolution!!

[Dennis Donovan]

4. Wait... wut?

The only problem was, when the time came during Monday’s caucuses, those precinct chairs could not connect with party leaders via phone. Mr. Bagniewski instructed his executive director to take pictures of the results with her smartphone and drive over to the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters to deliver them in person. She was turned away without explanation, he said.

I'd like to hear why she was turned away...

[ramen]

10. Same here, would love to have heard that conversation n/t

[Zolorp]

5. They'll be counting the forms people filled out on entry

The problem is those forms won't necessarily be an accurate reflection of what happened in realignment. Add to that the potential for chain of custody issues and these results can never be considered an accurate reporting.

[Takket]

6. The right is going to have a field day with this

[Dennis Donovan]

8. They already are all over twitter

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

29. Can only imagine... heads need to roll!!

Bernie/Elizabeth or Elizabeth/Bernie 2020!!
Either way, they're stronger together & can't be bought!!
Jump on the Bernie Bandwagon & join The Revolution!!

[Blues Heron]

7. Hey the gizmos failed!!! well whaddayu know

So tired of the gizmo-crazy Millennial period that we're all in now wheteher we like it or not. Not everything needs a gizmo, especially things that were working fine. The abondonement of the analog world for digital puffery is so foolish. Yes I have a smartphone it's extremely fiddly and annoying.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

21. +1

[PTWB]

35. My smart phone is a precision instrument that always responds to my inputs exactly as programmed.

The only time I get an unexpected result when interacting with my smartphone is when I have done something incorrectly or I do not fully understand the workings of a particular application.

[Blues Heron]

40. sure, fiddly though.

Loved the car2go app - that one had to be rebooted pretty much every usage.

[Corgigal]

9. Couldn't connect

on a phone number, with your phone?

Odd, we’re they busy? What?

[Lonestarblue]

11. Trump will now brag about Parscale.

And to give Parscale credit, he was effective in using social media and targeting specific Facebook users, with Facebook’s help, to guide Russian disinformation campaigns. I don’t know how much pressure, if any, the DNC out on Iowa to scrap their old system, but we all need some answers here.

[IronLionZion]

12. GOP will claim fraud and liberal socialism

rather than the general inability of organizations to provide training to people who are new to using apps.

Training and testing before rolling it out would have improved results. This just makes it seem like Dems failed on the ACA exchanges and failed again, because we're the party that fails over and over again. It's frustrating.

Trump will suggest outsourcing our elections to Russia.

[rockfordfile]

14. The GOP traitors blame everything

[IronLionZion]

36. Well, their Iowa caucus went perfectly without a hitch

for Trump

[brutus smith]

13. This is such bullshit! This makes us look like a clown show.

[UCmeNdc]

15. Electronic vote counting, again? Mmmmmmmmmm?

[SharonClark]

16. Sean Bagniewski leads one of the most successful county organizations in the country.

I trust his take on this caucus mess.

[denem]

17. Untested app. No training for precinct captains. Gave it a miss.

Correct call. Then the phone melt down

[Laura PourMeADrink]

22. What is his take?

[denem]

24. The app was dodgy so he didn't use - precinct captains did the usual count

But afterwards, they couldn't get through with the phones melting down -absolute chaos - so he sent his executive director to IDP HQ, and they turned her away. Bedlam.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

30. That "turned her away part" is mysterious. If it

Was me I wouldn't leave until I found someone in authority to handle.

[zentrum]

18. It does look fishy.

Rump has already tweeted that the DNC is conspiring to defeat Bernie. He is doing this to infuriate Bernie supporters against Biden.

I am concerned that this Iowa Mess gives Repugs a way to scream to the rafters in 2020 when Rump loses---that the Dems put in some sort of shadow technical fix.

WTH happened? It's inexcusable. Is the DNC responsible for running this thing, or some other entity?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

23. Your first paragraph just described exactly what

the Russian's strategy is as well. Hmmmm. How odd our president aligns with that.

[denem]

27. Yep.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287470735

[DonaldsRump]

31. Trump sure is obsessed with BS

Wonder why?

[CentralMass]

33. Bernie supporters don't put any credence in anything coming out of tRump lying lips.

Any suspicion of unfairness in the
minds of Sanders supporters didnt come from the right.

[zentrum]

39. Yes, it came from the right.

That's my point. Trump is trying to foment so much anger in Bernie supporters that they won't vote for Biden if he's the nominee.

You don't need to invoke Russia to see how and why they would do this. They want insurmountable division in our party. Period. This is a way to do it.

None of it has to be true. Just smoke and mirrors and conspiracy. But that's the method of the Trump-McConnell-Breibart-Miller cabal.

[CentralMass]

43. They might be observing and laughing their asses off but they didn't do this.

[zentrum]

44. Not saying they actually did this.

My point was that Trump is tweeting that the Democratic establishment is to blame for this.

I'm not saying the Dems are responsible for actually doing it. Not saying the right is responsible for actually doing it.

All you have to do is float the rumor for the vote for Biden to be depressed in November.

The rumor a right wing tactic. Not a right-wing hack. That's my point.

[CentralMass]

45. The narrative is writing itself and I wont go diwn the rat hole on past self inflicted wounds.

You presuppose that this will hurt Joe Biden. The nomination isnt even close to being decided. Any predictions on the out come of last night is guess work but it is sounds like Sanders did well and may have possibly won and that Biden may have done poorly.. the campaigns own observers must have an indication of the outcome. There should have been a clear transparent process and the winners should have reaped the the rewards of their victories and the bump and momentum that such a win brings. In the last primary there were similar such incidents where the parties presumptive favirite did not win the event and the victory bounce of the the winning candidate was muted by party elements.

[zentrum]

46. I DON'T Presume

..it will hurt Joe Biden. Not going down any rat hole.

What I keep explaining and what I'm reporting is that Trump is trying to use it to hurt Joe Biden. Read the morning news.

He's also tweeting things like "if the Dems can't run their own caucuses, how will they run health care?"

This is a bad FU. It makes Dems look incompetent. It can feed any rumor needed. I'm telling DUers how the right-wing is using it. It's a story they are running with. Not me.

[rownesheck]

20. Don't know jack about the situation,

but could the app or phones have been hacked? Again, I'm just now reading about this.

[denem]

25. The app didn't work. They are doing a paper ballot recount.

The say the app was not hacked, but there seems to have been a denial of service attack which stopped people from using it.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

26. Just reading too. Sounds too much like gross

mishandling to be gross mishandling. Priority one...get vote totals finalized. Priority two figure out what happened. Could scare the public into doing something about safe elections.

[duforsure]

34. I think this will be ok

And they found a glitch , and now are making sure of the count before putting it out maybe slow, but at least they're trying to make sure it's correct. When it's out soon it'll all be known who won, and who lost , and a change of finding out a few hours later do not change the results. Republicans and trump will say things to redirect attention away from trump, and their corruption issues that are coming to light, more every day now, so they'll use this for a distraction.

[bucolic_frolic]

37. The appearance of democracy is better than no democracy at all

Ask any satellite of the U.S.S.R., may they R.I.P.

[MineralMan]

41. Amateur hour all around.

[Baitball Blogger]

42. This is the part of the Democratic party that makes me throw up.