Iowa caucus debacle is one of the most stunning tech failures ever

Iowa officials counting the results coming in Monday from the caucusing app reported irregularities that required them to switch from the app to counting votes manually. Party officials said the “underlying data” put into the app was fine, but it is unclear as of yet how they know this or even what they consider “underlying data.”

“Last night, more than 1,600 precinct caucuses gathered across the state of Iowa and at satellite caucuses around the world,” the Iowa Democratic Party said in a statement Tuesday. “As precinct caucus results started coming in, the IDP ran them through an accuracy and quality check. It became clear that there were inconsistencies with the reports. The underlying cause of these inconsistencies was not immediately clear, and required investigation, which took time.”

The Iowa Democrats were using an application made by a partisan progressive start-up named Shadow Inc., managed by a nonprofit investment company called Acronym. In a statement, Acronym distanced itself from Shadow.

“We are reading confirmed reports of Shadow’s work with the Iowa Democratic Party on Twitter and we, like everyone else, are eagerly awaiting more information … with respect to what happened,” Acronym said in a statement.

Iowa Democrats explained that backup measures for the Shadow app took “longer than expected.”

“We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed. The application’s reporting issue did not impact the ability of precinct chairs to report data accurately,” the Iowa Democratic Party statement said. Voters will surely be asking the Iowa Democrats to prove how they know the information is accurate with so many reported irregularities.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-debacle-is-one-of-the-most-stunning-it-failures-ever.html