Who Needs Russian Meddling? We’ve Got Iowa
File under: How Can You Be This Stupid?
Last night on national television, the Iowa Democratic Party shot itself in foot, and this morning it’s holding the same gun to its own head. At this writing at 6:00 am, results of the caucus last night are still not in, and no one can say when they will be. Holy Jesus. With the 2020 election being probably the most significant 
presidential election in US history, some genius in Iowa decided it was a REALLY GOOD IDEA to roll out a new app to report caucus results. AND, employing typical state party incompetence, training on said new app was between lame and non-existent. Chaos ensued during the evening caucuses and the app, as apps are wont to do, locked up. The state party then told precinct chairs to phone it in, jamming phone lines. Some precincts actually had to take a photo of the app screen and drive the results in. Stupid. Incredibly stupid.
I’ve never really understood why Iowa has been so important for the last 40 years since Jimmy Carter put it on the map. Or why it goes first. Or why it still uses the caucus system which has never been all that reliable. Along with New Hampshire and Vermont, Iowa is probably the least representative of national diversity. It’s sparsely populated and overwhelmingly white. I do know one thing – the Democratic Party didn’t need this, and is a terrible start to the 2020 election cycle. Also, I predict that this is Iowa’s last time to be first and last caucus.
I have a suggestion for reforming Iowa’s caucus system and it goes like this:
- Print up a whole bunch of sheets of paper with the candidate’s names on them.
- Find a whole bunch of buildings around the state (churches, schools) that people can easily find.
- Provide some little tables that have some privacy (We can even call them voting booths).
- Have people come to this place, take a form, and put a mark next to the name of the candidate they want.
- Count the marks for each candidate.
- Send the totals in.
- Go home and drink a beer.
I know this is a really unique approach to picking a presidential nominee, but it might just work, especially if the precinct chairs could read and count. And, it would eliminate the idiocy of hopeful candidates spending years and millions of dollars drumming up support among the three dozen or so people living in the goddam state. Iowa never deserved to go first with it’s stupid caucus system, and richly deserves to be moved to like the last on the list of Super Tuesday (or later).
Sheesh
For the life of me, I don’t understand why we allow these hayseeds the importance of being the first in the nation and an extreme, outsized influence on who gets to be the next president of the USA.
1These rubes have chosen to send Joni Ernst to the Senate (she can’t even wipe the drool of her own chin), and have repeatedly re-elected Steve King and Chuck Grassley, so their judgement is already suspect.
How about next time, we make them go last, just for incompetence’s sake?
Iowa.
2Been there.
Tremendous number of silos.
Way too many people making wine.
Artists like to paint the scenery and people. Most famous people painting involves two people: man and wife, both on a farm, man holding farm tool.
USDA has a huge facility n the state.
Some notable schools.
Otherwise . . .
It’s the DNC. The Sanders campaign has released some of their internal numbers, and they show Sanders winning, handily, while the DNC preferred moderates barely even placed. This is not about using some untested app, it’s about not wanting to give Bernie Sanders the recognition he has earned and deserves. This is a major screw up, and Perez needs to resign immediately. Or there needs to be a new party formed. The Democrats seem to be not able to stage a reasonable process, not even to save themselves. Apparently it’s true: the DNC would prefer to see another term of Trump, rather than a real progressive win.
3@ Paul – Please send me some of whatever you’re smoking. Or, on second thought, don’t. It causes extreme paranoia. Remember Occam’s Razor.
4Ds are playing right into the hand of the R playbook plan to rig / question the November 2020 election outcome results by seeding doubt about election results. The R’s obsessive unsuccessful quest to find massive “voting fraud” aside, Rs will claim non-existent “voter fraud” by Ds as a “both sides do it” argument for their own real fraud / vote suppression efforts. “Ds are cheating!” will be the R banner. Correction: that “create doubt” R tactic has already started: Charlie Kirk Chairman of TrumpStudents tweeted falsehoods about Iowa Caucus voting on 2-2-20, i.e., even before the vote. Watch what happens now from him and the R echo chamber.
5Software development is yet another place where dreams go to die. Stress testing is time consuming and expensive, and (obviously) crucial.
Or, for the DNC: “Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.”…
6@ El Jefe: There is no need to be insulting. So, do tell… what does it look like, to you? Everything I’m seeing shows Biden placed 4th, at best.
“Democratic” moderates need to take note: you can play Kick The Hippie, again, or you can win elections. You can’t do both. That choice is yours. But the fact is, if you rig another primary, there will be a schism in this party that will assure crazy fascist domination of our politics for the foreseeable future. But there is no way we are going to take another DNC corporately owned candidate forced down our throats. Count on it.
7I imagine candidates in 2024 will not give Iowa the attention it has received in the past. Several candidates haven’t bothered this year, with a plan to receive delegates from big states. Whether that’s a good plan is yet to be determined, but I’m sure they are pleased they didn’t waste time/money in a state with only 900K registered Dems.
8@Paul – C’mon. Spare me. Do you understand that you are positing a massive conspiracy among local, county, state, and national organizations? THAT is impossible. I could just as easily posit that Biden ran away with it, and the Russians sabotaged the result to give him a defeat. Occam’s Razor says the simplest answer is the correct one. The simple answer is incompetence, plain and simple. Just because you’re guy didn’t win doesn’t mean it’s a conspiracy against him.
9I have to wonder if there was outside interference; just a shot across the bow, maybe a warm up for November.
Picking the POTUS shouldn’t begin with an insane game of Red Rover in some High School gym.
10I’m really curious about the firm which did the development for all this smacks of a gang of college boy programmers who focus on gaming and apps rather than a true enterprise system and all that entails.
It’d be fun to do an IT audit and ask to see their requirements documents, system architecture documents, database design, application design documents, unit/function/system/enterprise test plans, etc. I’d also love to see their stress tests, usability tests, support plans, etc.
This was a pure IT failure, not a political one. Low bidder?
11Follow the money El Jefe. Who was behind that app that suddenly appeared out of nowhere? Who pushed its use and who funded the development?
12In 2016 the Bernie supporters were told they weren’t wanted or needed after the convention. This year TPTB in the DNC started early.
“The two parties are just the two wings of the same bird of prey.”
Perhaps ballots plus ranked voting?
I wouldn’t assume malevolence until after I disprove incompetence. I’ve seen people want to roll out new tax software in early April. Nuff said.
13Iowa is first because that is the only way such a small population state can have significant impact on nation-wide elections. There is no way they’ll give up that power – if some state moves their primary up to December of the previous year, Iowa will move theirs to November.
Caucuses survive because of the old New England view of town hall meetings where even cousin Jed can get up and speak his piece. The obvious problem is that this almost silences those who work evening/night shifts, or those who live too many miles away from a caucus site, or those who are disabled and require paramedics to travel to the hospital, much less the local high school.
I’m not opposed to caucuses … but they should not be used as selections in primaries, but instead be followed up by El Jefe’s dandy suggestion of Iowa entering the 19-th century and using a standard voting procedure.
I’m suprised no one has made an ADA complaint about the process.
As for using a phone app for the results, that is just insane – I have zero trust in my phone’s software, and never us it for email or anything that involves entering banking or credit card info. [And I’m one of those weirdos who have hacked and root-kitted my own phone.]
14Enough of Iowa trying to count!
This is 2012:
WASHINGTON • The stunning admission by the Iowa Republican Party that Rick Santorum — not Mitt Romney — may have won the Iowa precinct caucuses gives would-be reformers new ammunition to challenge America’s curious process of electing a president.
After all, the story after the Iowa vote on Jan. 3 would have been Santorum upsetting Romney, and in the unpredictable flow of momentum politics it might be Santorum, not Newt Gingrich, positioned as the main challenger to Romney on the eve of the conservative-dominated South Carolina primary tomorrow.
The turnabout also harks back to the 1988 Democratic vote in Iowa, where former St. Louis Rep. Dick Gephardt scored a narrow victory over Paul Simon, a victory questioned over the years by allies of the late senator from southern Illinois. Gephardt and Simon eventually lost out to then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who was defeated by George H.W. Bush in the general election.
15I agree with @13 RepubAnon–ballots plus ranked voting for all of the primaries!
16Let’s just have a national primary. Second week in September works for me. And do it on Saturday to be easier for folks to vote.
17*taking a deep breath here*
I’ve worked the Iowa Caucuses for different campaigns over the years and I’ve traveled to Iowa in order to campaign for candidates since 72’, which is indeed, when I wasn’t even old enough to vote. So, insert “Missouri Woman Has Thoughts” headline here.
The Iowa Democratic Party and the DNC under pressure from the Sanders campaign, contracted with an external firm to build an App that would “facilitate speedy transmission of caucus vote counts.” The apps development seems to have started 2-3 months ago, which if you’ve ever worked in Tech, should have set your hair on fire. They rushed the app out, instructed Caucus Chairs to download it on their own, and didn’t bother to do any field testing or provide training. Because, paraphrasing the immortal Will Rogers, “We’re not members of an organized political party, we’re Democrats.”
FWIW, Nevada Dem federal account paid the developer of the app, Shadow $58k in August, Iowa Dems state account paid Shadow $63,183 in two payments over Nov & Dec, suggesting app wasn’t developed until just months ago? Both caucus states. Shadow is a spin-off from PACRONYM, a new Dem dark money/superPAC hybrid.
So, just as any sane, rational person would have expected – nothing worked. Well, almost nothing. Iowa actually has printed ballots (all caucus) goers filled out this card -1st preference on one side. 2nd choice on the other side. These cards will be the basis is of the ultimate hard number for accurate results.
Now about those results. If I was running a candidate’s campaign, I would understand the desire to get out in front of this (fundraising anyone?) and I’d probably shove my candidate out there with a pre-prepared speech talking about how we’d “done better than anyone expected, and onwards to New Hampshire! Thanks Iowa workers and voters, we love you!” (See Amy Klobuchar whose staff got her out there during cable news’s filler time) I’d like to think I would have been smart enough to not to tell my candidates to declare absolute victory (Sanders, Buttigieg), or suggest to suggest that their is a conspiracy (Sanders, Biden). I’d like to think that I’d tell my people to say “It was a close race, we are in the running and heading on to New Hampshire.” (Warren). But I can certainly understand the other choices.
We should ALL not get roped into Iowa conspiracy theories. It was human error. When Trump spouts this stuff, remember, he’s doing it to get you to lose confidence, give up & not vote. Don’t let him keep you from voting. The one way to be sure your vote won’t count is if you don’t cast it.
18Because I grew up with them, and participated until I was 30, I LIKED the Iowa Caucus proceedings.
19The only difference last night was the damned app.
For the uninitiated, you go into your precinct location, sign paperwork with name, present ID, address, phone number, et cetera. You fill out a ballot during the process, with your first and second candidate choices. Second choice goes on the back of the ballot.
Then you actually go Stand With Your Candidate. If you are lucky, the actual candidate will be there. Based on the number of people in the room, a minimum percentage of people must stand for a candidate for the candidate to be viable. If not, you go stand with your second choice. Written ballots are turned in, and the precinct workers gather the ballots, and people go, hopefully to a place with an adult beverage, to await the numbers.
The BIG change this year was the app.
True, I have not been to a Caucus in 30 years because I have lived elsewhere, but a younger sister worked at a precinct this year, and she’s my source of info.
I also have a law school friend who lives in Davenport, Iowa, and he said Biden was not even viable at his precinct.
And yes, # 1 Rick S. this Hayseed has a Law Degree. You Fool.
MissDemeanor, had a great chat tonight with a nice young lady who was a Caucus Secretary (You can actually have good conversations with people on Twitter and learn cool stuff after you wade through the crazy). Anyway she was in an Urban area and was pointing out how much Iowa had changed over the decade.They are now leaders in the Insurance industry and in Wind Energy. She tells me that rural areas are falling by the wayside as corporate farming has taken over small farms and is the case in many states more young people are moving to urban areas. So not hayseeds.
20