Posted on 02/09/2020 8:48:41 AM PST by Liz
THEN AND NOW-——THE IOWA CAUCUS DEBACLE UP-CLOSE:
LAST FALL, Iowa’s Republican and Democratic Parties, and web development vendors, examined the app the Iowa Democratic Party commissioned to tabulate and report caucus results, partnering with (cough) Harvard’s “Defending Digital Democracy Project” to develop strategies and systems to protect results and deal with misinformation.
The Harvard group included "party campaign experts” Robby Mook and Matt Rhodes, and experts in (A) cybersecurity, (B) national security, (C) technology and (D) election administration.
Fortuitously, the group simulated different ways “things could go wrong” on caucus night. (cue maniacal laugh machine here).
Mook is 2016 campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, and Rhodes is Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign manager.
Out of sheer public-spiritededness, these two helped develop a video to alert campaigns to warning signs of hacking and misinformation.
THAT WAS THEN-—THIS IS NOW-—REVISIONIST IOWA DEMOCRATS DEFEND THE DEBACLE
“The app the Iowa Democratic Party commissioned to tabulate and report results from the caucuses on Monday was not properly tested, people briefed on the app by the state party told newspapers."
" It was quickly put together in just the past two months, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.”
Iowa state Democrats decided to use the app only after another proposal for reporting votes — which entailed caucus participants phoning in their votes — was abandoned, on the advice of DNC officials, according to David Jefferson, a board member of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.
The Iowa Caucus Debacle is a microcosm of what the entire USA would be like if the American People were stupid enough to let the Democrats seize control of it.
App malfunction. LOL. Yeah, right. It’s sad when they have to plead incompetence to cover up their malfeasance. Sad but entertaining.
The results of the Democratic Iowa caucus were delayed Monday evening because of a technical issue with the results system, according to reports. About 85% of precincts were reporting results by 10:30 p.m. in 2016, according to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. This year, there were no results in at the same time, reportedly because of an issue with the application being used.
Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s campaign contributed money to the technological firm whose voting app that contributed to reporting delays in the Iowa caucuses. Federal Election Commission filings reveal that Buttigieg’s campaign gave tens of thousands of dollars to Shadow on July 23, 2019 for “software rights and subscriptions.” Shadow, a technology company that has an investor in the Democratic digital nonprofit organization ACRONYM, was also paid $60,000 over two installments by the Iowa Democratic Party to build an app to help make caucus voting easier and faster for precinct volunteers.
FEC filings also reveal that the Nevada Democratic Party paid Shadow $58,000 for “website development.” (photo evidence at link) Plus, the firm is run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The Los Angeles Times reported this morning that an app created by a tech firm run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign is taking heat for the unprecedented delay in reporting Democratic caucus results from Iowa.
BACKSTORY Shadow started out as Groundbase, a tech developer co-founded by Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis, who worked for the tech team on Clinton’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic nomination.
Niemira had previously worked at kiva.org, a nonprofit that makes loans to entrepreneurs and others in the developing world, and Davis had spent eight years as an engineer at Google. ACRONYM’s founder and CEO is Tara McGowan, a former journalist and digital producer with President Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign. With no official results in from Iowa, it looks like Mayor Pete Buttigieg is claiming victory in the caucuses. He took to Twitter to announce a victory. Sort of. --SNIP--
At this rate, with this sort of disorder and chaos, President Trump is going to steamroll whoever the Democrats throw at him and his well-oiled machine this November. It is going to be like the 2016 election all over again, which is really quite appropriate considering Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, Robby Mook, is reportedly tied to the electoral mess in Iowa.
Iowa’s Republican and Democratic Parties] and their app and web development vendors partnered last fall with Harvard’s Defending Digital Democracy Project to develop strategies and systems to protect results and deal with any misinformation that’s reported on caucus night.
They worked with campaign experts Robby Mook and Matt Rhodes — as well as experts in cybersecurity, national security, technology and election administration — and simulated the different ways that things could go wrong on caucus night. Mook, 2016 campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, and Rhodes, Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign manager, helped develop a public-service video to alert campaigns to the warning signs of hacking and misinformation.
==================================
The three Shadow principles involved in Iowa: CEO Gerard Niemara, CTO Krista Davis, and COO James Hick…...operating office in Denver. (Remember when Platte River Networks, Denver, had Hillary’s govt computers?)
Shadow brags on their website “We are campaign and technology veterans who built and implemented technology at (A) Hillary for America, (B) Obama for America, (C) Google, Kiva, Apple, (D) the AFL-CIO, and, (E) the DNC.”
Ut, oh......Obama, too?
>> “who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.”
“Don’t worry, the NDA doesn’t cover anonymous disclosures.”
Thanks for posting, Liz.
Amen.
Beautiful......love it.
Y/V/W
They’re so bright they didn’t see the need for any real world Beta testing. Actually it’s more propaganda B.S. The real reason the app failed is they needed cover to “fudge” the results. The demonicrat party is astroturf on steroids.
These folks blamed the Russians for election meddling—while they were creating an app for election meddling.
Clever!
(Mook—street slang word for motherf*&^er.)
The app that “failed” the Democrats in Iowa is called the DNC!
My guess is that they were SO CERTAIN that Trump was going to be removed from office that the nation would be so grateful that it would award POTUS to Hillary Clinton. That would atone for Trump stealing the election from her in the first place. AND they were going to give Hillary Trump's first three years as a replay / redo plus another eight years just because she deserved it. She wouldn't face the electorate for eleven years and, by that time, they would have gotten rid of the Electoral College so New York and California could re-elect Hillary through her 100th birthday.
Their plans went awry when impeachment blew up in their faces.
That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
AOC could have signed off on it, so what? Quality software does not result from “sign-offs” but from rigorous testing and adherence to industry standards and procedures, which I suspect were unknown to these powerpoint jockeys.
Even the limited analysis of the code that has been done thus far proves it is a hacked-together skeleton project app built on a standard framework, sort of a “paint by numbers” approach, which is always going to lead to bad outcomes:
SHADOW CEO WEIGHED IN: “All the data that was produced by calculations performed by the app was correct. It did the job it was supposed to do. The problem was caused by a bug in the code that transmits results data into the state party’s data warehouse.”
Ut, oh, is he confessing to committing an electronic crime?
Could be Shadow pulled a fast one on Iowa election officials. Probably sold them an old program instead of creating a new one for Iowa.
B/c if the results were skewed, Shadow was probably using one created to bollox the results .....
Maybe the one they coded for Hillary? We all know how they coded the machines to give every tenth vote to Hillary.
Shadow could have been using an app created to bollox the results ..... Maybe the one they coded for Hillary?
We all know how they coded the machines to give every tenth vote to Hillary.
Voter fraud and election experts detailed findings from a cyber/forensic investigation reveal
compromised voting machines in 2018 (and quite probably, in the recent KY and LA governors’ races).
(1) security protections in voting machines were disabled,
(2) penetration and manipulation of actual vote tabulations was and is possible, and
(3) evidence already exists that votes were surreptitiously, electronically manipulated to change election results.
Iowa’s Secy of State (which oversees elections ) and Iowa L/E authorities need to investigate.
A dry run for invalidating the general election.
Non-technical but well connected group gets hugely overpaid to make an app, farms app out to tech crew of unknown aptitude, and it doesn’t work.
No surprise.
Mook et al just hoped to rake in more than the project should have been worth, but didn’t know the quality or experience of the people they subcontracted to.
That’s one possibility.
I like it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.