How the Iowa Caucuses Became an Epic Fiasco for Democrats. The problems that beset the Democratic Party’s first state caucus of the presidential race ran far deeper and wider than one bad app.

New York Times ^ | February 9, 2020 | Reid J. Epstein, Sydney Ember, Trip Gabriel and Mike Baker

[karpov]

DES MOINES — The first signs of trouble came early.

As the smartphone app for reporting the results of the Iowa Democratic caucuses began failing last Monday night, party officials instructed precinct leaders to move to Plan B: calling the results into caucus headquarters, where dozens of volunteers would enter the figures into a secure system.

But when many of those volunteers tried to log on to their computers, they made an unsettling discovery. They needed smartphones to retrieve a code, but they had been told not to bring their phones into the “boiler room” in Des Moines.

As a torrent of results were phoned in from school gymnasiums, union halls and the myriad other gathering places that made the Iowa caucuses a world-famous model of democracy, it soon became clear that the whole process was melting down.

Volunteers resorted to passing around a spare iPad to log into the system. Melissa Watson, the state party’s chief financial officer, who was in charge of the boiler room, did not know how to operate a Google spreadsheet application used to input data, Democratic officials later acknowledged.

Others, desperate to verify results, began telling some precinct leaders to email photographs of their worksheets — the paper forms used to tally results — to a dedicated email address. But for hours, no one monitored the inbox. When it was finally opened Tuesday morning, there were 700 unread emails waiting, with photos that had been sent sideways; volunteers had to crane their necks to decipher the handwritten forms.

An hour after the caucuses began, the Iowa Democratic Party chairman, Troy Price, huddled in another room with other officials, none of them with a clear strategy to manage the unfolding chaos or answers to share with increasingly exasperated presidential campaigns.

[RAldrich]

Yes. That’s one of the funniest articles I’ve ever seen. Good reporting, even if it’s the New York Slimes.

[Liz]

........dems were not spared the utter humiliation.........

[lepton]

Let’s suppose a complete collapse of the application.

There is no reason that the collection, tabulating, and final calculation for the entire thing could not have taken place starting from scratch within 6 hours. And much of that time would be slowed down by ensuring secure collection.

[poconopundit]

Wow, Liz, sounds like a total, unmitigated disaster. But maybe that was the plan...

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