The first signs of trouble at the Iowa Caucuses came early.
<><> the smartphone app had been ok’ed last fall by Harvard’s 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” and experts in
(A) cybersecurity, (B) national security, (C) technology and (D) election administration.
<><> fortuitously, the Harvard group simulated different ways “things could go wrong” on caucus night.
<><> (cue maniacal laugh machine here).
<><> but a simple task like reporting the results began failing last Monday night.
<><> “quick-thinking” Democrat party officials then instructed precinct leaders to move to Plan B:
<><> plan B had precincts call-in results into caucus hdq in Des Moines, to be entered into a secure system by volunteers.
<><> but when volunteers tried to log on, they discovered they needed smartphones to retrieve a code,
<><> the caucus team they had been told NOT to bring phones into the “boiler room” in Des Moines.
<><> a torrent of results were phoned in from gyms, union halls and elsewhere, places that made the Iowa caucuses a world-famous “model of democracy,”
<><> it soon became clear that the whole smart-phone, app process was melting down.
<><> desperate volunteers resorted to passing around a spare iPad to log into the system
<><> other Dems , desperate to verify results, were telling precinct leaders to email photos of worksheets that tallied results — to a dedicated email address.
<><> for hours, no one monitored the inbox; finally opened Tues AM, there were 700 emails with photos sent sideways;
<><> volunteers faced the task of deciphering the handwritten forms.
<><> Iowa Demo Party chair, Troy Price, huddled with other Democrat officials,
<><> alas, no Democrat had a clear strategy to manage the unfolding chaos with exasperated presidential campaigns.
So that's why they couldn't just phone in the results as they had been in the past: under Plan B they couldn't enter them. And Plan C consisted of emailing marginally legible photos of the raw data into a mailbox nobody checked until the next day? There is failure, and then there is epic failure.
<><> alas, no Democrat had a clear strategy...”””
The IT end of Obozo care worked just about as well. The Harvard group with this app also reminds me of the ‘best and brightest’ and the M-16.