Delivered by the very Democratic Party officials who have said for four years they were “ramping up” technology capabilities, convening numerous security task forces and collaborating with federal agencies to make sure everyone was in the loop on voting security, the Democratic Party’s Iowa caucus fiasco represents one of the the biggest 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.”
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.
We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night’s Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers.
— Shadow, Inc. (@ShadowIncHQ) February 4, 2020
MacDailyNews Take: Ay yi yi. Shadow managed by Acronym? Doesn’t sound shady at all! Sounds like something from an episode of Get Smart, actually.