How a Bad App Plunged Iowa Into Chaos (theatlantic.com) 269
Zeynep Tufekci, writing for The Atlantic yesterday: The morning after caucus-goers filed into high-school gyms across Iowa, the state's Democratic Party is still unable to produce results. The app it developed for precisely this purpose seems to have crashed. The party was questioned before by experts about the wisdom of using a secretive app that would be deployed at a crucial juncture, but the concerns were brushed away. Troy Price, the state party's chairman, claimed that if anything went wrong with the app, staffers would be ready "with a backup and a backup to that backup and a backup to the backup to the backup." And yet, more than 12 hours after the end of the caucus, they are unable to produce results. Last night, some precinct officials even waited on hold for an hour to report the results -- and got hung up on. It appears that the Iowa Democrats nixed the plan to have precincts call in their results, and instead hired a for-profit tech firm, aptly named Shadow, to tally the caucus results. The party paid Shadow $60,000 to develop an app that would tally the results, but gave the company only two months to do it. Worried about Russian hacking, the party addressed security in all the wrong ways: It did not open up the app to outside testing or challenge by independent security experts.
This method is sometimes dubbed "security through obscurity," and while there are instances for which it might be appropriate, it is a fragile method, especially unsuited to anything public on the internet that might invite an attack. For example, putting a spare key in a secret place in your backyard isn't a terrible practice, because the odds are low that someone will be highly motivated to break into any given house and manage to look exactly in the right place (well, unless you put it under the mat). But when there are more significant incentives and the system is open to challenge by anyone in the world, as with anything on the internet, someone will likely find a way to get the keys, as the Motion Picture Association of America found out when its supposedly obscure digital keys, meant to prevent copyright infringement, quickly leaked. Shadow's app was going to be used widely on caucus day, and independent security experts warned that this method wasn't going to work. The company didn't listen. If Shadow had opened up the app to experts, they likely would have found many bugs, and the app would have been much stronger as a result. But even that process would not have made the app secure.
This method is sometimes dubbed "security through obscurity," and while there are instances for which it might be appropriate, it is a fragile method, especially unsuited to anything public on the internet that might invite an attack. For example, putting a spare key in a secret place in your backyard isn't a terrible practice, because the odds are low that someone will be highly motivated to break into any given house and manage to look exactly in the right place (well, unless you put it under the mat). But when there are more significant incentives and the system is open to challenge by anyone in the world, as with anything on the internet, someone will likely find a way to get the keys, as the Motion Picture Association of America found out when its supposedly obscure digital keys, meant to prevent copyright infringement, quickly leaked. Shadow's app was going to be used widely on caucus day, and independent security experts warned that this method wasn't going to work. The company didn't listen. If Shadow had opened up the app to experts, they likely would have found many bugs, and the app would have been much stronger as a result. But even that process would not have made the app secure.
These People (Score:4, Funny)
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The ObamaCare website still doesn't work properly, it's only been 10+ years.
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Maybe they should hire the Russian Hacking Team Shadow to program it, since they did such a good job on the Iowa Caucus app.
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No, they want doctors to be in charge of health care, not insurance companies. If you've never seen the Orwellian-named "explanation of benefits" from an insurance company, you'll know why.
From health care to having lunch catered in, whoever is in charge is whoever is paying the bill. Wanting the government in charge of health care payments is wanting the government in charge of health care decisions. As annoying as any insurance company is, just try to imagine how much a federal bureaucrat with tenure cares about your problem.
Re:These People (Score:5, Informative)
Conditioned resentment of government... (Score:4)
..ignores the vast amount of good it does. Government is our only defense against oligarchs (when they don't run it) and only alternative to inherently amoral private enterprise.
Doesn't actually work that way (Score:4, Insightful)
There are studies, congressional hearings and plenty of testimony and anecdotes to back this up (no, I will not google them for you, you're a big boy).
Somebody has to pay for healthcare, it's just a question of who. Paying out of pocket isn't an option since you don't know how you're gonna get sick meaning healthcare lends itself to some kind of insurance scheme. And if you've got a insurance that everybody needs by their very nature (being human and all) it makes sense to have the largest pool of insurrees possible, meaning everybody, meaning single payer.
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And yet, many places with single payer healthcare ... deliver health care.
Administration costs for health care in the US consume most of the health care dollars. Just t
Re:These People (Score:4, Informative)
Doctors don't get to decide on the amount of paper work. He who pays the piper calls the tune. They don't even get to decide what procedures get done; insurance has a veto.
Re:These People (Score:4, Informative)
I recently had a child who spent five weeks in a tier 3 neurological ICU. I reckon the cost of her care there, including surgery, diagnostics, and medical consults cost multiple millions of dollars. The median American's net worth is about $97,000. If we could have sold our house *instantaneously* for its market value, we might just have been able to swing it. But not having to do that is why we pay for insurance.
The thing is, the stuff the insurance company did not only delayed her care, it made it more expensive and reduced the quality. Insurance rules dictate that a patient who leaves the ICU and is expected to have more than a week of additional hospitalization has to go to a special low-cost facility called an LTAC. The thing was, my daughter got sick out of town, so it was out of network, and it took the insurance company a week to negotiate with the local LTAC, a week she spent in a tier 3 facility where she was getting the most expensive medical care in the world. They could simply have allowed the hospital she was already in to move her down two floors from the ICU to a regular ward and they'd have saved money. They could have done a helicopter transfer to an in-network hospital for a fraction of the cost of a day in the ICU.
When she got to the supposedly lower cost LTAC, it didn't have the specialists she needed, so they had to hire contract neurologists and infectious disease consultants, so there went the savings. At one point she had a problem hearing, which was probably wax in her ears, and they called in a consulting ENT *team* (which by the way they get to charge overhead on top of). I shamed the attending into calling for an otoscope, but when they found it the batteries were dead and nobody knew where the charger was. When the ENT came in with their fancy stereoscopic otoscope, they looked in her ear and said "it's full of wax. Give her ear drops."
But that was just a bad LTAC, you're thinking. Nope. This was, according to the ICU's pulmonologist, the *best LTAC in the United States*. If you get sick and go to the ICU, when you're discharged you'll probably go to a *worse* hospital.
Oh and as for rehab -- I was billed the exact same outpatient service delivered ten times, anywhere from $10 to $1000. It all depended at who at the insurance company reviewed that day's record. I got an Orwellian-named "explanation of benefits", which simply showed they reimbursed random amounts of money for each visit, and try as I might there was no way to reach a human being to get some kind of resolution. It was pay, or have it sent to a collection agency. This is a supposedly top of the line policy, we paid to be reimbursed, but if they don't pay we have no recourse but to sue.
I am telling you from first hand experience: unless you have millions of dollars of cash ready at hand, you need insurance, but forget about the insurance people doing the right thing, or the financially efficient thing. The system is so broken, people working for it don't even care if what they're doing even makes *sense*. They just don't want to be the person blamed for anything.
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No you don't. When doctors are in charge of your health, you get things like the AMA limiting the number of medical schools and resisting giving NPs or PAs the ability to prescribe aspirin without an overseeing doctor.
Open Source It (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open Source It (Score:5, Insightful)
Also maybe spend longer than 2 months on it and then do a proper test before you put it into production.
You know, basic software development. These Shadow guys are probably losing a lot more than $60k now, they should have not taken the contract in the first place. Again, basic rule of contracting, say no when the deadline is unrealistic because if you don't you get the blame.
Re:Open Source It (Score:5, Insightful)
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The contract was probably given to them due to political connections, not because they're a legitimate bidder.
Exactly. The company was started by the same people that failed with Hillary Clinton's campaign.
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Shadow will get some much deserved blame and maybe the company will go under as a result, but I have a feeling the people who made the stupid decision to start the project will remain where they are making further poor decisions.
... and who want's to bet that this company was started for this express purpose?
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Anyone remember the Niagara Falls of tears during the Bush presidency, that Halliburton got a government contract without an open bidding process?
That was of course several orders of magnitude more significant than this penny-ante stuff, but I'm curious if the DNC which was so committed to an open and fair process did so themselves for this relatively simple app?
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The DNC doesn't run the Iowa caucuses. Never has.
Type in six numbers. Two hours, maybe two days (Score:3, Insightful)
The app needs to allow the user to type in six numbers, then submit those numbers to the server. It's a homework assignment for Web Development 101. Here is the code needed for the actual app, the client side:
[Form method=post action=https://dnc.org/wearedumb.cgi]
Precinct # [input name=precinct] [br]
Biden [input name=can1][br]
Buttigieg [input name=can2][br]
Sanders [input name=can3][br]
Warren [input name=can4][br]
[input type=submit]
[/form]
I just pretty much made the app in 93 seconds.
The server side is onl
Re:Type in six numbers. Two hours, maybe two days (Score:4, Funny)
The app needs to allow the user to type in six numbers, then submit those numbers to the server. It's a homework assignment for Web Development 101. Here is the code needed for the actual app, the client side:
[Form method=post action=https://dnc.org/wearedumb.cgi]
Precinct # [input name=precinct] [br]
Biden [input name=can1][br]
Buttigieg [input name=can2][br]
Sanders [input name=can3][br]
Warren [input name=can4][br]
[input type=submit]
[/form]
I just pretty much made the app in 93 seconds.
The server side is only slightly more complicated.
Building this app could literally be a question on the final exam for a first-year student, and it shouldn't take them more than 15 minutes or so. Then add a couple days for testing. That is, spend 100X as long testing it than you did building it and you STILL have it done in under a week.
raymorris ( 2726007 ) you ignorant slut ...
You ruined a very good point by pushing this skill out to the final .
It's mid-term.
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While Shadow and ACRONYM have a lot to be sorry for, one has to ask why they only got 2 months to work on this? Was this an IDC requirement? If so, they have only themselves to blame.
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maybe spend longer than 2 months on it
Exactly. This right here was 100% of the problem. Not secretiveness or anything else. Speed is the enemy of reliability. The sworn vicious enemy that kills reliability dead and uses the bones for toothpicks.
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That's ok, their stipend from the Cheka will more than make up for it.
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Who designed it that way? Surely the Democrats were not trying to fuck up their own event?
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They were. Bernie isn't a Democrat. They actively sabotaged him in 2016 and wanted Hillary at any cost.
Re:Open Source It (Score:4, Insightful)
So what exactly is the conspiracy here? Hilary Clinton isn't standing but they just hate Bernie so much they blew up their own process... And that helps him win somehow?
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Democratic and Republican party insiders do not care who wins elections, as long as that person does not upset their lucrative apple cart. Bernie would upset the apple cart. Trump has not. Democratic party insiders would much rather lose to Trump than win with Bernie. If Bernie wins, the swamp gets drained, for real this time.
The whole nomination process, in both parties, is designed to ensure that a cart-tipper never gets close to a nomination.
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Do you realize how bonkers that sounds? And how does any of it help stop Bernie? I mean the polling put him way down the list.
It deprives Bernie of a Victory Lap (Score:4, Insightful)
Sanders is the only one with a strong theme. If he starts getting momentum he'll become unstoppable. That's just how politics works. The DNC, CNN & MSNBC are all trying to blunt his momentum. That's all.
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"Hilariously Rotten Clinton". Thanks for the laugh today, I never heard that before.
Re:Open Source It (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like Bernie lost in Iowa anyway. In any case this sounds kind of far fetched. I mean they must have planned it long in advance and for what, to deny Sanders the chance declare victory a day or two earlier? The next primary is two weeks later.
A much simpler explanation is that it's just your very common garden variety IT screw-up, and unless you have some pretty convincing evidence otherwise I don't any need to invent these outlandish theories.
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Looks like Bernie lost in Iowa anyway. In any case this sounds kind of far fetched. I mean they must have planned it long in advance and for what, to deny Sanders the chance declare victory a day or two earlier? The next primary is two weeks later.
A much simpler explanation is that it's just your very common garden variety IT screw-up, and unless you have some pretty convincing evidence otherwise I don't any need to invent these outlandish theories.
Yeah, Sanders is only winning the popular vote while Buttigieg currently has more delegate votes. Sounds familiar...
Re:Open Source It (Score:5, Insightful)
62% of precincts reporting. Ask which precincts. Yeah, funny enough they left out the ones that were polling highly in favor of Bernie.
This is a repeat of the Republican tactic used in Iowa in 2012, where the party "accidentally" messed things up, and declared Romney the winner. Two weeks later, they admitted, whoopsie! Rick Santorum had won. But by that time, the narrative that he could not win had taken hold, and his campaign was dead in the water.
The Iowa Democrats also changed the caucus locations at the last minute, but only in counties that were polling with Bernie in the lead. It's why there was such low turnout, when there has been huge amount of energy and enthusiasm for voting, as well as huge rally turnouts. This was a serious case of rat-fuckery.
Want to know why Buttered-eggs claimed victory before ANY results were in? One of his top staffers is married to the head of Shadow. And his campaign paid Shadow for unknown services. Although the fact is being censored, both Bernie and Warren staffers saw Buttered-eggs staffers using special functions in the app to cheat. Allegedly, they have photographic evidence.
Without that evidence, the Iowa democrats would have gotten away with it. Because they had it, they forced the caucus to admit that there were "mistakes" made, and they would verify all the numbers before announcing anything.
Pete did not expect that to happen, so he had his victory speech locked and loaded. In order to cover for him, the Iowa caucus has only released the numbers for precincts that support Pete. By the time the truth comes out, the media will have moved on and won't say a damn word about it.
Just like they did with Romney and Santorum back in 2012. Corporate media is owned and controlled by a very, very few individuals, who all have the class interests of the very wealthy in common. I recommend getting news from The Hill's Youtube channel, "Rising" as the two hosts, progressive journalist Krystal Ball and conservative Saagar Enjeti are both highly critical of their respective parties. Funny thing, neither conservatives nor progressives like getting fucked over by pro-corporate politicians.
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What sounds like conspiracy to you? Much of this was reported by Lee Fang, a very well respected journalist. The rest, I have indicated as "allegedly" but I think it is worthy of further investigation.
More importantly, why does the very idea of corruption by both parties seem impossible to you? I am saying, this means everyone needs to get out and vote. The fix is in, but there are way too many of us for that fix to work, if we actually get out and vote. I am not engaging in suppression, I am flat out sayin
He didn't, he almost certainly won (Score:3)
Given what we know about the remaining districts a proper news source would have called it for Bernie by now.
This is almost certainly why the DNC is dragging their feet. It removes Bernie's victory lap.
Re:Open Source It (Score:4, Funny)
They were. Bernie isn't a Democrat. They actively sabotaged him in 2016 and wanted Hillary at any cost.
Oh, and btw... sir, respectfully, Bernie is, sadly, a Democrat.
If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have rolled over and supported Hilariously Rotten Clinton after she conspired with the “Democratic” (hahaha) Bribe-Taking Party to rob US, actually, (not him,) of a FAIR FUCKING ELECTION.
What makes someone a Democrat?
If you are a VOTER, in most states, you are a “democrat” if you vote in the “Democratic” (hahaha) Party’s primary. That, from the state election system’s point of view, MAKES YOU A DEMOCRAT.
In 2016, I think Bernie Sanders voted in the primary election. (For himself, presumably, which is to be expected.) For the purposes that make most of America’s Democrats Democrats, he too is a Democrat.
Voting for “Democratic” party proposals, supporting the party’s candidates, espousing to support them, being ALIGNED with their CAUSE donating money to their causes... running for the party’s NOMINATION... all these things SHOULD make one a member of a party for practical purposes, and I think Sanders meets every one of these criteria.
The only way in which Bernie Sanders is NOT a “Democrat” is in the fact that he does NOT, unlike the vast majority of people campaigning for their nomination, ACCEPT THE DIRTY, FILTHY, CORRUPT MONEY FROM BIG DRUG COMPANIES, he doesn’t take money from LOBBYISTS to push a certain agenda LIKE THE ONES WHO TAKE BRIBES DO, or from BANKS... etc.
This also FREES Sanders from having to FUNNEL the campaign contributions he receives from the people to so-called “consultants” and PISS AWAY MONEY the way the PARTY COMMANDS THEM, which if you didn’t know, IS A CONDITION OF RECEIVING MONEY FROM THE CORRUPT, BRIBE-TAKING, SO-CALLED “DEMOCRATIC” (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!) PARTY.
AND, I BELIEVE, it’s probably THE reason Bernie won’t officially join their party and accept their “help”. It’s because that would mean BECOMING A PAWN OF THE ELITE AND THE ESTABLISHMENT AND THE CORPORATIONS that are FUCKING America and the world UP. And he apparently won’t do that, which begs, I think, the following question:
Why, when they cheated US in 2016, didn’t he IMMEDIATELY form his own party. The “Were Not Taking Corrupting Campaign BRIBES” Party or something. Instead, Bernie Sanders KNUCKLED THE FUCK UNDER, supported Hilariously Rotten Fucking Bribe-Taking Clinton, cynical opportunist and carpet-bagger that she is, and tried to HELP THAT BITCH TRY TO GET ELECTED after participating in the very cheating that robbed AMERICA of our rightful nominee. You know, the one we WOULD ACTUALLY HAVE CHOSEN HAD WE ACTUALLY BEEN ALLOWED TO CHOOSE instead of having their pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-corruption candidate shoved down our throats...
That’s what pisses me off about him, and why I DO NOT support him now, and why I won’t waste another vote on him in a primary.
Because the “Party” whose nomination he keeps seeking...
C. H. E. A. T. S.
So I’m probably voting in the primary for Gov. and former VP Candidate Bill Weld, because at least he’s TRYING to remove Donny the Fraud the only way it seems we might be able to. At the ballot box.
Of course, OTOH, the so-called “Republican” (hahaha, they don’t give a fuck about the Republic either,) Party, cheats too. Fuck.
Guess I’ll vote for someone else, then. I’ll wait until Election Day, see who is still running on that day whom I can stomach voting for, and cast my vote for whoever that is.
It’s all I can do, at this point, because I sure as fuck am not getting my hopes up for BS again.
Off topic here but you remind me of a traffic stop where the driver knows dammed well he's got a suspended license -- third offense -- and he just won't shut the hell up.
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It was a company "run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. [latimes.com]"
What would you expect to happen?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
No, Buttigieg wasn't in fourth place (Score:3, Informative)
Look, I don't like any of the Democratic candidates, and will be voting for Trump in November. And I have no proof that the app wasn't rigged, as there's a lot of interesting smoke there. So consider me an informed outsider with no dog in the race.
But this "Buttigieg was fourth in Iowa polls" talking point is simply wrong. A number of Iowa polls [battleswarmblog.com] had Buttigieg first or second over the last few months, and an NYT poll had him second there last week. He's poured the lion's share of his fairly considerably fina
Re:Open Source It (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh and Mayor Pete, who every poll running up to it had him MAYBE getting fourth place, gives $40k to the company making the app [youtu.be] and suddenly he takes first place! Someone cue up the "Isn't that convenient" clip for me, thx.
The "convenient" part is that some coverage of this keeps saying "gave". As if the campaign donated. But AFAICT, the "gave" is similar to how you "give" money to gas stations and they "give" you fuel for your vehicle. I mean, that's generally how you purchase products and services.
And, while they certainly should have vetted the company to make sure they were capable of writing this app, it doesn't seem at all weird for a political party to use a company which provides services to political parties to implement a service for a political party. This wasn't an election, after all, it was an event internal to a specific political party.
throttling (Score:3)
I am not sure if that app was used to actually falsify results but what i certainly consider plausible is that the vote count is being throttled to allow Buttigieg to declare victory and since the whole establishment is against Sanders, to allow the whole press to claim Sanders lost.
The complete results showing Sanders won will be published when they are no longer news.
Note that Buttigiegs team have also blocked publication of poll result in Iowa https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
I wonder then what that app
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I suspect that they were hired by Cheka to create confusion and delay.
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This is ironic because the Shadow's CEO was the one who called the DNC's data handling and collection "$hit".
Security is all fine and well, but securing a dumpster fire doesn't really help anyone either. Open sourcing this, and many other aspects of data collection directly involved in selecting candidates, should be a requirement. This should be open and above board---not secret.
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Re:Open Source It (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't open source it, shitcan it! Keep computers out of voting. Paper. #2 pencil. People that know how to count. That's all you need. Works in power outages. Works in the presence of hackers. Works when the internet goes down. Works if your satellite access goes down. Works inside or out on the lawn. Just works. Use pencil, paper, and shoot the first SOB that suggests getting a computer involved.
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Don't open source it, shitcan it! Keep computers out of voting. Paper. #2 pencil. People that know how to count. That's all you need. Works in power outages. Works in the presence of hackers. Works when the internet goes down. Works if your satellite access goes down. Works inside or out on the lawn. Just works. Use pencil, paper, and shoot the first SOB that suggests getting a computer involved.
^^^This.... except for the shooting people part. Fire them and blacklist them, but don't shoot them.
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Well, I was just kidding about the shooting thing, it was hyperbole for effect!!! But they might earn a really dirty look...
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can we at least work them over with a rubber hose?
Or better yet, force them to watch every federal, state, and municipal debate for the next two years . . .
hawk
Re: Open Source It (Score:2)
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Re: Open Source It (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think that'll help (Score:5, Insightful)
A website might work, especially if it stuck to really simple pages. But what they really should do is stop doing caucuses and do a real primary with vote by mail. The State will even run it for them.
But, well, if they did that they couldn't do stuff like have super delegates hand the state to their preferred candidate or use peer pressure (caucuses aren't anonymous) or suppress the youth vote by having the caucus in the middle of nowhere (you'll note that a lot of places didn't have cell reception).
Why only two months? (Score:3)
Why did the Iowa DNC only give them two months to deliver the app? Surely, they knew when the caucus was scheduled and could allocate enough time to get something in place in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, considering who runs Shadow Inc, (a former Clinton staffer) they may have been fed a line of crap.
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Keep in mind that if they had done nothing, we would still have this 'they messed up!' shitshow because it is always a slow proc
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Why did the Iowa DNC only give them two months to deliver the app? Surely, they knew when the caucus was scheduled and could allocate enough time to get something in place in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, considering who runs Shadow Inc, (a former Clinton staffer) they may have been fed a line of crap.
Not to get political (OK, I know that's a bullshit line), the Democrats (disclaimer: I'm one) are all over the fucking place.
They're talking social justice, which is important, but voters want that shit taken care of at the state level. I do not like Trump one bit because he's a disgusting human being, but I can't argue with success.
Looking at the 2016 playbook, "It's the economy, stupid!" The economy is doing well. Democrats can't attack on that front so it's down to single issues like the several social o
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Why did the Iowa DNC only give them two months to deliver the app?
Stupidity on both customer and vendor side. Anybody smart would have given this at least half a year before to order it. Anybody smart will have refused the order with a time frame this short, because of the extreme negative press when it fails and the high probability of failure.
dupe.. (Score:3)
Ok it's an important story, so maybe it does deserve to be posted once a day..:
https://politics.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
Re:dupe.. (Score:4, Informative)
If Slashdot had a sports team, it would be called the Duplicates.
Why are Bernie supporters so upset? (Score:5, Funny)
Bernie had more voters at the caucuses than he needed so a few were simply taken away and redistributed to other candidates who needed them more. I'm not sure why he is upset about that. This is basically Sanders' entire platform in a nutshell. No one should have that much.
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Mod parent up!
Typical overstatement to get views (Score:4, Insightful)
Results (Score:5, Insightful)
Although there's a lot of conspiratorial nonsense out there about this all being intentional to take away from Buttigieg having a victory or to obfuscate the process in order to steal it from Sanders, I still think it's just pure incompetence that was responsible for this shit show. Even if it weren't that way, I think all of this would still have been drown out because of the State of the Union address and the impeachment vote, so I'm not so sure that it would generate a lot of traction either way. Sanders will win New Hampshire since he has such a big lead and the rest of the main candidates are all running close to equal, and he has a strong chance of winning Nevada as well.
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Incompetence, sure. But that's baked into the system that establishment Democrats use. Like the former Soviet Union and China, having political connections is more important than a proven track record, so incompetent people are given lucrative government contracts, grants, and other perks because they know somebody in charge of the law-making or the bureaucracy.
So, instead of finding a competent tech firm with a proven record, the selected a firm run by former Hillary Clinton campaign managers [courant.com], a group with
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The caucus was run, as it always has been, by the Iowa democratic party, not the DNC. Buttigieg, like other candidates, licensed software rights from Shadow but did not have anything to do with this app. (https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/feb/04/what-we-know-about-shadow-acronym-and-iowa-caucuse/)
oh FFS Just use paper and a pen! (Score:4, Insightful)
The Shadow Says You Will Vote Trump (Score:2)
The Shadow Says You Will Vote Trump
Apparently this stuff is hard, (Score:2)
As in, there are apparently no app frameworks or best practices that can let devs build an app with effective front-end security, accurate data collection, and secure data transfer. It looks, from the outside, that this all needs to be re-invented at some granular level, every time, unless you're in the business and are replicating this framework for multiple sequential projects. And even then...
If course the DNC doesn't want to solicit for and buy a failed app. But the perceptions include the DNC being unt
That article is a piece of crap, just like the app (Score:5, Insightful)
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> Security had absolutely nothing to do with the problems encountered.
You know that how? The claim out there is that the backend was attacked making synchronization impossible. That theory fits the available data.
Some others are claiming that the Deep State did it to prevent am embarrassing Biden slaughter. Still others are claiming "Russia, Russia, Russia". Both of those claims are currently unsupportable with neither being impossible.
I'd say the DNC should finally accept the DHS offer to help at thi
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"Apps." Ugh (Score:2)
60 k for a secure tight app not feasible (Score:4, Insightful)
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I do not know the validity of the 60k claim for the app but it seems outrageously low. If this was done with profit in mind probably 15-20k would be an average margin. That leaves 40-45k on the table for the actual development of the app. Taking out operational and administrative costs that leaves around 25-30k on the table for the actual team for two months.
It doesn't sound like that's what happened. So far Iowa has admitted to spending $60,000 on this app and Nevada paid $58,000 to Shadow, Inc. last year, for apparently the same or a similar app. We don't know, yet, how many other states with caucuses also paid this company for their "work". Also, this company has been in business for about a year and appears to have some pretty impressive outside funding. So your $60k budget may be off by an order of magnitude or more.
Link between Nevada and Shadow [crn.com].
Inve [thedailybeast.com]
$60,000?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever happened (Score:2)
...to "user acceptance testing"?
If they cannot do this (Score:2)
Iowa is arguably the most televised and anticipate caucus of the presidential race. Candidates have been campaigning there for over a year. The date is set by law and is therefore quite predictable. In seven of the last 9 presidential elections the winner of the Iowa caucus won the Democratic nomination for president.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/i... [cbsnews.com]
The Iowa caucus is considered to have a tremendous impact with candidate having a great deal at stake on the results.
https://www.nytimes.com/intera... [nytimes.com]
To say tha
Re:If they cannot do this (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed, on Buttigieg. I find it very unlikely that Buttigieg ends up as the nominee. Amongst other things he has a big problem attracting the black vote. Sanders and Biden both appear to be much more viable candidates. That being said I think Biden is about to implode from his corruption issues.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, it's not as though the whole show was being run by the same people who rigged the primary last time [latimes.com] or that the Establishment was in danger of losing faith in Joe Biden [nbcnews.com]. Heavens to Betsy no.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apart from being embarrassing and drawing unwanted national attention, what really was the problem here? Apparently they had a backup plan (which failed) and a second backup plan which involved actual paper records (which was/is really slow), so what if the app was a bad idea that was poorly executed, under tested and horribly non-functional?
Seriously, where I'm having fun laughing at the Iowa Democrat party's loss of face and I'm enjoying the pithy "and you want these guys running your healthcare" one liners, let's face it, they still got their results (albeit 48 hours later than expected). If they had lost the records or reported bad data, that would have been a serious problem. As it was, this is only embarrassing, no real harm was done and we will get the expected results... Eventually....
IMHO - the *real* news out of Iowa is that Biden is a distant 4th (by about 10 percent), after polling head and shoulders above his challengers. THAT says something interesting about the polling, makes me wonder about the accuracy of the polling for the rest of the primaries, brings into question the heir apparent status of Biden and is way more important than problems the Democrat Party of Iowa had with reporting the results.
DNC is happy with the software (Score:2)
This is what happens in the DNC when someone like Buttigieg starts gaining momentum going into Super Tuesday. The DNC ain't having it. They want Biden/Warren on the ticket, and that's what they're going to fight to make happen.
Even if it means using voter irregularities to get their way.
"Plunged Iowa into Chaos" (Score:2)
Wow. I had heard about the the caucus being screwed up, but I had no idea there were roving bands of marauders, famine, and semi-hourly executions.
Would it not have been sufficient to say, "How a Bad App Complicated an Otherwise Simple Caucus" ?
Just use email (Score:2)
The fix is less technology, not more (Score:3)
Canadian federal elections use a paper ballot and a pencil. Humans count them. The counting process is open to scrutineers. Here is what a typical ballot would look like:
https://i.cbc.ca/1.5353867.157... [i.cbc.ca]
Throwing more tech at a problem that was caused by tech isn't the solution. The prevalence of voting machines in America undermines democracy. Well that and many other things.
It is somewhat ironic that a nation that is so bad at democracy has billed itself as the world's defenders of it. American officials are often critical of election results elsewhere, all while their own system is sketchy as all heck. If the USA had foreign watchdogs monitoring its own elections, I'd hate to see what sort of conclusions would be draw about their legitimacy.
Re:The app achived its goal (Score:4, Funny)
No, the goal of this app was to show that the DNC doesn't need Russia's help to sabotage an election.
Re: (Score:2)
The DNC does not run the Iowa caucuses.
Re:"Bug" - 'Chaos Lite' (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Almost correct. Both party's power brokers, insiders, consultants, and functionaries are very authoritarian. The rank and file may or may not be fascist, and/or authoritarian. But for the most part, the rank and file from both parties are normal Americans who love democracy and the rule of law. With a very few exceptions, we all want the same things.
I've never voted anything but Democrat because there has never been a Republican who I felt represented my interests. But I realize that if I want something fro
Simple incompetence [Re:"Bug"] (Score:4, Insightful)
Man, tons of conspiracy theories.
https://www.snopes.com/ap/2020/02/04/online-conspiracy-theories-flourish-after-iowa-caucus-fiasco/ [snopes.com]
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-mishaps/202002/iowa-caucus-failures-bad-design-and-disinformation [psychologytoday.com]
Look, this one is easy: simple incompetence, magnified by the fact that the local DNC thought the app would work, so they didn't think that they needed to make the back-up phone-in system robust. There is simply nothing new about people screwing up. People do that all the time. Particularly, this one was by a company with little experience writing apps, who was awarded the contract by people who had no experience in software management.
What I'm most amused by is slashdotters simultaneously posting "why did they think they could write the app in only two months? Everybody knows it would take more than that!" and also "This job was so easy it should have been done in a weekend! How could they screw it up when they had two whole months to do it?"
Re: (Score:3)
This would be true if the person the Democrats wanted to put in control was a "Leftie", instead he's basically a republican across the board, just running from the other party. The actual Lefties don't want this guy on the ballot, nor did they want Hillary in 2016. It just happened, because "strategy".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
People want to know what is going to happen in the future. If they don't acknowledge the limitations on what is possible to know about that, they end up clutching at straws. The Iowa caucuses are the first available straw, and from that they're going to make a truckload of conjectural bricks.