Discussion

• Vox Cameron Peters on x

  Nevada promises its caucuses will go better than Iowa's

• @alxthomp Alex Thompson on x

  .@nkulw talked to an Acronym staffer, who spoke under condition of anonymity because of a non-disclosure agreement, who said it's “far and away the most disorganized place I've ever been a part of.” https://theoutline.com/...

• @cwarzel Charlie Warzel on x

  as usual, @max_read is very smart on this. Everything's networked in the sense that institutions all play off each other and many of them are broken and sputtering and making each other worse https://nymag.com/... https://twitter.com/...

• @joycewhitevance Joyce Alene on x

  Iowa serves a key purpose: reminding us we must have paper records. Despite a coding error that caused partial reporting (a problem caught before results were released) “the party has been able to verify the vote counts thru required paper documentation.” https://www.nbcnews.com/…

• @brandyzadrozny Brandy Zadrozny on x

  Took a look at the various disinfo campaigns swirling around Iowa yesterday w/ @JasonAbbruzzese. Takeaway: We don't need foreign interference to show us our 2020 vulnerabilities. Americans were perfectly capable of spreading disinformation on our own. https://www.nbcnews.com/...

• @cnbc @cnbc on x

  Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price addresses the “stumbling block” that delayed caucus results. “A thorough, transparent and independent examination of what occurred yesterday will follow.” https://www.cnbc.com/... https://twitter.com/...

• @caseyjohnston Casey Johnston on x

  this piece tells the same story; people in power realizing they can't win on merits and so creating as much confusion as possible to give themselves lots of gray area to interpret in ways that are favorable to them is an old and sad tale https://www.nytimes.com/...

• @loganclarkhall Logan Hall on x

  given this information, it's pretty amazing that the app was even used in the first place https://twitter.com/...

• @zslayback Zak Slayback on x

  dude we've given grants to college kids who can build better working apps in a weekend, don't turn this incompetence on “tech” https://twitter.com/...

• @gelles David P Gelles on x

  “In the end, only one-quarter of the 1,700 precinct chairs successfully downloaded and installed the app, according to a Democratic consultant who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid losing work.” https://www.nytimes.com/... via @NYTimes

• @cheesemeister3k Cheesemeister on x

  Collecting all the data, but not fully displaying it? That's a hell of a showstopper bug to find in production. https://twitter.com/...

• @digiphile Alex Howard on x

  What happened last night in Iowa should be a wake-up call. A bug in an app led to an information void that bad actors rushed to fill with disinformation & conspiracies: https://www.nbcnews.com/... Unfortunately, those folks include Senators, & the president's sons & campaign mana…

• @markhgn @markhgn on x

  ‘Make sense of it’ 🤣 this is tech working as intended — complicating processes that would otherwise manage just fine 👇 https://twitter.com/...

• @americanwombat Christina Holland on x

  This is a really detailed account of specific companies and people and decisionmaking involved in campaign technology, including a lot of stuff on Shadow and its history, I think it's useful when a lot of people are just guessing and making “I bet” and “sounds like” jokes https:/…

• @44 Menotti Minutillo on x

  incredible thread also, naively... building a custom app seems horrifyingly and needlessly complex based on a bad set of up front assumptions and decisions ?? https://twitter.com/...

• @myhlee Michelle Ye Hee Lee on x

  This is such an illuminating thread that captures the complexities of campaign tech, the funding behind it and the persistent difficulty in finding long-term solutions for improving campaign tech on the left. https://twitter.com/...

• @marshallk Marshall Kirkpatrick on x

  Here's the explanation you want to read of the Iowa Caucus tech failure, written by the 1st engineer at the company that built Twitter years ago and a very politically savvy person. https://twitter.com/...

• @alexismadrigal Alexis C. Madrigal on x

  This is a tremendous thread with great insights into what really happened with the Shadow app in the Iowa caucuses. https://twitter.com/...

• @msmacb Katie MacBride on x

  These conspiracy theories are killing me. The Iowa caucus is run by old white volunteers—what's more likely, that they rigged the entire primary or they had trouble with an app?

• @yascha_mounk Yascha Mounk on x

  I know it's tempting to make jokes... or insinuations. But there is absolutely no evidence that there is anything untoward happening in Iowa. Calling elections “rigged” without any evidence boosts conspiracy theories and destroys trust in democracy. Don't do it.

• @kt_so_it_goes @kt_so_it_goes on x

  absolutely love the convergence of the “hillary hid the server in ukraine” people & the “hillary rigged the iowa caucus against bernie” people. this is a woman who can do all that but somehow couldn't beat a serially bankrupt pathological narcissist with a brain made of cat food

• @yaeleisenstat Yael Eisenstat on x

  1/2 This is disinformation about our election, directly debunked by Iowa Secretary of State @IowaSOS. It's meant to sew distrust in our democratic process, which was Russia's strategy too. Apparently news anchors are free to spread lies about our election, with no accountability.…

• @shadowinchq @shadowinchq on x

  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.

• @shadowinchq @shadowinchq on x

  As the Iowa Democratic Party has confirmed, the underlying data and collection process via Shadow's mobile caucus app was sound and accurate, but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the IDP was not.

• @farmerchris Chris Farmer on x

  @BriannaWu Here's the error message I got. Yikes. https://twitter.com/...

• @dnvolz Dustin Volz on x

  Sen. @RonWyden's office asked the DNC three times about details regarding the app during the run up to the Iowa caucuses, but received no reply, an aide to the senator said. https://www.wsj.com/...

• @ebruenig Elizabeth Bruenig on x

  Clinton's '16 campaign manager Robby Mook isn't responsible for the Iowa app, contrary to a popular conspiracy theory (that I wrongly repeated, for which I apologize!) But the story of how an app collapsed caucus night in Iowa is perhaps more disturbing. https://www.nytimes.com/.…

• @rabble @rabble on x

  The fundamental problem is we've got a very broken way we fund campaign tech on the democratic side of the isle in the US. There is tons of money in politics but it doesn't get used in the way which builds anything sustainable. Here are some reasons why.

• @dnvolz Dustin Volz on x

  WARNINGS IGNORED: The Iowa Democratic Party barreled ahead with the use of an unvetted, undisclosed mobile app despite admonishments from security experts. DHS offered to test the app, but was turned away. 1/ https://www.wsj.com/...

• @shadowinchq @shadowinchq on x

  Shadow is an independent, for-profit technology company that contracted with the Iowa Democratic Party to build a caucus reporting mobile app, which was optional for local officials to use. The goal of the app was to ensure accuracy in a complex reporting process.

• @ronwyden Ron Wyden on x

  My warnings about this technology were ignored, and the result is chaos and a loss of confidence in our elections. Unless states step back from using unproven technologies in our elections this will keep happening. https://twitter.com/...

• @shadowinchq @shadowinchq on x

  Importantly, this issue did not affect the underlying caucus results data. We worked as quickly as possible overnight to resolve this issue, and the IDP has worked diligently to verify results.

• @zeynep Zeynep Tufekci on x

  New piece from me: Who needs the Russians when elite arrogance, matched in magnitude by their incompetence, can screw things up this badly? If only it were the Russians! That'd be easier to fix. Worse, there was no need for that damn app. Yes, I'm furious. https://www.theatlantic…

• @public_citizen @public_citizen on x

  The #IowaCaucas app: -Was engineered in just the past *two months* -Was not tested at statewide scale -Was not vetted by DHS's cybersecurity agency -Was sent to volunteers without any training on how to use it Just unbelievably reckless. https://www.nytimes.com/...

• @b_fung Brian Fung on x

  I visited Shadow Inc.'s address listed in the Iowa Dems' disclosure filings. It led to a WeWork in this trendy Washington alley (steps from Maydan and La Colombe). But a receptionist told me Shadow moved out last month to an unknown destination. ??? https://www.cnn.com/... https:…

• @lhfang Lee Fang on x

  Dem group behind Shadow distanced itself from the Iowa caucus developer. But they share office space, briefings & resources. The team is made up of former Hillary campaign staff tied to Mayor Pete and have privately expressed hostility to Bernie https://theintercept.com/...

• @timmarchman Tim Marchman on x

  At its core the Democratic Party is about connected insiders making money from overly complicated solutions to nonexistent problems https://www.vice.com/...

• @rabble @rabble on x

  What shadow, groundbase before it, and many of the rest of us like affinity and groundwork (similar name I know) all want to do is solve the problems which come up in progressive campaigns. We're trying to create tools for the organizers.

• @rabble @rabble on x

  The space is dominated by decision makers who are stuck on a very short term decision making cycle. Structurally there is no space for long term investment, despite everybody stating that this would be good.

• @rabble @rabble on x

  To understand why shadow exists and how they failed to provide the tools the Iowa Democratic Party needed we need to know how this space works.

• @rabble @rabble on x

  Shadow made some tools which look useful, their messaging app is similar to hustle and http://getthru.io/. Their lightrail app https://shadowinc.io/... is something people really need.

• @rabble @rabble on x

  They messed up, but here's the thing, shadow is a company which came out of of the collapse of another electoral tech company, Groundbase ( http://getgroundgame.com/) which has some well known folks in the campaign tech space.

• @mehdirhasan Mehdi Hasan on x

  Hopefully tonight's chaos in Iowa will persuade Democrats to no longer kick off this process in Iowa. The whole thing is ridiculous and archaic and unrepresentative. https://twitter.com/...

• @mollyjongfast Molly Jong-Fast on x

  FYI: next time don't give your app a nefarious name. https://twitter.com/...

• @kurtschlichter Kurt Schlichter on x

  HOW COULD THIS BE ANY BETTER? https://twitter.com/...

• @max_read Max Read on x

  everyone hates the app! even me! I hate the app too. but a working democracy should be able to handle a bad app without it turning into a national catastrophe https://nymag.com/...

• @dank Dan Koh on x

  Building software is incredibly hard. We've built and re-built our software for years and we're still working on it. The fact that this was built the past two months and not tested state wide is just an enormous breach of responsibility to our democracy. https://twitter.com/...

• @charles_gaba @charles_gaba on x

  I develop mobile apps for small businesses which are mostly just informative and it still takes longer than that to fully develop & test them out. This is an embarrassment. https://twitter.com/...

• @kyledcheney Kyle Cheney on x

  This is a throwback when Trump began priming supporters to distrust the 2016 results on Election Day by inaccurately claiming widespread voting irregularities...until he won. https://www.politico.com/... https://twitter.com/...

• @sarahjeong Sarah Jeong on x

  every tech motherfucker in january 2017: how can i help. how can i make the world a better place. how about an app [fast forward three years later]

• @lachlan Lachlan Markay on x

  Higher Ground removed Shadow's predecessor firm from its list of portfolio companies. An ACRONYM blog post saying Shadow would “exist under the ACRONYM umbrella” has been deleted. A page saying ACRONYM “launched” Shadow has been changed to “invested in” https://www.thedailybeast.…

• @heterodoxious Josh Harris Photography on x

  This is not looking good. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...

• @lachlan Lachlan Markay on x

  New: Shadow Inc. investors ACRONYM and Higher Ground Labs are scrubbing their websites of info linking them to the firm behind the app that fueled Iowa caucus chaos last night https://www.thedailybeast.com/ ...

• @willsommer Will Sommer on x

  Trump allies are seizing on Iowa's caucus chaos to push conspiracy theories that the results are rigged against Bernie Sanders. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ ...

• @buzzfeedben Ben Smith on x

  I'm usually on the other side but it's really outrageous to blame older, diligent people who handled this for years then got handed a bunch of confusing rules and bad tech by young people! https://twitter.com/...

• @nytimes @nytimes on x

  “We should be begging for the most analog election technology possible,” writes @KevinRoose. “After all, every piece of technology involved in the voting process is a possible point of failure.” https://www.nytimes.com/...