And QA and testing, two important parts of the “everything else.” Even if they sourced it out on fiverr or something, it needed to be done.
4 Likes
We do Scantron in Ohio, and our “receipts” are stickers that read “I [heart] VOTING” except the heart is a graphic of the state.
7 Likes
It’s one thing to use DNC as short hand for Democrats in general when talking about general stuff.
But it seems like a lot of these people don’t understand the distinction between state and National parties. Or that the National party does not have direct control of state parties.
There also seem to be a lot of people calling this a primary, or who seem to think all primaries work this way.
But at least caucuses are bad again. One of 2016’s head spinning moments for me was when extemely online progressives suddenly decided caucuses were the most democratic thing ever because Sanders was out performing Clinton in caucus states. For my entire life “caucus bad” has been a central peg of progressive electoral reform.
5 Likes
If the Democratic primaries of 2016 taught me anything about American politics, it was that enthusiasm about politics is orthogonal to being informed about it. There were a lot of energetic, zealous people who very clearly didn’t know how things worked.
4 Likes
I’ve never been offered a receipt, only a “I voted” sticker.
4 Likes
Is Bobby Tables an Iowa voter?
3 Likes
Same. I believe there’s a printout spit out that shows the ballot’s been scanned, but the election workers haven’t shown it or given it to me. (I’m not criticizing them-- they are invariably friendly yet professional, and some of them have been working our precinct for years.)
4 Likes
absolutely. this a thousand times
my only point was that the blame sits with the iowa dnc for wanting to do so, and with the management that promised they could do it on the pale shadow of real development costs
the individual programmer/s?
we’ll probably never hear their story.
and that sucks, because the media reports and many people’s comments blame the software - as if it was a glitch, a bug, or a bad programmer that wreaked the results - when it actually sounds like it was the process - the project itself - that was the problem
6 Likes
From now on in every election I’m writing in “Giant Meteor”. It’s the only way to be sure.
3 Likes
Any electronic link anywhere in the chain of getting public opinion out in the form of an elected official is nothing but an attempt to defraud the public. ESPECIALLY in a matter like this, where a simple 10-second voice phone call would have worked perfectly. My words about the so-called “leaders” wanting to be able to screw with the real vote counts are still valid. Even inside their own parties they want to be able to write their own reality.
2 Likes
The theory variant I heard was that the DNC was trying to not report results until the press lost interest specifically because they did know that Biden lost badly, that way a report of 4th place in Iowa wouldn’t affect future results as much. On one hand I feel like they’d have to realize that partial results would leak in this scenario, but on the other hand this is the party that lost the 2016 election, so 
5 Likes
Well, there was a very sophisticated state-level information warfare campaign involved with them losing. Plus Comey releasing that statement days before the election, which clearly violated FBI policy. If either of those two things had been different, I’m convinced Hillary would have won in an electoral landslide. However, she also could have run a significantly better campaign, and come out on top electorally – that’s on her and her campaign staff, who really, really fucked up.
The “delay the results and they’ll lose interest” conspiracy makes as little sense as all the others – if anything, this has put WAY MORE attention on the Iowa results, and caused the news cycle to (very predictably) stagnate, including examination of how poorly Biden did, vs. just quickly moving to the next states, in which he may do much better. May. Maybe not, we’ll see!
1 Like
There are a lot of Andrew Yang signs up in my neck of the woods (South Bay & Santa Cruz). That polls show Yang supporters unwilling to support any other candidate kind of tells me all I need to know. That we have a party that really ought to be split up into multiple parties. Even though that is basically impossible under the current system. If people can’t figure out how to get along and compromise, then maybe we don’t deserve to run things.
1 Like
Okay junior.
6 Likes
That’s partially the increases in turnout since 2008, lot more first timers in each cycle these days. Which is ultimately a good thing.
But there’s a troubling tendency to forefront bad information because it comports with expectations. And that ain’t helping.
2 Likes
I like these variants:
4 Likes
Except the DNC’s bungling incompetence over three decades is quite plainly obvious. So no, they don’t get a pass just because some cranks thought they did it on purpose.
Additionally, in 2017 the DNC affirmed and won the right in court (as a private corporation) to decide the primaries in “a smoke-filled back room,” ignoring actual voting at their leisure. So there’s that, as well. Gosh, how could anyone think some sort of conspiracy is afoot…?!
You can save us the feigned astonishment that anyone could suspect the DNC of foul play. It won’t wash.
4 Likes
Is having a set of rules as a political party “foul play,” though? Especially when they were mostly aimed at helping a, well, Democrat win the, uh, Democratic primary? Bernie is not and has not been a Democrat.
To borrow your line, save us the feigned astonishment that anyone would actually be surprised by this, or really even find it all that dirty. I say this as a guy who gave Bernie the max financial contribution allowed in the 2016 primary, really does NOT have an affinity for the Clintons (or even the DNC itself), and very very very much wanted him to win. But this permanent crucible against The Democratic Party? Me no think it helping.
1 Like
So, I started out I the “likely just unfathomable and inexcusable incompetence” camp, but after watching this play out for a while, I’m pretty solidly in the “rigged “ camp at this point.
Aside from all the too-coincidental connections of the app makers to Clinton and Buttigieg, the unprecedentedly cancelled last poll, and ignoring repeated warnings about the app from multiple sources, there’s been a string of suspicious shit with their release of the results.
-
They released partial results.
-
Those results were apparently heavily loaded towards rural counties.
-
They have not released results that were reported by local precincts for over 24 hrs, and won’t tell the precinct chiefs why.
- They recently had to correct an “error” that coincidentally took 24 state delegate equivalents away from Sanders, and didn’t correct it until they were called out on the discrepancies
https://twitter.com/iowademocrats/status/1225170253778444291?s=20
https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1225178927263633409?s=20
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
4 Likes
The people that are being called out from the company are not the rank and file, they’re the ones who would have sought out and taken the contract, so they’re just as much involved in it as the politicians.
2 Likes
