Iowa Caucuses, the Blob, and the Democratic Party Cartel

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/iowa-caucuses-the-blob-and-the-democratic

by simonpure • 6 years ago

112 99 6 years ago

mattstoller.substack.com

silenussays3• 6 years ago

Best line: "It's not a conspiracy, it's a community".

That sure can be applied to a lot of things in this world.

rob74• 6 years ago

When seen from the inside, it's a community. When seen from the outside, it might look to some like a conspiracy...

buzzkillington• 6 years ago

Including the Mafia.

If only Rico laws were applied to people who aren't a bit too tanned to be really white.

CWuestefeld• 6 years ago

The root cause of the Iowa fiasco is a nonprofit corporation called ACRONYM, which owns the technology company Shadow, Inc.

It's not at all clear to me that this is the case. I mean, sure, there are obviously big problems with the app's design and implementation. But there are ample signs of deeper problems with the customer (and indeed, TFA alludes to some of it).

The fact that the Party insisted on keeping specifics about the app secret until the last minute was the first big red flag to me. With the customer making such a demand about a product that's intended to be widely distributed with zero ramp-up time, they had at least two strikes against them from the start.

Further mess-ups outside the app development, like using the same phone lines for support and for reporting, are mistakes that don't obviously fall on the shoulders of the developer.

The customer - the Iowa Democratic Party - probably needs to bear at least part of the blame for this. It's true that an experienced developer might have given their customer better guidance, but that doesn't absolve the Party from these mistakes.

claudeganon5• 6 years ago

I’m not sure we can even distinguish the entities involved in this case. The head of the Iowa Democratic Party was partying with the ACRONYM’s CEO just before the election. She is married to a Buttigeig staffer. Her husband’s brother is comms director for Buttigeig and was tweeting out log in PINs during the election. And of course the whole ACRONYM operation is wrapped up with Democratic Party dark money.

https://mobile.twitter.com/taraemcg/status/12239909781277245...

https://mobile.twitter.com/bhalle87/status/12245589259467939...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-a-dem-dark-money-group-is-...

matchbok• 6 years ago

Yep, the DNC planned a whole conspiracy for.... Iowa.

sixQuarks2• 6 years ago

Also, why did Buttigeg donate $42k to shadow inc? This should be illegal

SilasX2• 6 years ago

It’s really jarring that the orgs are called ACRONYM and Shadow. I thought those were just ironic filler names to mock the real, undisclosed orgs. But from the article and tweets, it seems real.

Still feels like a parody of some sort. Let me know if I’m not getting it.

logosmonkey• 6 years ago

No, I had the same exact thought. They are basically Bond villain org names. I don't think there was some grand conspiracy here, far more likely a grand failure of tech as a fix for perceived organizational problems as seen in any number of corporations.

aakilfernandes• 6 years ago

In politics, there's a huge incentive for insiders to appear to be a kingmaker. Names like Shadow and ACRONYM play into that stereotype of a behind the scenes puppet master, that politicians will pay big dollars to get them / keep them in power.

At a larger level, it makes understanding whats happening really difficult. Its hard to tell who is actually corrupt and who is "peacocking" corruption.

vilhelm_s• 6 years ago

https://paxamericana.tumblr.com/post/190648864953

rdtsc• 6 years ago

It’s really jarring that the orgs are called ACRONYM and Shadow... Still feels like a parody of some sort.

I thought it was satire the first time I heard as well. Voting software from a company called Shadow inc. is just such bad optics. Nobody there thought to at least spin off a company called "Open Digital Democracy Services Inc.", open source the thing and maybe get some external entity to take a look at it?

This reminds me a bit about putting funny messages in logs which are emitted during catastrophic events. It might seem cute at the moment, but when shit hits the fan and the customer calls and quotes those lines back at you over the phone it is just so embarrassing.

ceres• 6 years ago

Maybe the founders are fans of fictional depictions of evil megacorporations such as Evil Corp, Massive Dynamic Inc, Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated, etc.

notyourday• 6 years ago

It was a total lack of understanding of a product/market fit.

Election volunteers are in a demographic that is targeted by the likes of Consumer Cellular ( data? we dont need that. We just want to call our friends once a month) , GranPad (a tablet with a VERY BIG button - tap here to make a video call to your family ) and AARP.

Someone needs to be out to lunch to think they would download an app, authenticate to it and be able to submit election results using it even with multi month of training.

dqv9• 6 years ago

The whole thing is a red flag. McGowan's ties to the Buttigieg campaign[0] are a clear conflict of interest. Whether or not there was malicious intent, there was no disclosure ahead of time. Now we get the conspiracy theories.

And I can't really blame people for theorizing conspiracy. The IDP and DNC should've vetted this company in advance and declined due to the conflict of interest.

Let's not forget that they were told not to go ahead with using this app (albeit for other reasons than the ties to the Buttigieg campaign)[1].

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/02/04/us/politics/ap-u... McGowan, 34, is married to Michael Halle, a senior strategist for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/795906732/despite-election-se...

tptacek4• 6 years ago

The DNC does not run the Iowa Democratic Caucus.

_jal• 6 years ago

The customer - the Iowa Democratic Party - probably needs to bear at least part of the blame for this.

They bear most of the fault.

The event they run is an every-4-year organizational nightmare run almost entirely by volunteers. It is akin to running a bunch of small conferences in synchrony, which is not something people really normally do.

It is entirely possible to get it right - it isn't super difficult, just a lot of work. But changing the rules, inserting the (bad) app, changing the phone numbers involved in the backup plan shortly beforehand... this process was doomed before they started.

I'm not defending the app - I really really don't think they should be heading down this path - but the app failure was as much shoddy planning and training was it was about the app.

(And I do hope this kills the caucus - far past time for it to go.)

zaroth• 6 years ago

There’s an extremely interesting and important discussion to be had around what happened with an App in Iowa, but TFA seems like the wrong plank to walk off of to have it.

Maybe one day we will have an honest and true post mortem of what happened on Monday. Reports have been conflicting and non-sensical. No one that I can find has managed to actually show the app in question in detail, what numbers were meant to be reported, and how it actually all fell apart.

I’ve heard explanations ranging from caucus chairs unable to login to the app, to the result reports coming out of the app being corrupted. Days later we’re still at only 70% precincts reporting and a race still too close to call. For what was apparently, a fairly low turnout event.

We’re talking about a web form collecting like 6 integer values from 1,765 precincts, right?

giansegato• 6 years ago

That's exactly what I'm not getting. Everybody is discussing scalability problems, but as far as I've seen it all comes down to ~2K users and ~2K consequent form submissions. I can understand juniority, but here even a kid could've handled this kind of "scale"

kjaftaedi• 6 years ago

Even blaming the app is wrong in my opinion.

They had backup plans in place where the precincts would just phone their results in. (as you would expect) ... except nobody was answering the phones.

They were interviewing people on TV who were trying to report their precincts results over the phone, and were interviewing them while on hold. I remember one guy saying he's been waiting for hours for someone to answer.

The app is a scapegoat because people are willing to accept "testing in production" as something that just happens, instead of what in reality should be considered gross negligence.

jellicle2• 6 years ago

Yep. They've obviously had much longer than needed to simply report the values via paper and telephone calls, so the only reason you don't know those numbers now is that the party possesses them and is declining to release them.

I believe it's perfectly legitimate to speculate about why the party might be declining to release them and to make adverse inferences. The time delay granted by claiming "technical problems" has been exceeded.

Proziam2• 6 years ago

Bias Check: I didn't vote Bernie in 2016, I won't be voting Bernie in 2020, and I can honestly say there's not a single politician running that would actually represent my opinions and values.

"It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a community."

I don't know. I have serious doubts about whether or not we're seeing foul-play here. What we know for sure is that the app in question was partially funded by a(at least one) candidate. Essentially, a candidate gave money to the system that counted their votes. The company behind the app was founded by people tied to the Democratic 'establishment' (specifically, Hillary Clinton). And, as far as I can tell, the Democratic party has done everything in their power to ensure the candidate with the most name recognition and popular support in the race (Bernie Sanders) isn't their nominee.

From what I have seen thus far this cycle, and from what I saw in 2016, I can't help but be suspicious.

arcticfox• 6 years ago

The baffling thing to me about so many conspiracy theories from Sanders' camp is that the delay hurt Buttigieg far worse than Sanders.

Sanders is fine with no news from Iowa, the next primary is in his backyard and he has nationwide name recognition.

Buttigieg on the other hand needs Iowa to be huge for him, and this fiasco certainly hurt that strategy.

beeftime• 6 years ago

The idea that the delay(s) hurt Buttigieg in any way is a profound misreading of the situation. Iowa has a small number of delegates, and it's only important in as much as it creates momentum for the winner going into the next three states.

If they released the vote totals on time and Bernie won, that would have given his campaign momentum, which could have lead (still might) to a NH blowout.

Instead, Pete got to "declare victory" twice -- night-of, and again after the 60% release. Now it really doesn't matter if they release the results and Bernie is shown to have won, because we're already multiple news cycles away from caucus night and most people aren't really paying attention, so it's going to be hard for Sanders to capture any momentum, if it's shown he has won. Pete, on the other hand, got a significant NH bump from the IA results in the latest polls.

I think the only way it's hurt Pete is through IDP incompetence, where to most Americans (who hate a cheater and love a conspiracy theory) it looks, for lack of a better term, extremely shady. It's also fired up Bernie's base of die-hards, who are now on the warpath (or even more so) for the early states

wycy• 6 years ago

If Buttigieg holds onto the win once 100% of the votes are counted, it'd be clear evidence not only that there was no conspiracy but also that Buttigieg was absolutely robbed.

If the winning number of SDEs does flip to Sanders by the time they're all counted, though, that'll be pretty damning.

I'm currently on the "no conspiracy" train, since a caucus is pretty hard to fabricate.

cjbillington• 6 years ago

At the time the theories were put forward, Sanders supporters believed Sanders was to come out in front, so they thought the delay was harming him. Both sanders and Buttigieg were claiming their internal numbers showed them in front.

Sanders may yet come out ahead when full results come out - the betting markets put it at 25%, so the theorists might yet be right that the delay hurt Sanders the most (not necessarily right about their theories, but I sympathise with the general level of paranoia - although an given theory probably isn't correct, I think those dismissing them all as crazy lack imagination).

Arguably, since by all accounts Sanders performed much better than Biden (who is seen as Sander's main competition, not Buttigieg), it's still relevant that the delay hurt well-performing candidates in Iowa (Sanders and Buttigieg) and benefited poorly performing candidates (Biden).

hak8or• 6 years ago

You are going to vote though, correct? Lesser of two evils and all that.

If you do not make your voice known, you will be out into the same camp as voter apathy, at which point why should those running care about you if you don't vote?

Proziam2• 6 years ago

Supporting either party at this point goes against my moral values. Both parties support war (or other violent action) and I refuse to support any such action that isn't purely defensive. That issue alone is a disqualifying factor for me, and I care about more than one issue.

That said, I'll continue to support individual issues I care about, and I'll happily call my reps to tell them how they could earn my vote.

sykick• 6 years ago

People running for office ought to care about all of the people in their voting district. Children can't and don't vote but their interests ought to be looked after by politicians. Wouldn't it be a sad state of affairs that those who run for office are only expected to care about people who can potentially and directly help them? I believe we Americans have mostly come to the point of accepting this as normative.

mint2• 6 years ago

Unfortunately there is a large number of people who somehow feel apathy and silence is the best way to get attention in a huge crowd of people making their choices known.

Our culture is good at creating very individualistic princes and princes. No compromise whatsoever. My way or the highway.

salawat3• 6 years ago

The real issue is that voting anyway doesn't solve the problem of not having a truly representative candidate, and a two party system which has a duopolistic stranglehold on the moral character of the nation.

The correct approach is to run and compete, but the disparity in financial amplification created by the two established parties keeps anything from being able to take root.

huherto• 6 years ago

Please consider this.

- In software engineering it is notoriously difficult to distinguish between capable and incapable companies/individuals. You basically need a very capable person to make the evaluation. But who chooses the evaluator ?

- Even a capable company can screw up by no putting the right people in the project.

- Even one person in a capable team can derail a project.

- A project needs time to ramp up, go from alpha testing to beta testing to production. A project that goes from dev to production in one night has 10x the risk of a regular project.

- 60k is very little money for such a risky project.

- Finally, The obligatory don't ever, ever trust voting software https://xkcd.com/2030/

LukeEF2• 6 years ago

The obligatory xkcd! They should have known, right?

ianai3• 6 years ago

This is clearly not an HN appropriate topic from the comments alone. This thread is devolving into a mixture of the worst possible interpretations of what happened with outright lies and misleading representations being used to fuel FUD.

Shivetya• 6 years ago

welcome to the shit show that has been present for quite awhile. at least this article up and declares its political while too many are slipped in under the covers and are very easily traced back to one campaign's or another talking points.

just flag every article and maybe enough others will join in and we can get back to pretending to having an agnostic view on this site

skmurphy• 6 years ago

key paragraph: "In this moment in history, the network of institutions that comprise the Democratic Party, from cable news channels to law firms to campaign operative networks to Silicon Valley lobbying outposts like Facebook and Google, are hollow and obviously incompetent."

This seems to be hyperbole, but I am not familiar with Matt Stoller so I reserved judgement and read a number of the back issues of his newsletter (archived at no charge on the site at https://mattstoller.substack.com/ ). I came across this https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/airplanes-and-accounting-... which was written in December and correctly predicts the subsequent collapse of Boeing.

Both articles are well written and insightful, the analysis is not from a political perspective but from a careful review of governance models and the impact of incentives on behavior.

ianai3• 6 years ago

Well you won me over. I do think this guy is trying to honestly shed light on the powers of influence and concentration at work in the industry at large. I’m dubious though about the value of this particular article.

34679• 6 years ago

Definition of conspiracy

1 : the act of conspiring together

Definition of conspire

1a : to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement

b : scheme

2 : to act in harmony toward a common end

Following the above, a conspiracy can be "the act of working in harmony toward a common end". Otherwise known as Politics. Whether there's a conspiracy here isn't up for debate; by definition a political party is a conspiracy. What's debatable is if they conspired illegally.

tptacek4• 6 years ago

Why is Matt Stoller credible on this topic? Is there evidence he has better sourcing than a book he once read and a bunch of Google searches?

dmix• 6 years ago

Just sounds like some vague connections thrown together that happens to match the thesis of his book. Yawn.

blhack• 6 years ago

I feel really bad for the people who made this thing. It looks like it was mostly interns/people at their first job out of a bootcamp.

It was a mess, sure. My first major project was probably a mess too, except my "mess" would have been looking at a display and going "huh?", not being accused of trying to undermine democracy.

joering2• 6 years ago

Its a classical example of government waste and corruption. Some shady company collected millions while interns took blame for their first app not being robust and at the level of banking app. Sadly the winner of this fiasco is Trump.

It was similar with Obamacare website. Done to the tune of $5 billion dollars (!!) it was mostly prepared by IT corporations located in India, the source code is/was terrible with jQuery hosted on some third-party CDN, it was/is a disaster.

jellicle2• 6 years ago

As this caucus was administered and paid for by the Iowa Democratic Party, a private corporation, this is not a classical example of government waste and corruption, unless you're making the subsidiary argument that government shouldn't farm out or privatize essential functions like elections, which I would agree with.

teucris• 6 years ago

Its a classical example of government waste and corruption.

I agree on the corruption part, but elected governments had very little to do with this. To me that’s a double edged sword - the caucus process could be an independent expression of the will of the people (in theory anyway) but it also isn’t subject to proper scrutiny nor required to be a transparent process.

silenussays3• 6 years ago

The thing that blows my mind is that they only spend around $60k developing it. Steyer and Bloomberg have spent 400 million dollars combined on ads in South Carolina. Couldn't any of the several billionaires that support the Democrats have kicked down a couple hundred grand for this at least? Even Epstein randomly handed out 100k checks to profs at MIT. It's not that much money for these people.

vasachi2• 6 years ago

60k for a web page, that has a form to input about 8 numbers? With about 1000 users maximum?

Judson• 6 years ago

To me, the Iowa Caucus Fiasco™️ is best explained by incompetence and embarrassment. A bug in the app caused it to fail, call centers overwhelmed, and a bunch of people who had been at the caucus for hours probably tried to take the reporting into their own hands, and caused even more delays.

Verifying the results that were scribbled on an undated piece of paper by 1600+ volunteers is not an easy task. [Esp after the fact, when the whole verification was centered around username / pw / 2fa / + pin, which may have not been readily accessible for call-center use].

The Des Moine Register poll was scrapped for less, which is why it feels like a cover-up. Not because of any candidate bias, but because the caucus probably needs to be redone for the results to be credible under scrutiny, or nullified entirely, which would be quite an embarrassment.

leto_ii2• 6 years ago

It’s always been a bit of a puzzle for me to define just what the Democratic Party is. There are no formal membership dues, and registration varies by state. Candidates can sometimes run for the party nomination without being a member

As a non-American this kind of stuff has always been a bit bewildering for me. Why is such opacity accepted in the electoral/political process?

Doesn't this always risk shifting power to unknown and unaccountable individuals?

Doesn't this muddying of waters allow for all sorts of hidden conflicts of interest?

DanTheManPR• 6 years ago

Part of the reason is that the framers of the US constitution hated parties, and seemed to take a "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" approach. With no backbone of written law to fall back on, US political parties only rely on their own rules as an organization of people. All the problems you described do affect them, and they used to be even more exclusive and opaque. The candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are fruits of the opening up of parties, effectively allowing takeovers by determined blocks of people.

LarryDarrell• 6 years ago

For the most part, most of our rules and traditions are there to make sure the poor and people of color stay disenfranchised.

LukeEF2• 6 years ago

I mean srsly people, has nobody read the relevant xkcd? It was all so clear: https://xkcd.com/2030/

blazespin• 6 years ago

Gods, why not just take a picture of the voting sheet and send it in. Iowa only has about 1700 voting districts? I could data entry that myself in about 2 hours. Split the work among 10 people, and you'd have it done in 12 minutes.

elicash• 6 years ago

My guess is either (a) they're hand-counting all the paper backups, and/or (b) campaigns are chiming in and confirming or disputing results before the IDP makes the result public, which means more time for folks to weigh in and more fact-gathering before the public knows the results. And that while this wasn't the plan, the initial things going wrong caused such distrust in the process they felt this was necessary.

scottlocklin2• 6 years ago

Funny Matt is usually a straight shooter but didn't mention Tara McGowan (CEO of Acronym; it's on linkedin) is married to Buttigieg senior staffer Michael Halle. Maybe he didn't notice.

https://www.axios.com/pete-buttigieg-michael-halle-senior-st...

leto_ii2• 6 years ago

Does anybody know why this story was flagged? :-S

Iowa Caucuses, the Blob, and the Democratic Party Cartel

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