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How the Iowa Caucuses Became an Epic Fiasco for Democrats (nytimes.com)
11 points by nwvg_7257 2318 days ago
3 comments

This looks really bad, but in truth it probably will have a negligible direct effect on the outcome. The secondary effect of making the party look incompetent or perhaps corrupt is of course important.
tl;dr of the article:

1. The app was buggy and had a terrible roll-out 2. The people in the backup call center couldn't use 2FA because they didn't have their phones 3. Someone posted the phone number for the backup reporting system on 4chan. 4. Individual caucus centers were manually calculating the 36 numbers they needed to report, making errors and also not always following the rules.

For those outside the US, note this shouldn't reflect on the entire voting system. Caucuses, which are rare, are run by party volunteers. Primaries are run by the government.

I'd appreciate if a voting wonk could tl;dr this issue after all the reporting is in.

I find how the sausage is made for US democracy to be truly unpalatable, but it is important to know what's going on.