2020 Elections

[spork]

Meanwhile, when facing a general election opponent who is a master of social media trolling and who solicits foreign hacking into opponents' campaigns, Democrats:

• Throw money at a less-than-reputable app developer with shady ties to the DNC instead of using a competitive RFP process.
• Give the developer two months to build the product.
• Don't test the product for bugs before implementation.
• Don't train users of the product, many of whom are not familiar with/don't otherwise use the technology, prior to the time the product has to be used.
• Don't have real-time technical support in place when things go wrong.

And we're not talking the construction of an equivalent to Amazon here. I think less than 2,000 people were supposed to download and use the app to report caucus results, which the software was supposed to tally.

Yup, not ready for prime time, which is #SAD, given that this was not exactly an unscheduled and unforeseen event. If a party is going to use a caucus system to allocate delegates, it seems important to have a working system.

On the other hand, let's take a deep breath, realize that the caucus meetings happened, the results in each were tallied up, so it's just a matter of collecting and reporting those- and also keeping this in a more proper perspective, realizing that the preferences of a party members in Iowa need to be as privileged as we've set up narrative of the primaries to play out. Let's see how March 3 and March 10 unfold...

But why even have an app at all? There were never problems in the past with reporting results. (There were problems, but not with reporting results). There are, I am betting, pretty much the same number of precincts this election cycle as the last one, so it's not like the caucuses were suddenly scaled up in a way that required automation. It seems like the app was a solution, or <cough, cough>  "solution" in search of a problem. I can't even imagine there was that much money to be made, if indeed, there were some shady connections between the app developers and the Iowa Democrats. The market was small with not a whole lot of opportunity for growth.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-04/clinton-campaign-vets-behind-2020-iowa-caucus-app-snafu

[Parasaurolophus]

So what I'm seeing at the moment, based on comparison of caucus chair results and IDP results, and other reports from the ground, is that ~1500 Bernie votes have been wrongly attributed to Deval Patrick and others, and several hundred Warren votes have been wrongly attributed to Tom Steyer.

So...

[hmaria1609]

This news story came out earlier today--DNC Chair Tom Perez has called for a re-canvass in Iowa:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dnc-chair-calls-for-recanvas-in-iowa/2020/02/06/0ec4dc4c-4906-11ea-9164-d3154ad8a5cd_story.html?itid=hp_rhp-top-table-low_iowa-dnc-1245pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans#comments-wrapper

[Anselm]

https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination

Bernie is in the lead with people wagering money on the elections on this website. 

[Parasaurolophus]

You know... I've started thinking that the real takeaway from the Iowa debacle is that we should have been asking the IDP to show its work for the last fifty years. Instead, we've just blindly accepted their verdicts, with no way to check for ourselves.

I mean. The problem can't just be having to report the raw numbers of votes (if we can call them that). They always had to know what those numbers were, so that they could start assigning SDEs. Clearly, what's caused all the trouble here is that they can't do the math for themselves.


And that's actually a pretty astonishing revelation.

[clean]

I've started thinking that the real takeaway from the Iowa debacle is that we should have been asking the IDP to show its work for the last fifty years. Instead, we've just blindly accepted their verdicts, with no way to check for ourselves.

I mean. The problem can't just be having to report the raw numbers of votes (if we can call them that). They always had to know what those numbers were, so that they could start assigning SDEs. Clearly, what's caused all the trouble here is that they can't do the math for themselves.

I could clearly be wrong, but it was my impression that the final Iowa results have always been pretty easy to determine.  This time, the DNC  (or the candidates) required more information. They didnt just want the Final tabulations (one count), but the intermediate results.  (how the sausage was made)  What was the First vote (before the lower vote getting candidates were eliminated?)  Where did the voters go to when their first vote was declared un-viable?

Again, I may have misinterpreted the news, but it seems that the problem was not that the final tallies, especially in the past, are now suspect, but when asked to answer multiple questions, something failed. 

[Parasaurolophus]

I've started thinking that the real takeaway from the Iowa debacle is that we should have been asking the IDP to show its work for the last fifty years. Instead, we've just blindly accepted their verdicts, with no way to check for ourselves.

I mean. The problem can't just be having to report the raw numbers of votes (if we can call them that). They always had to know what those numbers were, so that they could start assigning SDEs. Clearly, what's caused all the trouble here is that they can't do the math for themselves.

I could clearly be wrong, but it was my impression that the final Iowa results have always been pretty easy to determine.  This time, the DNC  (or the candidates) required more information. They didnt just want the Final tabulations (one count), but the intermediate results.  (how the sausage was made)  What was the First vote (before the lower vote getting candidates were eliminated?)  Where did the voters go to when their first vote was declared un-viable?

Again, I may have misinterpreted the news, but it seems that the problem was not that the final tallies, especially in the past, are now suspect, but when asked to answer multiple questions, something failed.

Maybe I've misunderstood, but wouldn't they have always had to know the "intermediate" results in order to determine the final result? This should just have been a case of collecting and preserving the same information they've always collected.

[clean]

Maybe I've misunderstood, but wouldn't they have always had to know the "intermediate" results in order to determine the final result? This should just have been a case of collecting and preserving the same information they've always collected.

No, IF you go to a car dealer and buy a car, does the tax collector know the different prices that you and the dealer negotiate, or just the final price that results? 

Unlike a primary where there is only one election result, in a caucus the crowds of supporters can and do change through the night. 

[Parasaurolophus]

Maybe I've misunderstood, but wouldn't they have always had to know the "intermediate" results in order to determine the final result? This should just have been a case of collecting and preserving the same information they've always collected.

No, IF you go to a car dealer and buy a car, does the tax collector know the different prices that you and the dealer negotiate, or just the final price that results? 

Unlike a primary where there is only one election result, in a caucus the crowds of supporters can and do change through the night.

But you have to count them, don't you?

[mamselle]

Under current conditions, a different question:

Under what conditions might elections be pre-empted, cancelled, or voided?

I realize this may seem presumptive.

But the only stupid question is the one you already know the answer to, and I don't know the answer to this one.

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

Under current conditions, a different question:

Under what conditions might elections be pre-empted, cancelled, or voided?

I realize this may seem presumptive.

But the only stupid question is the one you already know the answer to, and I don't know the answer to this one.

M.

Not an answer, but one of my supervisors once told me--just before I gave a presentation!--that there was no such thing as a stupid question. Only stupid answers.

[clean]

But you have to count them, don't you?

No.  As I understand the caucus system, at the start of the evening everyone gathers. Then they start by saying, "everyone for Bob go to that corner, and everyone for Ellen go to that corner, eveyone for Ted over there...."  They know how many are in the room as they had to check in upon arrival. If the smallest groups are less than 15% of the number in the room, those candidates are not viable.  Those standing in the corners for nonviable candidates are courted by the bigger crowds and people shuffle about.  Only at the end do they need to count the people standing in the corners for the final, viable candidates. 
This time, the DNC or whoever, wanted to know, as I understand it, how many were in each corner initially, and ideally, where the people from the nonviable candidates went. 

SO if Ted is deemed nonviable, they wanted to know that 40% of his supporters went to Bob, while 59% became Ellen Supporters and 1% went home. 
In the past, only the final count, and not the details of how many went where were collected.  No counts of the initial conditions were created.

There are other states the caucus.  IF you have experience, please explain the process, especially IF I misunderstand the process. 

[spork]

Under current conditions, a different question:

Under what conditions might elections be pre-empted, cancelled, or voided?

I realize this may seem presumptive.

But the only stupid question is the one you already know the answer to, and I don't know the answer to this one.

M.

A generic answer: primary contests are controlled by the political parties that run them, so it is up to the DNC and the Iowa branch of the Democratic Party to decide whether to re-run the caucus. But that won't happen because the optics would be terrible and participation by Iowa Democrats would be close to non-existent.

Iowa contributes 49 delegates to the Democratic presidential nomination process, with only 41 pledged to specific candidates on the basis of the caucus results. This is out of a total of 3,949 total pledged delegates nationally, so numerically it's actually an insignificant. But because Americans like to delude themselves into thinking archaic traditions not reflective of the mass of the existing population are essential to "democracy," and the media needs to fill its 24-hour news cycle with pointless blather, I doubt the Democratic party's primary process is going to change meaningfully anytime soon.

Different subject, sort of -- Biden said ""This guy's not a Barack Obama!" in New Hampshire, about Buttigieg. Guess who also isn't a Barack Obama? That's the reflexive thought this comment will generate among New Hampshire primary voters.  (Disclaimer: I'm neither pro- nor anti-Buttigieg. Pretty much the same goes for Biden, though I don't think Biden is a viable candidate given politics in 2020.)

[mamselle]

Interested in your last thought, particularity...

Is that because of the high-level mudslinging generated by the impeachment process + the "promised"/threatened investigation now potentially in process against him and his son?

Or...??

My original question was actually less granular....is there a danger that if the polls suggest an upcoming loss for Trump he could find a way to cancel the elections entirely?

I don't think his paranoid megalomania, enabled by his rabid fan base, is incapable of it, given what we've just seen in the peremptory firing of those who testified against him...he wouldn't even listen to those who suggested it was a bad idea, and I think he's now more dangerous than ever.

M.

[Ruralguy]

He isn't afraid of personal punishment, obviously. His own re-election, probably, but that's months off. What he doesn't care about is the Senators and Reps who will lose because of him.