Graphic by Natalie Kulak ’21
ANNA KANE ’20 & LIZ LEWIS ’22
The 2020 Iowa caucus ended in confusion and outrage when results were delayed due to the crash of an app designed to streamline result collection.
The app was created by the company Shadow for the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) to report the caucus results. This was the first use of the app in a major election, and though caucus chairs were given the option of calling in results on a telephone hotline to count votes, they were encouraged by the IDP to use the mobile app. When the app crashed, the phone line also crashed shortly after. Ac- cording to NPR, after finding themselves unable to report their results, many caucus chairs simply went home.
In addition, this year, all caucus chairs were required to file paper reports on how caucus-goers voted — a new measure implemented by the IDP as a backup in case of app failure. However, confusion surrounding the app crash meant that results of the caucus were unreportable, leading some Democratic candidates to claim victory.
As of Wednesday, Feb. 5, only 85 percent of precincts had been counted and the results are still unclear.
The Iowa caucus, held on Monday, Feb. 3, was the first nominating process of the 2020 presidential election. Amidst the crowded Democratic field, the results in Iowa were expected to give insight into the nation’s preferred candidate to join President Donald Trump on the ballot in November. The errors in counting, combined with contradictory reports by candidates themselves have instead begun the Democratic presidential race with confusion and disaster.
Since the 1970s, Iowa has been the first state to begin the process of selecting political parties’ presidential candidates. After 7 p.m., caucuses are held in 1,679 precincts around the state and voters typically flock to school gyms to participate. Supporters of each candidate gather in designated spots around the room and the vote is conducted via head count. For a candidate to be considered viable, they must receive at least 15 percent of the vote from attendees. Voters who originally express support for nonviable candidates then have the opportunity to instead cast their vote for any of the remaining candidates. In order to be considered the winner of the caucus, a candidate must have the most state delegate equivalents.
Jai Pemmaraju ’20 caucused in Iowa during the 2016 presidential election. “I think a lot of people in Iowa like the caucus system because they see it as a way to bring people to the side of their candidate, but I think in 2016 most people went into the caucus knowing who they supported,” Pemmaraju said.
According to NBC News, Iowa has faced issues with reporting in the past. In 2016, supporters of Bernie Sanders noted irregularities in the process, as Hillary Clinton won over Sanders by just 0.3 percent. In 2012, Mitt Romney was initially declared the winner, but ended up losing to Rick Santorum by just 34 votes.
By 10:30 p.m. on Feb. 3, when results from the caucus were expected to roll in, the IDP announced inconsistencies in re- porting and stated that only 35 percent of precincts had reported results. No other details were provided at that time.
“We have experienced a delay in the results due to quality checks and the fact that the IDP is reporting out three data sets for the first time,” IDP spokeswoman Mandy McClure told The New York Times.
According to an anonymous source who worked on the development of the app and was quoted in The New York Times, there had been “concerns that the app would malfunction in areas with poor connectivity, or because of high bandwidth use, such as when many people tried to use it at the same time.”
The app, developed only two months prior to the caucuses, had not been tested at a statewide level. The process was so rushed that Shadow wasn’t able to get it approved by the Apple Store, hindering users’ ability to successfully download the app. Some county chairs also experienced hold delays while reporting results to the party’s hotline over the phone, a process that had been utilized for decades.
For the first time, Iowans away from home had the opportunity to partake in this year’s caucuses. Eighty-seven satellite sites were set up around the world, including in France, Scotland and the Republic of Georgia. On Monday, Sophie Vincent ’22 voted in a satellite caucus held in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“It’s a very chaotic process,” Vincent said. “You need to go in knowing a lot more about your candidate in case you need to convince someone to come to your corner. And you have to have a backup candidate as well,” Vincent said.
Democrats were hopeful that voter turnout in Iowa would be high, indicating a desire to vote President Donald Trump out of office. Instead, figures reported by CNN indicate that turnout was roughly on par with 2016 figures, with approximately 172,000 total caucus-goers casting their votes.
“This year it was definitely a lot more chaotic due to the sheer number of candidates,” Pemmaraju said. “My whole family caucused this year and there were over 500 people at their polling place and they opened a lot more polling stations.”
The Iowa caucuses demand more of a voter than a primary might, but they have also come under scrutiny in recent years for their irregularities, as well as a lack of efficiency and rampant inaccessibility.
“I passionately resent the caucus,” Adelia Brown ’22 said. “The nearest satellite caucus was a 90 minute drive and I don’t have a car, so I couldn’t vote.”
To Brown, the caucuses are not only inconvenient, but are also damaging to the democratic process as a whole. Historically, the structure of the caucuses has demanded that voters dedicate an entire evening to being physically present for the process.
“[The caucuses] disenfranchise large groups of potential voters,” such as “college students, people with disabilities, and people who work evenings,” Brown said.
“The factors that can prevent someone from caucusing often correlate to certain political ideologies, like how college students are often more liberal,” Brown said. Because of this, “the specific people being excluded by the caucus could very likely alter the result.”
However, to Brown, even if the caucuses were more accessible, they would still be “a logistical nightmare.”
She cited personal experiences of sloppiness in the process, such as confusion with recounting votes, workers not checking IDs before counting heads and general inefficiency.
“The experience of going is long and emotionally exhausting. Your peers and neighbors can see how you vote,” Brown said. “It’s a really inefficient way to vote, both in terms of inconveniencing the vot- er and interpreting the results.”