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Have We Seen the Last Iowa Caucus?
The Iowa Democratic Party is in disarray after its debacle Monday night. They had four years to prepare for their first-in-the-nation Caucuses; as the night draws to a close they have no results, no explanation for their failure, and no excuses.
The results of the Republican caucuses came in fast, showing Trump the overwhelming winner. After hours of silence, the Democrats said they are delaying any results. “We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” communications director Mandy McClure said. “In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report.”
This, after bragging about how ready they were for this pivotal night.
In preparation for one of the most consequential elections of our lifetimes, we have taken historic steps to ensure a secure, accessible, and transparent caucus process. #IACaucus https://t.co/XY61GJ9AAD
— Iowa Democrats (@iowademocrats) February 3, 2020
We have staff on the ground working to help protect the integrity of our democratic process. And we’re doing everything we can to make sure Iowans’ voices are heard and the caucuses are secure. https://t.co/UJSQGQoiPA
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) February 3, 2020
Their website claimed the results would be posted after 7 p.m. CT. Below the declaration, a long line of zeroes. During an emergency phone call with the campaigns, one participant shouted, “This is an unbelievable explanation.” Another person added, “I think he speaks for all of us.”
Joe Biden’s general counsel quickly sent a letter to the state’s party leaders. “The app that was intended to relay Caucus results to the Party failed; the Party’s back-up telephonic reporting system likewise has failed,” she wrote. “Now, we understand that caucus chairs are attempting to — and, in many cases, failing to — report results telephonically to the party. These acute failures are occurring statewide.”
It’s past time for Iowa to end its bizarre, arbitrary, and confusing voting rules. After tonight, the national parties will demand it.
Published in Elections, Politics
This is ridiculous! Just think: In 1864, the American people knew Lincoln had been re-elected the day after the election. This was during a civil war, in a country that communicated by frickin’ TELEGRAPH!!!🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Yes, but then they didn’t have to contend with ‘Diversity’ – or so I am told.
Key word: Functioning
They had actually been dealing with diversity—both with and without the quotation marks—for some time.🙂
My theory is that Shadow was originally coded in 2016 but not released in time to help Hillary win Iowa by a falsely enhanced margin. The updated version of the app crashed because Hillary was not among the selections so there was no one to whom to give the fictitious votes the app had created. And when Bernie came out on top, it was Abort, Retry, Fail right here in River City.
https://youtu.be/i-4uKgXRnpI
Bwaaa-haa-haa-haa-haa!!!
Yes, I can. Fly-By-Night Consulting, a subsidiary of Strictly Legit Enterprises.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/iowa-caucus-app-shadow_n_5e390191c5b687dacc722824
Shadow? This level of intrigue sounds more like “The Shadow!”
Maybe they’re somewhere in Precinct 13.
Maybe Hillary has them in a lockbox.
They’re with the CRU’s original climate data.
The Clintons definitely know that the roots of crime run deep and know what evil lurks in the hearts of
menhwætever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0VNHe5fq30
Man, I thought the GOPe was bad! The Democrat Establishment are truly brazen.
Back to the post’s premise though – it’s time for the “Caucus” to go away – on one hand, I kind of like citizens advocating for their preferred candidates but could also see pressure applied to prospective voters that don’t align with say their union shop stewards choice, or the school principle’s choice.
Secret ballots that aren’t under the custody of either party’s apparatus/structure (paper ballots, numbered, allocated by district/precinct) look to be most tamper proof. Any phone voting initiatives should be shut down and nipped in bud.
It’s delicious to watch the Dems/Left cannibalize each other but it’s also evidence that we’re becoming a joke – this is something one would expect in Maduro’s Venezuella, Sadam’s Iraq or Putin’s Russia.
She must have given them her cleaning cloth. She kept it with the Rose Law Firm billing records.
If you’re Iowa Republicans, you’re probably saying “Why should we give up our caucus just because the Democrats can’t run theirs right?” Remember, the same sort of thing happened in 2016, when going into Iowa, the Republican primary was arguably more contentious than the Democrats primary was. Cruz ended up beating Trump in Iowa, despite his call for curtailing ethanol subsidies, while the Democrats ended up with Hillary having that amazing run of luck and beating Bernie by coin flip in every one of the precinct toss-up races.
This is the same thing as the Democrats’ governance screwing up cities or states (or when they have the White House, national policy) and then blaming everyone else but themselves for things failing. Just because the Democrats either can’t run a caucus competently or — worse! — don’t want to run one competently because they don’t like the outcome, and would rather be seen as bumbling incompetents than give the guy they think will lose in November a victory, doesn’t mean the problem is with the caucus system. If Iowa had a straight primary vote Monday night and Bernie was going to be the winner, it’s entirely possible the Dems would have had the same ‘quality control’ problems, or that missing ballots would be found in the back of vehicles 2-3 days after the election that altered the final result. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before in general elections.
Democrats manage to suppress own vote!
Except The Shadow is supposed to know.
Speaking as an Iowan, I’m perfectly happy to see the caucuses go away, as long as we also end up reforming the whole primary system in general. But I don’t think the Iowa caucus is a bad idea in itself. It does give some hard information for politicians and campaigns, and it helps demonstrate how well a campaign can organize turnout. The process is idiosyncratic, but when run competently it will produce results. And anyway, because it is usually dealing with a large field of candidates, some sort of ‘winnowing’ process is probably a good idea.
But many, many aspects of our politic system have gotten badly broken in the past few cycles…
Agree with @jon1979 on this one. Why should Republicans and everyone else have to abandon the caucus system just because the Democrats can’t do it. I sort of like having a system that’s got different ways of doing things.
I’m sure the Iowa results will be out soon. This is a much faster result than the EU was able to achieve; they had to keep holding referenda until the results came out the right way.
“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
Joseph Stalin in 1923, in reference to a vote in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Finding that at Snopes also turned this up:
“Indeed, you won the elections, but I won the count.” — Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza (1896-1956), Guardian (London), 17 June 1977.
Listened to the Bookmonger podcast on the drive into work. It’s about a book on Elizabeth Warren and starts out with, we are recording this before the Iowa caucus–listeners will probably know the results but we don’t. Nope, we don’t either.
Election chaos? The Russians probably had something to do with it.
Remember in 2012 the media cheered the Democrats’ use of new technology linked to social media to mine potential votes for Obama. It didn’t become a scandal until Cambridge Analytics used it to help Trump in 2016.
Election shenanigans at the ballot box have the same response. There were no questions about vote harvesting in California in 2018, and up until now there had been no questions about phone voting, or other types of off-site voting, where election officials aren’t around, because the conventional wisdom was those types of votes helped Democrats — legally as stated in the stories, but if it helped them illegally, that also was no big deal because it was helping the Good Guys. And if you saw any post-2018 stories about vote harvesting, it wasn’t on questions of whether or not ballots outside of the control of the person issued the mail ballot might be abused, but how smart the Democrats were to come up with this tactic.
If there are any media questions or anger about the Iowa results, it’s because as an in-house food fight between rival Democrats, it also splits the media. Outlets that are favorable to Bernie are going to be suspicious that the DNC is trying to steal the election here, where they wouldn’t care if Iowa had similar voter glitches in key precincts come November, if the glitches produced the proper result (and any stories about Monday’s screw-ups will inevitably end up being tied into some Trump-Russia meme, if the integrity of election results are questioned).
If Buttigieg has declared victory, can there be any doubt who will be his running mate?
Buttigieg/Stacey Adams 2020 – The Real Dream Ticket – You’ll Never Wake Up!
I have a love/hate relationship with the caucus system after my one experience. I hate the inconvenience of having to go out on a cold winter night to cast my vote — especially when it doesn’t usually mean much as Colorado caucuses comparatively late, Colorado is turning blue, and the Colorado GOP seems incompetent and feckless.
However, sitting in a room with 50 of my politically involved neighbors, several of whom are willing to stand up and make their case, seems like how a democratic republic should be.
The Democrats can’t run anything well, yet they want to run our country. Has anyone forgotten the rollout of the ACA website? That was a gem. And then there were the 2016 Iowa caucuses. They ended in ties, supposedly. Their brilliant solution was to flip a coin to determine the winner. Amazingly enough, Clinton won six out of six coin tosses. Try that next time you are in Vegas.