The only thing this change would do would be to change the 20x effective punching power of the "state to go first" from Iowa to a state that likely matters more in terms of winning the actual election after the primaries.
I think the there's more mystique to Iowa than hard data. Contested Iowa caucus winners over the last 50ish years have about 55% chance of winning party nomination and ~20% chance of winning the presidency, although their predictive power is stronger for Dems than Reps, so maybe more significant in context.
Is no one going to talk about how the chosen one (Joe Biden) totally flopped? While one data point isn't a trend, this is huge since all polls predicted he would win Iowa!
Biden has never done well in Iowa. Possibly that's why after all these years the Democratic Party Mainstream is objecting to Iowa being first, because it gets their preferred guy off on the wrong foot?
@jacob. Interestingly, Bernie beat HRC in both Wisconsin and Michigan in the 2016 primary. Maybe should have been an omen, but like you alluded to, no one thought Trump would be able to win in any of the states that touch L. Michigan. Even with enough prescience to to have foreseen that (I think maybe only Bannon did), no way was HRC going to step aside, and no one was going to ask her to. I dunno if Bernie could have done better against Trump or not, but it's an interesting thought experiment.
Last edited by IlliniDave on Thu Feb 06, 2020 6:32 am, edited 2 times in total.
Hey -- don't blame Iowa for being slow to adopt new technology when the app developer hired by the Democratic party didn't know what the hell they were doing. For example:
"The New York Times reported that many precinct chiefs had trouble simply downloading the app, and Motherboard’s screenshots give hints as to why that might be. The app was not deployed through traditional app stores or even sideloaded using an enterprise certificate. Instead, it was deployed through mobile testing platforms, including Apple’s TestFlight and a similar service that services both iOS and Android called TestFairy. Both platforms are for apps that are not yet finalized."
...
"The screenshot from Motherboard also shows that the app was distributed using the TestFairy platform’s free tier and not its enterprise one. That means Shadow didn’t even pony up for the TestFairy plan that comes with single sign-on authentication, unlimited data retention, and end-to-end encryption. Instead, it looks like the company used the version of TestFairy anyone can try for free, which deletes any app data after 30 days and limits the number of test users that can access the app to 200."
I believe the firm hired to create the app was owned/founded by former HRC campaign people rather than a "real" developer. In hindsight appears to be a serious case of amateur hour. Still seems weird they wouldn't have been able to count up the paper backups by now since historically they were usually counted within an hour or two. And they've had to tweak some of the numbers they have put out after discrepancies were noted. Looks like they're at about 97% with Bernie gaining a little ground on Mayor Pete, looks like it will be a virtual tie.
Apparently some results were also mailed in. Literally. So now they're also waiting for the mailman.
Another issue with using the backup phone lines after the app borked was that they started receiving prank calls from Trump supporters from around the country thus overloading the [limited] system for the legit calls. There were 35 backup lines to take 1600 results each of which should have taken no more than 5 minutes to report. That's still almost 4 hours w/o jamming.
Maybe some day the system will be designed for robustness rather than speed. I have some ideas ...
Stunning development it was really Trump and the Deplorables to blame, haha. Day 1 after the Senate vote and the new scandal is launched. Can't make this stuff up.
Edit to add: I'm actually okay with a number of DT's planks, but it would be a relief if we could find a better POTUS and end the nonsense propagated by the so-called political leadership.
Some party officials are blaming a 4chan brigade for adding to the phone chaos. With only 35 lines they don't seem to have planned for using the phones much at all. Also other people started calling in to get/confirm results. Basically an overall clusterfuck.
PS: https://www.memeorandum.com/ is a very good aggregator to see what the journalists are currently reading (beyond twitter)---it's sorted according to most popular story and tracks pretty fast (within the hour).
A re-do would fire up Bernie's base even more and would be rather convenient for the "establishment."
Iowa should've immediately came out and say "hey guys, we screwed up with this App thing. Here are the facts. Here is how we're gonna prevent this in the future. And here is a timeline for counting the votes now. We apologize" .
Crisis Responding 101...now the public and bad actors own this narrative.
A re-do would fire up Bernie's base even more and would be rather convenient for the "establishment."
Iowa should've immediately came out and say "hey guys, we screwed up with this App thing. Here are the facts. Here is how we're gonna prevent this in the future. And here is a timeline for counting the votes now. We apologize" .
Crisis Responding 101...now the public and bad actors own this narrative.
I don't disagree, but that tweet is from the DNC Chairman. He might just be talking about a recount of some sort. It seems a number of the errors uncovered so far have worked against Bernie, so maybe they'd accept it if they could be convinced it would be done in good faith.
Let me just say, as a programmer, this level of quality is absolutely par for the course in the industry. They probably had some intern write the API and then wrote two unit tests and called it a day. The rush to get this stuff to market means quality (and security!!) is absolutely left to the wayside.
So the app crashing because it wasn't developed right is extremely likely.
Iowa should've immediately came out and say "hey guys, we screwed up with this App thing. Here are the facts. Here is how we're gonna prevent this in the future. And here is a timeline for counting the votes now. We apologize" .
Beyond the insanely poor app, the deeper and darker problem is that the voting data they do have is highly problematic. That's why Tom Perez (the head of the DNC) is calling for a complete do-over.
The results released by the Iowa Democratic Party on Wednesday were riddled with inconsistencies and other flaws. According to a New York Times analysis, more than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, that were missing data or that were not possible under the complex rules of the Iowa caucuses.
In some cases, vote tallies do not add up. In others, precincts are shown allotting the wrong number of delegates to certain candidates. And in at least a few cases, the Iowa Democratic Party’s reported results do not match those reported by the precincts.
Some of these inconsistencies may prove to be innocuous, and they do not indicate an intentional effort to compromise or rig the result. There is no apparent bias in favor of the leaders Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders, meaning the overall effect on the winner’s margin may be small.
But not all of the errors are minor, and they raise questions about whether the public will ever get a completely precise account of the Iowa results.
The unmitigated disaster that will from here on out be referred to as "Pulling An Iowa" is 100% on the DNC and is in no way a reflection of the earnest, hard working, extra salt of the earth ordinary citizenry of the great state of Iowa. However, it is my opinion, that you have a better chance of spotting dead baseball players wearing skinny jeans walking out of your cornfields than once again kicking off a Presidential campaign.