Nevada Democrats won't use same app that caused Iowa havoc
February 4, 2020
The Nevada Democratic Party today announced it won't use the same app blamed for throwing the Iowa caucuses into chaos, even though the organization previously paid the tech company believed to have developed it.
"NV Dems can confidently say that what happened in the Iowa caucus last night will not happen in Nevada on February 22nd," Nevada State Democratic Party Chair William McCurdy said in a statement. "We will not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus. We had already developed a series of backups and redundant reporting systems, and are currently evaluating the best path forward."
A Democratic technology consultant confirmed to POLITICO that the software Iowa used was the handiwork of Shadow Inc., a D.C.-based outfit that received more than $63,000 from the Iowa Democratic Party in November and December.
The brief statement from Nevada did not address whether the state party had been intending to use the same app in the first place. It also did not explain why it paid $58,000 to Shadow in August for "technical services," according to FEC records.
The Iowa Democratic Party said coding errors in the app caused the significant delay in counting and reporting caucus results, leading to problems across the state on Monday night that have continued into Tuesday.
“We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed,” Tony Price, the Iowa Democratic state party chair, said in a statement. “The application’s reporting issue did not impact the ability of precinct chairs to report data accurately.”
The party told the 2020 presidential campaigns earlier today that it intends to release a portion of the caucus results at 5 p.m. Eastern time.
Zach Montellaro contributed to this report.
Source: https://www.politico.com/
