
Democrats Declined DHS Offer to Test Caucus App - toomuchtodo
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-04/iowa-democrats-say-results-to-be-released-today-campaign-update
======
tempsy
The conflict of interest here is stunning. The CEO of this company Acronym,
which owns the app developer Shadow, received $100K from the Buttigieg
campaign and her husband is an advisor for his campaign. Buttigieg's
organizing director is also a former employee of Shadow. And the entire
company is all former Hilary Clinton employees e.g. centrist democrats.

~~~
dralley
>received $100K from the Buttigieg campaign

This company produces the textbanking software that the Buttigieg campaign
uses. It's frustrating to watch people repeating the phrase "received money
from the Buttigieg campaign" with the implication that it's a bribe when the
actual situation is that both the Iowa Democratic Party and the Buttigieg
campaign used the same contractor for some software.

~~~
freewilly1040
There's a pretty clear conflict of interest between the Buttigieg work of
helping his campaign and the caucus tabulating work for the DNC. There might
not be _actual foul play_ , but the reason we look to avoid conflicts of
interest in things like this is that it's easier to establish a lack of
conflict of interest than it is to establish a lack of foul play.

~~~
esoterica
Most people working in politics have done work for a zillion other candidates
and the state/national party apparatus before. That’s the nature of political
work; campaigns only last a few months so people are always job hopping. If
that counts as a conflict of interest than every staffer for every single
candidate is guilty of a conflict of interest.

~~~
freewilly1040
You're supporting my point. If a staffer worked for a campaign and in a role
in charge of election integrity _at the same time_ , as this firm is doing, it
would indeed be considered a conflict of interest.

~~~
kelnos
I think the parent's point is that if you only consider contractors/staffers
who don't have conflicts of interest of this sort, your hiring pool drops to a
number that is too small to be useful.

Whether or not that's true is debatable, but I think it's a compelling point.

~~~
mattrp
>your hiring pool drops to a number that is too small to be useful.

That's why it's called a swamp.

------
pessimizer
My bet is that the contractors were incompetents who were hired based on
political connections, and they both 1) just finished the app within the past
week, and 2) never tested it after it was officially finalized. By bet is that
they tested it weeks ago, it failed, they blamed the failure on a few bugs,
they eventually marked those specific bugs fixed, then just prayed after
shipping it. I know I'm being too specific, but _past trauma_.

Major sign: Not only wasn't there a dry run before d-day, but they didn't even
train the people expected to use the app on the app.

The corruption is traditional corrupt procurement (apparently connected to
Buttigieg and the Clinton complex) rather than an attempt to fix the primary.
Primary fixing will be done out in the open with sudden rule changes.

~~~
riazrizvi
Incompetent is a bit harsh. I think you need to be quite good to hit a home
run with a new app/system that will be rolled out at an event to lots of
users.

~~~
pessimizer
The app's entire purpose is to allow 1700 people to type in 21 numbers, and to
send those numbers to a database. I don't know how that's more than a week's
work, with another month or two added to design the walkthrough.

~~~
riazrizvi
From a technical perspective where only informed and good actors are involved,
I suspect many of us could code up a working website in less than an hour. But
if you look at the issues reported on at the Des Moines Register [1] it seems
the job was about creating a reporting system in an environment where people
are actively trying to disrupt the system, possibly some of the reporters
themselves cannot be trusted. I think you'd need to sit through a few meetings
with the right people before you'd even understand what was required. You've
got to find tech/security people from previous campaigns to understand what
the dirty tricks are that people use to f with the results for example.

[1]
[https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presi...](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2020/02/03/election-2020-iowa-
caucus-problems/4618371002/)

~~~
derision
Sounds like you'd want DHS to review it then

~~~
saber6
Does anyone think DHS has the expertise on hand to review source code (and
would it be cart blanche style)? When I think of DHS I think more of physical
security measures. NSA is whom I think of when it comes to defensive
cybersecurity measures.

~~~
Stranger43
They likely have a standby contract with someone like Accenture or Deloite for
this kind of work.

The reason for putting this under the DHS rather then just outsourcing it
directly is that the DHS have some kind of credible neutrality where as nobody
trusts the DNC to not censor/rewrite any report they publish on their own.

------
ivl
Just so we're clear here: the results are on paper. This app was meant to
simply coalesces the results to have them in faster.

And some security testing and analysis also wouldn't have prevented this
problem, unless it was done at huge scale.

~~~
jayess
One wonders if they were auditing the numbers of actual registered voters vs
those actually voting and came up with numbers that were wonky.

[https://twitter.com/JTHVerhovek/status/1224550235881517056?s...](https://twitter.com/JTHVerhovek/status/1224550235881517056?s=20)

So who is now in possession of the paper records and how easy would it be to
manipulate those records?

~~~
throwaway5752
[https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1224697730058063872](https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1224697730058063872)
you are amplifying conspiracy theories, whether you know it or not.

Anyone that's worked on a system with distributed state knows data consistency
can be hard, particular in situations where the system comes under load and
latencies begin to increase.

You're not specifically complaining about it, but I think it's interesting
that they are being criticized for not being transparent, and then being
criticized based on that transparency when they are.

This isn't without precedent,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidentia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election_in_Iowa#Republican_caucuses)
(or [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/04/iowa-
seco...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/04/iowa-second-
caucus-debacle-eight-years/) for more narrative). Just 8 years ago in the
Republican caucus in Iowa they changed the announced winner more than two
weeks afterward.

------
tptacek
It's a little disturbing to me to see this detail featured in so many stories,
because (1) DHS isn't especially qualified to review applications for security
vulnerabilities, and (2) there are reasons not to insert the Republican-
controlled DHS into the processes of the Iowa Democratic Party. Moreover,
there's no evidence at all that security had anything to do with the failure,
and lots of reasons to believe otherwise; it's not even a relevant detail.

I'm a broken record about this, but you probably don't want to work in a field
where the norm is that the government checks your software engineering work,
particularly for security; there is a longstanding track record of failure
here.

None of this is to defend the app, which appears to have been, from conception
through deployment, moronic.

------
ptyyy
> Such a test from DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency would
> have focused on security and not the performance issue that Wolf said was
> most likely responsible for the failure. Still, Wolf said this was a
> “concerning event” given the amount of scrutiny around elections security
> after Russians targeted the 2016 presidential election.

> “We don’t see any malicious cyber activity going on,” Wolf said. “No one
> hacked into it -- so this is more of a stress or load issue as well as a
> reporting issue that we’re seeing in Iowa.”

> The Iowa Democratic Party has said there was no evidence of hacking in the
> much-delayed results, merely human error.

DHS wouldn't be the one to do performance testing. Sure they should have had
security scans but the issue at hand is not related.

~~~
scohesc
You'd think that a lot of the allegations of foreign interference in the 2016
election would have been recalled in the past couple of months and the Iowa
Democratic Party would have openly welcomed the DHS' security testing of the
app to ensure minimal foreign meddling.

~~~
eropple
I think that the folks handling this software project screwed up plenty, but I
also don't know if I'd fault them for not going anywhere near DHS. Given the
way the current administration has shamelessly attempted to corrupt pretty
much every institution it touches I think the political compromise of DHS is
something that opposing parties should be factoring into their threat models.

Architecture, performance, and security reviews? Definitely should've
happened. DHS? Ehh.

------
bob33212
Having been around DHS procurement a bit, I can only imagine what their App
testing looks like. It probably only can test on certified Windows CE and Zune
devices.

~~~
fuqmachine
Still better than no testing at all. They weren't securing any of their SQL
queries. I made a more secure app in high school!

------
throwaway5752
This thread is full of the dumbest takes imaginable.

There are no conflicts of interest beyond those in niche markets anywhere.
There are a finite number of people and companies serving in this space.
Multiple campaigns use the same contractors, and those contractors will advise
campaigns. The conflict of interest is known and the key thing is declaring
them, siloing information, and policing behavior. This happens in _every
startup board_ where a customer participates in a funding round [and gets
board seats].

Also, what was DHS going to do here? This is a private organization doing a
[private] caucus in a single state. We've all read the mythical man month. DHS
should focus on securing the national elections, which there is ample evidence
they are behind on.

~~~
hart_russell
The Iowa caucus has a huge effect on the elections. Multiple employees of this
shadow company worked directly for Hillary's campaign:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/heterodoxious/status/122458084831...](https://mobile.twitter.com/heterodoxious/status/1224580848319488000?s=21)

~~~
throwaway5752
Hillary was the Democratic party nominee in the general election. Everyone in
the Democratic party technical consultancy world worked for her in 2016. Just
pointing this out without context is useless. How does that compare to the
Democratic party in 2008, or the Republican party in 2016?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Everyone in the Democratic party technical consultancy world worked for her
> in 2016.

Well, if they worked on the Presidential general election at all, which
obviously not everyone in that space did.

------
chasing
This definitely proves [insert favorite conspiracy theory against your
candidate of choice here]. 100%.

~~~
wool_gather
You're being too kind limiting it to just single candidates, in my opinion! ;)

------
gatherhunterer
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. The media wanted a live, reality TV-style event
and didn’t get it. Last night was supposed to be huge for ad revenue and now
they’re out for blood. Imagine waiting patiently for conclusive results in
every state. How are they supposed to run ads if people aren’t glued to the
screen?

What’s bad for the 24-hour news cycle is good for Democracy.

~~~
SyneRyder
Washington Post says it has been a success for ratings, with people tuning in
to live coverage of the disastrous caucus phone calls process:

"'They hung up on me’: Iowa caucus official’s failed attempt to report
precinct results makes for great TV and bad night"

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/04/iowa-
caucus...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-cnn-
sebastian/)

------
adamch
I don't understand why this wasn't done via Google Forms instead. A bunch of
sites each reporting some numbers, which are then tallied and analyzed
separately. Why is a whole app infrastructure necessary?

~~~
pessimizer
The Democratic Party is a device for handing out contracts to friends and
family.

------
supernova87a
I would love to see some screenshots of this ridiculous app that someone
approved for use after consulting their cousin who owns the business.

------
codingslave
Politicians in the United States are more similar to actors than to statesmen.
The only difference between them and Hollywood is the necessity of academic
credentials and perceived morality.

~~~
chasing
Brad Pitt can't start wars or make decisions about the national budget.

~~~
harmoat
Reagan could

------
throwaway5752
Worth reviewing the 2012 Republican party Iowa caucus
([https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/04/iowa-
seco...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/04/iowa-second-
caucus-debacle-eight-years/))

 _" This isn’t the first time in the past decade that the process has failed
to produce a timely result, which in turn arguably affected what happened next
(which, after all, is what makes Iowa important).

In 2012, it was the Republican caucus that was a mess. Back then, Mitt Romney
was named the winner of the caucuses by eight votes — a narrow victory, yes,
but still a victory for the favorite to be the Republican nominee.

Romney went on to win the New Hampshire primary comfortably, apparently
winning the often-elusive double in the first two contests — he would have
been the first Republican to ever win both Iowa and New Hampshire — and
setting him on course to face incumbent President Barack Obama.

Except eight days after that New Hampshire win, we found Romney actually
finished second in Iowa. The Iowa GOP announced, 16 days after the caucuses,
that Rick Santorum had actually finished first — by 34 votes. But even that
result was tinged by uncertainty"_

If you read the article, I'm actually leaving out the worst details (lost
votes, misallocated votes, secret votes). The same explanation applies as this
one. Caucuses are an overly complicated relic and should be discontinued by
all parties. This current embarrassment has recent precedent in the other
major party and in that respect is respecting tradition of demonstrating the
fundamental, intrinsic ridiculousness of caucuses.

------
blendo
Nevada will use the same app (apps? Android AND iOS?) for their upcoming
Democratic caucuses Feb 22.

I expect:

A) A forensic analysis will quickly show where the problems lie

B) The analysis will be only superficially reported, likely due to NDAs with
the app developer. In other words, no source code for you, voter!

C) With low probability, election integrity will ever so slightly increase by
the time the 2024 or 2028 cycles come around,

D) No candidate will see this debacle as a big issue. Except maybe Bloomberg.

------
bediger4000
After what we heard in the House Impeachment inquiries, and the general
refusal of Republicans in leadership positions to disavow _illegal_ foreign
interference in US elections, why should Democrats let DHS test anything?
Isn't that potentially letting malevolent bad actors access your systems? In
general, why would you let an opponent that more-or-less promises to not obey
laws, rules and norms access your system?

------
yingw787
I think issues like this belie the fact that the real concern is executing on
voter turnout and building alignment between different branches of the party
(party leaders, grassroots leaders, primary candidates, old and new voters,
etc). I think there is a real chance that exploits or misinformation might
swing a district, then a state, then maybe the general election, but if it's
still that close after everything that's happened over the past four years,
it's not a great look for our future and to the world presently.

I think that also speaks to us engineers and startup founders, that there's
not always a technical solution especially when the problem is cultural. I
oftentimes go all gopher and dig dig dig into trying to find a technical
solution, and it's hard for me to recognize this truth. I think if we all
provided cultural solutions to cultural problems, at work and at the voting
booth, we'd all be much better off. I'm slowly working towards this direction.

------
egberts1
Dark PAC money again.

[https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1224562950133800961?s=21](https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1224562950133800961?s=21)

------
klundqist
There was a big splash about the Democrats getting a CTO after the 2016
elections to fix their tech mess. Whatever happened to that?

~~~
smacktoward
There's a distinction to be made here between the national party organization
(i.e. the DNC) and the various state party organizations. Even if the national
party gets its act together 100%, the state parties have a fair degree of
independence, and the national party has a limited number of levers to force
them to do things the way it would like.

In this case, the tech firm was contracting directly with the Iowa Democratic
Party, not with the national DNC. So the question here wouldn't be the tech
competence of the national party, but of the specific state party that let the
contract.

------
bcatanzaro
Why didn’t they just use Google Docs. It’s bizarre to me that the Iowa
Democratic Party is building any infrastructure at all.

~~~
thedance
Doesn't the Docs frontend have a hard limit at 50 concurrent editors?

~~~
michaelt
Google Forms appends each form submission as a rows in a spreadsheet, and
isn't limited that way.

Of course, some account has to own the spreadsheet and hence have write
access. So it's not the _ideal_ vote-tallying system.

~~~
iudqnolq
Although all edits are logged...

------
gdubs
Bigger question (one always worth asking): why on earth was an _app_ necessary
in the first place?

------
mpiedrav
What about an app by some permanent federal election commission? Several
countries have a Supreme Electoral Court, which is independent of political
parties.

For instance, in Costa Rica (3.4 million voters) we just elected mayors
nationwide and received trustworthy results within a couple of hours (reported
using a party-independent app).

Caucuses are also run by the Supreme Electoral Court. Kind of an Election-as-
a-service.

~~~
Rebelgecko
The party primaries are more or less independent from "real" elections. This
is how the parties like it— the DNC argued in a lawsuit that they don't have
any obligation to make the process fair.

------
toomuchtodo
Mods: Title was copy pasted from the article at the time, but it appears to be
in flux. Update accordingly, no editorialization intended.

------
Stranger43
Im willing to bet the real reason there is inconsistencies is that the app
used an home-brewed noSQL back end with week to no protections against
duplicate entries and no real data validation despite the use of smartphones,
which tend to increase data entry errors over full keyboard devices.

It's likely that you have the same precient reporting in using both the app
and the phone system and entries where someone is missing an zero or mistypes
a 9 instead of an 8 somewhere, causing the votes cast to differ from voters
present in some precients.

Now with an well designed sql schema detecting and eventually correcting this
kind of data quality issues are straightforward but as this is the work of an
small relatively new digital marketing agency with almost no record outside of
working for the party machinery so whats the odds that this app is backed by
an well designed transactional database framework rather then a quickly
cobbled together nosql schema.

To make it worse this is an case where the democratic party could have
demonstrated an commitment to more transparency and less centralization as
there is no secrets that needs protecting and yet the Iowa democrats went down
the opposite road of more centralization and less transparency in an move
that's just showcasing everything that is wrong with america's political
establishment.

The open democratic way to run an election like this would be for the
individual districts to publish their results for 3rd party validation
directly to the public when they are done caucusing instead of placing them in
escrow until the incompetents at the party HQ is done calculating the way it
seems to happen now.

As of now the app is likely destined for a complete rewrite with the actual
tally being done the old fashioned way using calculators and spreadsheets so
an DHS code-audit would just make the issue resurface at an inconvenient time
when this is no longer news, as im pretty sure anyone with a clue about IT
inside of the party machine knows exactly how they screwed up and prefers
strange conspiracy theories to being exposed as mundane fools.

------
MadWombat
Lets forget about the politics for a moment, but I am curious. What exactly is
so difficult about a vote counting app? Why is it hard? It seems like a
relatively easy thing to do, but I must be missing some hidden complexities.

~~~
dragonwriter
> What exactly is so difficult about a vote counting app?

It's not a vote counting app, it's a vote count reporting app.

And it's not particularly hard, which is why I think the tech failure angle is
probably wrong and that the problem is exactly what the IDP says: the vote
counts actually being reported were inconsistent which might in part be an app
UX/training problem, but is probably mostly an administration-of-caucuses
problem, suspicion of which from 2016 is exactly why the DNC required the
additional reporting this year, so that the integrity of the process could be
verified.

~~~
donarb
It wasn't just reporting the final results. They were keeping tabs on both the
first and second realignments, plus delegate counts. Essentially three sets of
numbers. The reason behind this is so they could report total turnout numbers,
something which was not previously reported.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The reason behind this is so they could report total turnout numbers,
> something which was not previously reported.

No, the reason is because multiple campaigns (who tend to have precinct
captains report the first and second alignment numbers and track how they are
doing internally) complained about apparent inconsistencies in the final
results in 2016, so the DNC required the additional figures to be tracked and
reported officially with paper trails to provide transparency and confidence
in the integrity of the results.

------
veeralpatel979
I dislike the utter lack of transparency here.

You have an app that's a critical part of the voting infrastructure for the
most important caucus in the Democratic Party, and yet we don't know:

\- Anything about the people who developed the app

\- The source code for the app, which should be open source in my view

\- Any information about the myriad of conflicts of interests that may or may
not exist

Another learning lesson is that your startup can have poor or no marketing and
have a non-functional product, but if you are well-connected, that's enough to
close deals in certain verticals.

~~~
throwaway5752
If you think that's bad, how do you feel about the RNC outright cancelling
primaries
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Republican_Party_presiden...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries#Cancellation_of_state_caucuses_or_primaries)
even in cases where there were at least two serious opponents?

~~~
veeralpatel979
The RNC cancelling primaries is much worse. I'm surprised they've gotten away
with it.

Iowa's Democratic Party still has a paper trail of votes. The results may be
delayed but they'll at least exist.

On the other hand, GOP voters won't even get to choose who their nominee will
be in certain states. Yes, I know the president will almost certainly win
these primaries. But why not let people vote?

Sure, it costs money to hold the primaries, and maybe it causes embarassment
to the president if he doesn't garner the vote he's expected to win.

But not holding primaries is simply utterly undemocratic.

------
chiffre01
Apparently nobody in the DNC has heard anything about electronic voting being
inherently flawed. It's astounding they encouraged the use of this app.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/us/politics/iowa-
caucus-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/us/politics/iowa-caucus-
app.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage)

Who are these people?

~~~
donarb
It's not electronic voting, it's electronic reporting.

~~~
wool_gather
True, but is this a meaningful distinction here? That is, the records are
passing through the app, and the output is being used to declare the results.
Does the point at which the flow enters the app -- poll workers vs. voters --
change the risk profile?

------
freepor
This would seem dumb in any previous administration, but given how the
agencies have been weaponized as political cudgels, this seems like the
prudent decision even if there was a big fuckup.

------
o_nate
I feel like in the old days they would've just had everybody fax their results
into the central office and it would've worked fine.

~~~
WhompingWindows
The last time I tried to fax some results, my confidential medical information
was bounced back to the printer in my office and printed without my knowledge
for my coworkers to view...

I'll take modern tech over faxes any day.

~~~
o_nate
Well, it sounds like you were using one of those modern fax/printer/copier
monstrosities. In the old days, it would've been a dedicated fax machine.

------
throw7
How about each district just publicly publishes its numbers anywhere they want
on the internet (just make it known publicly ahead of time where each
district's numbers will be published officially). The main software just
gets/scrapes and aggregates the numbers. Frick... the majority of us here
could bang out some scripts and everyone can compare results.

------
1337biz
I am greatful for fuck ups like these. They are doing a lot much more good
than harm.

For the public who does not read further than the headlines this increases
their scepticism agains digital and online voting. Much more than any security
expert opinions can ever do.

------
pasquinelli
Maybe they should've just sent results in with a phone call.

------
silenussays
Does anyone know if they hired out of work coal miners to work on the app?
After all these are the same people telling everyone to learn to code when
their job gets shipped overseas. If it was just some connected tech bros from
elite schools making this thing, then this outcome is quite pathetic, but if
it really was 50 year old miners who did a 12 week bootcamp, I'm more likely
to cut them some slack.

------
skrowl
> “Yeah rigging the primary worked wonders for the Democrats last time,”
> Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, invoking his father’s frequent claims in 2016 that
> the Democratic nominating process was rigged against Bernie Sanders.

Are we.... are we still pretending it wasn't rigged? Debbie Wasserman Schultz
literally was forced to resign as DNC chair over the rigging scandal. I don't
think the DNC rigging their 2016 primary is controversial or in dispute is it?

If so, framing it as "[President Trump]'s frequent claims" rather than an
undisputed fact is disingenuous at best here.

~~~
afjl
Disclaimer: I consider myself center-left, not really a Democrat though,
mostly independent.

From what I have read, it's strongly in dispute.

The super-delegates issue was really just a poor policy by the DNC, one that
could be exploited by a strong establishment/mainstream candidate. Bernie has
always been an outsider, relative to the Clintons, in that sense.

Some debate questions were provided to the Clinton campaign apparently because
they had asked for them, whereas the Sanders campaign had not. In retrospect,
probably not a good look, regardless of whether or not he/she asked for them.
Probably should have immediately released the same questions to Sanders'
campaign once Clinton's received them.

I feel like DWS was forced to resign because she was incompetent and
directionless, and only got the job since she was a crony of establishment
Dems who wanted a "friendly" to occupy the seat. This might also be me
projecting, since I have a hunch that Republicans are better at mobilizing
resources to achieve specific goals (e.g. judge appointments to courts of all
levels, governorships), but I think I'm starting to digress so yeah.

------
c0restraint
Well, given their intense commentary on previous election results &
interference, that's bloody ironic...

~~~
duxup
I don't see a conflict with having a crappy app, and be concerned with those
topics.

------
criley2
This entire thread is full of conspiracy, disinformation and outright
ignorance.

Such a sad state of affairs for this website. If the folks writing these
terrible comments are the same folks working in this industry, perhaps the
sorry state of most web software is more understandable.

Since the conspiracy and lies are permeating all but one comment in this
thread, here's a short roundup of replies:

* The DNC had nothing to do with the Iowa Caucuses, which are run by the Iowa Democratic Party themselves

* Caucuses have traditionally been pretty rough to manage. I remember when Mitt Romney won Iowa, until it was reported that Ron Paul won Iowa, until we realized it was Rick Santorum who won Iowa. It's not a party thing, it's a state thing.

* Nothing about a 1/2 day delay on reporting results "hurts Bernie", in fact, smart analysis is that it helps him and his narrative based campaign (just look at the comments here!)

* The people who conduct these operations are Iowa democrats, who appear to support Bernie more than anyone. So, the claim of many conspiratorial comments here is that "Bernie supporters are rigging Iowa to hurt Bernie". Disinformation doesn't really make sense when you actually follow the threads and write it out plainly!

~~~
vorpalhex
This is the time when Democrats are most likely to engage in aggressive
infighting, and also the worst possible time for them to do so.

Even if you're very spirited in your support for your candidate, it's
important to do your best to be accurate and careful in your response to your
fellow party members.

~~~
fuqmachine
What if you're an independent caucusing for one Democrat and don't care about
the others? There are many on Sanders' side doing just that and it's unfair to
tell them that they're bad for being skeptical of the cancellation of the most
important poll and delaying the results of an election that would've gave
Sanders tremendous media coverage and a bump in the polls

~~~
vorpalhex
> What if you're an independent caucusing for one Democrat and don't care
> about the others?

You have a poor understanding of the American electoral process and should re-
evaluate your stance in it if your goal is to affect change.

> ...unfair to tell them that they're bad for being skeptical of the
> cancellation of the most important poll and delaying the results...

I'm not saying they shouldn't be skeptical, I'm saying it is wrong to attack
other democrats without evidence and point fingers at other candidates because
you're upset that Iowa had a poorly run caucus.

I would also caution against assuming the outcome of any poll or caucus, most
of all Iowa which is a tremendously difficult caucus to interpret.

~~~
fuqmachine
I'm only telling you that they exist. 34% of Sanders voters "may not" vote for
another blue candidate. 10% voted for Trump. This isn't my opinion. This is
just data.

