Democracylopnik: Iowa Shit Show

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 02/04/2020 at 08:43 • Filed to: None

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So, the Democratic caucuses last night in Iowa have turned into a technological shit show. An untested app for reporting results, jammed phone lines, older volunteers who refused to download the party’s app for reporting results, zero training on the app for volunteers, an app that simply didn’t work or couldn’t connect, and then claims of victory by campaigns who have absolutely no idea what the numbers really are. The app used last night to report results “had not been vetted, tested at scale, or even shown to independent experts before being introduced in Iowa.” Trump tweeted that the only winner in Iowa last night was him, and he’s right.

We act like technology is going to make everything better, when in reality, technology does a better job of fucking everything up. Barring the hanging chad debacle in 2000, this country seemed to be doing just fine electing people without technology more complicated than an ink pen. The American electoral process is broken. Hell, why do we still vote on Tuesday? I’m pretty sure most voters aren’t traveling to the polls on their buckboard after the crops are put up. Why isn’t election day a national holiday? Wouldn’t that make it easier for people to, you know, vote? And why are we relying on untested, eminently hackable technology?

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Oh, and good morning, Oppo. Have a bonus car-politics related pic.

haveacarortwoorthree2 > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 08:47

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The only tourism dollars Iowa gets are from (1) people going for some reason to the Field of Dreams, (2) speeding tickets given to people passing through on I80 and I35, and (3) from presidential election season. Now Iowa Ds are trying to eff that up too. What a bunch of buffoons. (Said with all love from a former Iowan who got the hell out almost 30 years ago)

Tripper > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 08:51

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That lead image is perfect “ hurr durr bleep blorp bloop” *mouth breathing noises*

Nibby > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 08:51

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they’re just trying to figure out how to rig the system so bernie doesn’t win

typical US

ttyymmnn > Tripper 02/04/2020 at 08:53

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“Do you guys know what my password is?”

“Nope.  Mine is 1234”

Tripper > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 08:54

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lol exactly

Chuckles > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 08:59

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Even before technology got involved, the Iowa Caucuses were already a shitshow. Forming teams in a high school gym is fine if you're playing dodgeball, but less good for choosing presidential candidates. 

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:01

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Ad there was the Des Moines Register poll flop...

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:03

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And news today of a leadership collapse among the group putting together the DNC national rave party.

ttyymmnn > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 02/04/2020 at 09:05

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Hadn’t seen that.  Link?

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:06

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Hey, that’s the same code as my luggage!

LongbowMkII > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:12

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Why don’t we use paper? Well where’s the money in that? Like kinja, we must complicate things until they break. 

MKULTRA1982(ConCrustyBrick) > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:18

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I still think you guys should do a write in Campaign for Teddy Roosevelt? Reinvigorate the national parks 

CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:18

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I feel like the Dems almost deserve 4 more years of trump with some of these ridiculous things they do

Mercedes Streeter > haveacarortwoorthree2 02/04/2020 at 09:22

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Hey now, there’s the Iowa 80 truck stop, Dubuque, Maquoketa Caves, and.......

What do people do in Iowa? lol

ttyymmnn > MKULTRA1982(ConCrustyBrick) 02/04/2020 at 09:26

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I’m all for that. Besides, TR was the first (former) president to fly in an airplane.

Bully!

ttyymmnn > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 02/04/2020 at 09:27

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As a lifelong Democrat, I agree. 

nFamousCJ - Keeper of Stringbean, Gengars and a Deezul > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:31

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When properly implemented technology can be a wonderful thing. But when it goes wrong it can be terrible. See also:

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:35

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Average age of election volunteers: 79

This was never a good idea.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 02/04/2020 at 09:35

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They definitely deserved the first 4...

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > LongbowMkII 02/04/2020 at 09:37

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If it is like Kinja, we must complicate the broken thing until it almost works again, albeit not in the way it was designed. I think forcing the high level politicians to endure Hour Rule levels of crap would be good for the country.

haveacarortwoorthree2 > Mercedes Streeter 02/04/2020 at 09:37

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What do people do in Iowa?

As a teen and then a college student there, you work, get drunk, and have sex (not necessarily in that order). Then graduate and leave the state .

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:37

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Apparently some people giving the poll enlarged the text on their screen which made them miss reading the candidates names at the bottom of the list. May have only happened in a few cases, but the results were suspect enough that they didn’t release them.

ttyymmnn > nFamousCJ - Keeper of Stringbean, Gengars and a Deezul 02/04/2020 at 09:38

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Aw jeez, just bring back the styrofoam targets. 

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > LongbowMkII 02/04/2020 at 09:39

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OPPO’s going to be a little less user-friendly if we revert to paper...

DC3 LS, Fuck Hyundai, now and forever > Nibby 02/04/2020 at 09:40

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I hope him, Yang, and Gabbard form a new party and let the Democratic party die.

ttyymmnn > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 02/04/2020 at 09:42

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That doesn’t happen when you use a clipboard.

glemon > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:46

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I worked with a team to put Nebraska primary results on the internet in 1996. Nebraska and Cali. were the first States to do it. They were not the official results, but they were the ones the press was looking for that night. It is not just the technology, the whole system is built from the ground up on 100s of volunteers who do a thing once every two to four years (or maybe doing it for the first time) who report to people locally who then aggregate and report to people statewide who aggregate.  We did it all by phone or fax back then and manually loaded the server.

It was very exciting, we were very aware things could blow up, they didn’t in our case. However, given the the process keeping it as simple as possible probably makes sense.

The people in charge of developing the app probably thought they were doing that, “everybody has a smart phone, we will just develop a “simple” app and have everybody use it”. User end, nothing ever looks as simple and intuitive to end user as it does to the people that design and implement it. Pure speculation, on my part, in any event lots of pieces to the machine to make it work right, they should have tested more before roll out on the big stage.

Ash78, voting early and often > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 02/04/2020 at 09:50

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Seriously. I know a TON of Trump voters who hated him, but just said “because he’s not Hillary.” And I don’t mean disaffected working-class racists (I don’t know any of those). I just mean people looking to protect their wealth, basic self-interest.

I’ve never seen so much defensive voting on the part of moderates in my life.

I almost want Bloomberg to win just because Trump hates him so much.

glemon > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:51

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Alternative theory, this and all future major elections will be hacked and fugg ed with to the point where even non-conspiracy theorists don't trust the results and this is the end of democracy in America as we know it.

MKULTRA1982(ConCrustyBrick) > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 09:52

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The OG Air Force One. Teddy doesn’t need a fuselage, save that money for the parks. 

ttyymmnn > glemon 02/04/2020 at 09:58

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And i n many cases, old people suck at tech. I wonder how much the company who built the app got paid. I’m sure that will come out soon.

ttyymmnn > glemon 02/04/2020 at 09:59

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That is entirely plausible. DT has spent the last four years saying “fake news” to the point that people only believe that which fits their personal narrative. Trump lost the election? Fake news!

It’s just that easy. We don’t need the Russians futzing with things. We did it to ourselves. 

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 10:00

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I’m imagining my dad at 72 trying to vote on a phone. He just figured out Amazon recently.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 02/04/2020 at 10:01

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The way things are looking the dems are doing a good play of self inflicted wounds.

glemon > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 10:04

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Yeah, the volunteers on the ground probably average out well over 60.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Ash78, voting early and often 02/04/2020 at 10:11

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Bloomberg has already spent $200 million, but what does he have to show for it? Interesting strategy... we’ll see what Super Tuesday brings, I guess.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bloombergs-super-tuesday-strategy-might-be-working/

haveacarortwoorthree2 > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 02/04/2020 at 10:25

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If only there was some way to scroll to the bottom of the page! 

ttyymmnn > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 02/04/2020 at 10:28

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People weren’t voting on their phones, the volunteers were using an app to tabulate and report the results. And the app didn’t work in many cases, workers didn’t know how to use it, or the older ones simply refused to use it and tried to phone in the results as they had in the past. But the phone lines were jammed and they couldn’t get through.

Here’s a thought: use paper ballots and take a couple of days to tally the results. Unfortunately, we live in a “I’ve got to have it now” society fueled by 24-hour cable news slavering over who gets the breaking story.

We’re doomed.

ttyymmnn > glemon 02/04/2020 at 10:28

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I think somebody  here commented that the average age is 72. 

wkiernan > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 10:31

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This app does the same thing as precinct workers calling local results on the telephone, but it’s ever so much better because it’s automated and bypasses the need for a little bit of manual effort by human beings. Oh sure, it completely doesn’t work, and even if it did it’s a bunch of opaque computer code so nobody would know how it works, or if it worked correctly. But that’s progress! or at least what passes for progress in these idiotic times.

But I don’t know why everybody’s kvetching so much about it, because this isn’t the general election. You want something to really complain about? Complain about the insanely bad voting machines used nationwide in the general election. Any candidate who proposes a law mandating human-readable paper ballots that are hand-counted for elections has my support.

Also.

Trump tweeted that the only winner in Iowa last night was him, and he’s right.

No, he’s not right. That’s just more gibberish. What the fuck did that illiterate racist pig “ win” ? He’s spewing entirely meaningless bullshit , as usual.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > haveacarortwoorthree2 02/04/2020 at 10:38

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They had an app for that. It didn’t work.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 10:43

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https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxDb18nQAakaQWVyYm9WWFktWE0

Ash78, voting early and often > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 02/04/2020 at 10:51

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Let’s just say that I had never heard a single political radio ad (for the presidency) in my entire adult life, but just yesterday in Deep Red Alabama there was an admittedly really good Mike Bloomberg ad on the classic rock station. We did elect our first Democratic senator in a couple decades just last year (a moderate). So it’s not impossible. I think people here are usually just against the Dem, not so much for the GOP.

I f we’re going to keep electing upper class New Yorkers to the highest office, I think we could do worse :D

ttyymmnn > wkiernan 02/04/2020 at 10:53

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Any time the Democrats look like bumblefucks he wins. 

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Ash78, voting early and often 02/04/2020 at 10:56

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He spent $2 million in OKLAHOMA.

I don’t think he has a prayer to flip these states, but he wants to win as many primaries as he can to build momentum.

wkiernan > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 10:57

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So there is the annual big game between the high-school football teams from Jonesburg and Smithtown. At literally the last second, with Jonesburg HS down 20-21, they made a successful field goal attempt. Or was it successful? Due to the last-second timing, the refs are not sure whether or not the clock had run out, so they’re reviewing the videotape to decide the big game.

Up steps this loud obnoxious fat boy, who stepped in some dog shit on the way in, who yells out “Huh, duh, lookit me! I’m the only winner!!!” Everybody looks at him and says, “Who the Hell are you? What are you talking about? You don’t go to either of the schools, and you didn’t even play! And you have dog shit on your sneakers.”

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 11:05

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I’m looking on the positive side— This is the last time “Iowa” will have a go-first standing... and their “chickens heads dunked in stump water with goats’ blood” method of brow-beating their neighbors into conformance on supporting un-electable candidates? That will finally go away.

The Iowa Caucuses will finally cease.  That is a positive.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 11:06

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Look.  It’s Iowa.  The geriatric nature of the beast is well known.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 11:09

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I love that anecdote in The Big Burn about Teddy and Gifford Pinchot “ditching work” for a few months to traipse all over the west surveying the National Forest properties that still exist today.

It’s a wonderful story...  that the PRESIDENT could take time off to work on a nationally important side project.

ttyymmnn > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 02/04/2020 at 11:16

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The Iowa Caucuses will finally cease. That is a positive.

ttyymmnn > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 02/04/2020 at 11:18

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Simpler times.

Textured Soy Protein > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 11:35

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The Iowa caucuses have always been a shitshow. I just was reading about them yesterday and apparently the whole reason they’re first is not because they wanted to be first but because they wanted to give themselves a long enough head start to do paperwork to report the results to the nominating convention.

Also, no offense to Iowa, but fuck Iowa. There’s zero reason a bunch of whitebread-ass motherfuckers doing the hokey pokey in their high school gym should set the tone for national elections. 

ttyymmnn > Textured Soy Protein 02/04/2020 at 11:36

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Nothing against Iowa either, but I agree.

ttyymmnn > Ash78, voting early and often 02/04/2020 at 11:39

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I just mean people looking to protect their wealth, basic self-interest.

Then Bernie should be a shoo in!

I’ve got a friend whom I assumed to be reliably liberal and who voted for Trump. I asked him if he’s still happy with his decision, and he said he is. Why? Because he’s not Hillary. The DNC really screwed the pooch, and if they rig it again this year for their favorite candidate, thinking that they’re smarter than the electorate, then we’ve got 4 more years of Trump.

ZHP Sparky, the 5th > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 02/04/2020 at 12:09

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“A new box of toilet paper keeps showing up at my doorstep every week and I don’t know why. Think it’s the pesky neigbhor kids again?”

ZHP Sparky, the 5th > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 12:16

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It’s absolutely infuriating that for the party that at least claims is more “techie” than “farmer” that they can’t pull of something as simple as using an app that has been properly tested for use at scale, and for people running these caucuses to download and know how to use them. This type of drama sets the tone on how unorganized they are, and makes voters lose trust in a sense (now no matter who wins there will be supporters of the other candidates who believe they were shafted in a sketchy way, whether it is true or not). Combine that with how inept the democrats are in using technology in their get out the vote campaigns, targeting ads, building donor and voter databases, keeping them fired up and involved, etc. – especially compared to Trump (screw him but his campaign is remarkably good at this) – we are screwed.

So start off by creating distrust amongst your own party, and then seal the deal by not being nearly as good at spreading your gospel and getting people to show up at the polls. It’s the democrats’ election to lose? Well they’re doing a mighty fine job at just that!

Derpwagon > Ash78, voting early and often 02/04/2020 at 14:11

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Bloomberg would be catastrophic. I vehemently oppose him. 

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > ttyymmnn 02/04/2020 at 14:33

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Says it all...

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 02/04/2020 at 16:46

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Ha!

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > haveacarortwoorthree2 02/04/2020 at 17:37

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I’ve actually rented a house on Lake Okoboji. It’s an amazing place. That being said, the fact that it is 3 hours from Minneapolis is the only reason it’s popular.

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 02/04/2020 at 17:38

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Does golf not count?

haveacarortwoorthree2 > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI 02/04/2020 at 17:42

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You are the only out-of-state person I have ever “met” that traveled to Okoboji for anything other than a family reunion. Congratulations! lol

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > haveacarortwoorthree2 02/04/2020 at 17:47

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I brought my boat and sta yed right on the lake. Th ey have some great boat -up restaurants. I think I’m going back this summer!

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI 02/04/2020 at 18:15

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Nah... hoops counts too...

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/weve-crunched-the-numbers-and-its-official-president-obama-played-a-lot-of-golf-while-in-office