Who Won? Nobody Knows

According to my Iowa friends the Iowa Democratic caucuses are always chaotic but last night’s appear to have been even more chaotic than usual. That’s one of the reasons I have been making the assertions I have about them. Institutional support is highly important in such an environment. And software that hasn’t been tested adequately? You astonish me. There are multiple types of software testing, the most basic of which is called “smoke testing”, a test of whether it runs at all. With the pressures for quick and inexpensive development these days it is not unheard of for software to be released into the field without even having been smoke tested.

Apparently, due to software problems with the mobile app that was being used to tabulate the more complicated than usual results and greater than normal chaos, official results in the Iowa caucuses are still not available. CBS News reports:

As Monday turned into Tuesday, there was no victor in Iowa. There weren’t even any official results.

As the campaigns came to learn, the Iowa Democratic Party found “inconsistencies” in reporting the three sets of results it promised to deliver. The information was to come from precinct captains, who were to report it through a newly developed app. But they ran into trouble as caucuses finished.

“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,” the Iowa Democratic Party said in a statement. “The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”

Early Tuesday, the Iowa Democratic Party chair said results will be provided “later today,” although he did not specify what time. Price said he wanted to emphasize this is a “reporting issue, not a hack” and “this is why we have a paper trail.”

Earlier, a backup option for precinct captains to report caucus results — a hotline — ran into its own issues.

When CBS News attempted to call the Iowa Democratic Party Caucus Hotline, a recorded message said, “Thank you for calling the Iowa Democratic Party’s Caucus Hotline. All of our operators are currently busy. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. We look forward to talking to you soon,” before playing hold music.

One precinct captain who was trying to report his results was on hold for an hour and had apparently just gotten through to the IDP — with CNN listening as he was about to report his results — when the party hung up on him on live television.

This wasn’t an isolated incident.

I think it’s going to be a long year.