DES MOINES, Iowa — The Nevada Democratic Party won’t use the same app blamed for plunging the Iowa caucuses into chaos.
“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 Chairman 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.”
After a year of wooing Iowa Democrats, 2020 White House hopefuls vying to take on President Trump in the fall still don’t know how many delegates they won in the primary’s opening contest as of noon EST Tuesday. They are expected to know what happened by 5 p.m EST.
The Iowa Democratic Party on Tuesday morning faulted coding errors in an app developed by Shadow Incorporated designed to help caucus sites report their precinct’s alignment and delegate results. Now Nevada, another caucus state hosting the “first in the West” nominating contest, then came under pressure over whether it would still use the same glitchy technology.
The Iowa Democratic Party has gone into overdrive to protect the integrity of its caucus results and its first-in-the-nation status, but it has simultaneously been criticized for its handling of the mess.
On Monday, the Iowa state-based party attributed the delay in conveying outcomes from its 1,600-plus precincts to “inconsistencies” in numbers being reported to headquarters.
“The underlying cause of these inconsistencies was not immediately clear, and required investigation, which took time. As this investigation unfolded, IDP staff activated pre-planned backup measures and entered data manually. This took longer than expected,” Chairman Troy Price said in a new statement Tuesday morning.
Price added, “As part of our investigation, we determined with certainty that the underlying data collected via the app was sound. While the app was recording data accurately, it was reporting out only partial data. We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed.”
He also quelled concerns human error had exacerbated problems after reports of inaccurate delegate calculations.
Monday night’s issues were foreshadowed earlier in the afternoon when caucus chairmen and chairwomen complained of experiencing technical difficulties with the app.
