United States: an application questioned in the failure of Iowa

Text by: Marie Normand Follow

The Democratic Party was unable to publish any results Tuesday after February 4 after the Iowa caucus. A vote Monday night in which supporters were invited to choose the candidate who will face Donald Trump on November 3. Beyond the complexity of the ballot, a smartphone application is also called into question.

Publicity

The application was to centralize the results of 1,700 ridings in Iowa. Monday evening, however, many local officials could not connect to it , or even download it. Many then attempted to report their results in the usual way, over the phone, but the lines were completely saturated. It must be said that the number was also that of the technical support of the application.

An application kept secret by the Democratic Party, probably to avoid hacking. We don't even know his name. According to the New York Times , it has been developed hastily in the past two months, by the private company Shadow ("ombre" in French), without a large test to verify in particular its ability to receive results at the same time. of a whole state. Not to mention that the people supposed to use it had not been trained either.

Democratic officials insist on Tuesday: there was no intrusion into the system. " The application recorded the data well, but then it communicated only partial data ". " A coding problem ," said the party. A bug to be dealt with urgently since this same application must be used during the Nevada caucus, at the end of the month.

Newsletter With the Daily Newsletter, find the headlines directly in your mailbox

Download the app

• United States

On the same subject

decryption

The chaotic beginnings of the Democratic primary in the United States: a bad sign for the future?

In the News: in the United States, a caucus that turns into a fiasco

TRNHAITI

United States / primary: Sanders claims to be leading fiasco vote