Shadow and the app that planted the primary in Iowa

Two winners and one big loser. The partial results of the American Democratic primary in Iowa gave Pete Buttigieg a neck and neck with Bernie Sanders on Tuesday, February 4. But more the identity of the democratic candidate nominated in this State, it is the technological failure which especially caught the attention.

“Nightmare”, “chaos”, “masquerade” were some of the terms used by commentators to describe the debacle of ballot counting. The publication of the first results had to be postponed by almost 24 hours due to numerous problems encountered with IowaReporterApp, the smartphone application used to transfer the official figures for each district of Iowa.

>> Read also on France 24: Democratic caucus: Iowa, the delicate stage for the contenders for the White House

Bugs in series

"This is an important reminder that fully electronic voting systems are not yet ready for important electoral deadlines," said Alex Halderman, professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, interviewed by the New York Times.

Ironically, the Democratic Party of Iowa had opted for a technological solution after rejecting the alternative of sending the results by phone, deemed too unreliable. But the app quickly showed its own limits. According to several testimonies collected by the American media, the app was difficult to download and install, the security codes to be able to use it did not always work, and the results were not fully transferred. When in desperation, local officials returned to the good old phone to transmit the results, the lines were saturated ...

This accumulation of problems threw a deep discredit on this first ballot of the race for the Democratic primary, while the candidates sought to understand the reasons for this failure. But Democratic Party officials refused "to say who created the application," said the New York Times. We had to wait for an article in the Huffington Post, published on Tuesday, February 4, to learn that the company behind this techno fiasco was a small structure in Denver intimately linked to the democratic apparatus, called Shadow.

The company was quick, then, to express on Twitter “its most sincere regrets”, claiming “to have learned the lessons from this affair”. But Shadow did not consider it useful to specify the origin of the technical problems encountered.

We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night's Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers.

Chronicle of a fiasco announced

This scandal, however, has everything from the chronicle of an announced fiasco. Shadow won the contract with almost impossible specifications: he had to develop in just two months a reliable technological solution to quickly compile and transfer the results of the caucus. Difficult in so little time to develop an app and test it in real conditions to assess any bugs or difficulties encountered in the field.

Practical issues have been poorly anticipated, such as the ability of users, sometimes elderly and living in rural areas where the connection to mobile networks is poor, to understand an application requiring to validate several security steps before being able to access the service. Shadow also did not have time to ensure the compatibility of IowaReporterApp with the wide range of smartphones available on the market, found the Vice website, which was able to analyze the application.

The computer security agency of the Interior Department also claimed that it could not test the security of this application. However, it is used to being consulted when using technological solutions during an important election, recalls the site The Atlantic.

The impression of amateurism that emerges from this failure is not harmful only for Shadow and the Democratic Party of Iowa. This is also bad news for the Democratic camp as a whole, as this small society is linked to the party's effort to be level with the digital campaign teams of Donald Trump.

Shadow in the shadow of the Democratic Party's technological arm

One of Shadow's main financial supporters is Acronym, an organization launched in 2017 by former digital advisers to ex-President Barack Obama. It is one of the structures that work to make the Democratic Party more technologically efficient by organizing a network of Tech companies ready to support the future Democratic candidate.

Shortly after the Iowa fiasco, Acronym tried to distance himself from his foal, claiming to be just one of the investors in the controversial company. However, officials from Acronym also work for Shadow and the two structures share offices in Denver, said The Intercept site.

Shadow, which has only been in existence for a year, had already rendered small services to the Democratic Party before breaking its teeth on the Iowa ballot. At least two candidates for the Democratic primary, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, have used their solution to facilitate the sending of campaign SMS. Contacted by various media, the two political leaders did not indicate if they would continue to work with this company.

In contrast, the Nevada Democratic Party, which had also paid Shadow to develop an app to count votes during its primary on February 22, decided to abandon this collaboration.

The France 24 week summary invites you to come back to the news that marked the week

Download the app