https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...iD6?li=BBZdWbk
The smartphone application
blamed in part for the ongoing delay in reporting results of the Monday Iowa caucuses is linked with key Iowa and national Democrats associated with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The revelation came as the Nevada Democratic Party announced Tuesday it would not be using the same app in its Feb. 22 caucuses, despite earlier reports to the contrary.
The app was issued by Jimmy Hickey of Shadow Inc., metadata of the program that the Des Moines Register analyzed Tuesday shows.
Gerard Niemira and
Krista Davis, who worked for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, co-founded Shadow.
Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price worked as Clinton’s 2016 Iowa political director. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday about the relationship between the party and Shadow, which it paid $63,184 for website development and travel expenses, according to reports filed with the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board.
© Joseph Cress/Iowa City Press-Citizen University of Iowa students hold up numbered cards while they caucus, Monday, Feb. 3, 2020, at the Iowa Memorial Union in Iowa City, Iowa. The Nevada party paid Shadow $50,143 for “monetary expenses,” filings with the Nevada secretary of state show. The filings provided no further details.
It was unclear whether the Iowa Democratic Party had chosen the app on its own, or had received guidance from the national party. Shadow's website indicates close ties to the National Democratic Party.
“When a light is shining, Shadows are a constant companion,” it says. “We see ourselves as building a long-term, side-by-side ‘Shadow’ of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and the progressive community at large.”
Security watchdogs had called on Iowa Democrats to be more transparent about the development and testing of the app prior to Monday’s caucuses. But Democrats declined to name the developer or provide testing details, saying top cybersecurity experts advised against releasing too much information because it could result in the vendor being targeted.
Shadow collected $153,768 in 2019 from seven different Democratic or advocacy campaigns, mostly for technology, software and subscription services such as text messaging, according to Federal Election Commission data. Among them were the presidential campaigns of former Vice President Joe Biden and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, as well as the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, according to the federal reports.
Company officials did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment.
Price on Tuesday morning issued a statement saying that because of a coding problem, the app reported only partial data.
"We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system,” Price said. “This issue was identified and fixed. The application’s reporting issue did not impact the ability of precinct chairs to report data accurately."
Efforts to confirm the count continued Tuesday, with the party saying it would release results sometime later in the day.
There were numerous complaints Tuesday from county- and precinct-level Democratic chairs that the app had been troublesome in the lead-up to the caucuses, and again on caucus night. Many said they had attempted to report their results by phone instead of using it, but encountered long hold times and dropped calls.
Deb Copeland, a Des Moines precinct chair, said her team chose to report results via phone.
“I didn’t even bother” to download the app “because we had an informal Facebook group and people were saying they couldn’t get it to do anything and had so many questions,” Copeland said.
Nevada Democratic party chair William McCurdy II said in a statement Tuesday morning that Nevada will not be employing the same app or vendor.
The party had previously announced plans to use an app to tabulate results at caucuses, as Iowa did, along with a second app that would be pre-loaded onto tablets available for voters to use at caucus sites during four days of early voting.
McCurdy said Nevada Democrats had already developed “a series of backups and redundant reporting systems and are currently evaluating the best path forward.”
The party did not respond to a follow-up message asking if the party had already planned to use a different app and vendor or if that was a change made in the wake of Iowa’s delayed results and technical problems.
The Iowa app was not vetted or evaluated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Christopher Krebs, the department’s cybersecurity agency director, told the New York Times on Monday night.
Kiersten Todt, managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute, an organization started by the CEOs of businesses like Microsoft to reduce hacking risks, had expressed cautions about the app prior to Monday’s caucus. On Tuesday, she called for political parties and the federal government to do a better job of working together on elections, which she said could have helped Iowa avoid the reporting problems.
Jason Clayworth is an investigative reporter at the Des Moines Register. He can be reached at 515-699-7058 or jclayworth@dmreg.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Looks like H.... and her DNC minions are at it again - and already have Yang blaming Trump and Putin for the Fascist DPST debacle - rather than laying blame at the DNC and likely H.... - where it belongs. H.... will spare nothing and no one in her quest for the Oval Office - as long as she breathes she is fixated on it.
Clinton campaign veterans linked with app that contributed to caucus chaos
