Tuesday, February 04, 2020

After Epic 'Nightmare' in Iowa, Democratic App Built by Secretive Firm Shadow Inc. Comes Under Scrutiny"
"This outfit is inexcusably secretive."
Published on Tuesday, February 04, 2020 by Common Dream
At Shadow, https://shadowinc.io our mission is to build political power for the progressive movement by developing affordable and easy-to-use tools for teams and budgets of any ...

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Officials from the 68th caucus precinct overlook the results of the first referendum count during a caucus event on February 3, 2020 at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo: Tom Brenner/Getty Images)

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Amid all the finger-pointing and anger that followed the nightmarish Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses Monday night, many journalists and progressive observers honed in on the smartphone app the state Democratic Party used—with disastrous consequences—to record and report the results of the highly anticipated contest.
"The DNC and the Iowa Democratic Party have engineered a nightmare. People are going to lose their minds over the result, whatever it is. Epic, raw incompetence."
—Zach Carter, HuffPost
The app, according to several news reports, was developed by the secretive for-profit tech firm Shadow Inc., which has ties to and receives funding from ACRONYM, a Democratic digital non-profit organization. Shadow's CEO is Gerard Niemira, who worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.

"State campaign finance records indicate the Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow... more than $60,000 for 'website development' over two installments in November and December of last year," HuffPost reported late Monday. "A Democratic source with knowledge of the process said those payments were for the app that caucus site leaders were supposed to use to upload the results at their locales."

Shadow has also been paid for services by the Nevada Democratic Party and the presidential campaigns of former Vice President Joe Biden and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
Democratic Party officials kept the details of the app as well as Shadow's involvement hidden from the public ahead of the Iowa caucus. But as Monday night wore on and frustration with the delayed reporting of the caucus results boiled over, journalists began scrutinizing the new technology and its developer more closely.
The New York Times, citing anonymous people who were briefed on the app by Iowa Democratic Party officials, reported that the app was hastily constructed in just two months and "not properly tested at a statewide scale."

"The party decided to use the app only after another proposal for reporting votes—which entailed having caucus participants call in their votes over the phone—was abandoned, on the advice of Democratic National Committee officials," the Times reported.

"The secrecy around the app this year came from the Iowa Democratic Party, which asked that even its name be withheld from the public," according to the Times. "There were concerns that the app would malfunction in areas with poor connectivity, or because of high bandwidth use, such as when many people tried to use it at the same time."
Mandy McClure, communications director of the Iowa Democratic Party, said in a statement that the new app was not responsible for the delayed results.
"This is simply a reporting issue," said McClure. "The app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results."

Results of the caucuses are expected Tuesday, but no specific time has been given. The presidential campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Buttigieg released portions of their internal caucus data suggesting they emerged victorious from the bungled process.

In a statement released in the early hours of Tuesday morning, ACRONYM spokesperson Kyle Tharpe attempted to distance his group from Shadow's technology.

"ACRONYM is an investor in several for-profit companies across the progressive media and technology sectors," said Tharpe. "One of those independent, for-profit companies is Shadow Inc., which also has other private investors. We are reading confirmed reports of Shadow's work with the Iowa Democratic Party on Twitter, and we, like everyone else, are eagerly awaiting more information from the Iowa Democratic Party with respect to what happened."




A voting app by Shadow Inc. takes center stage at chaotic Iowa caucuses

Brian Heater@bheater 
Image Credits: Tim Hynds/Sioux City Journal / Getty Images
American democracy can be confusing and messy. There is, perhaps, no better example than last night’s Iowa caucuses. The votes that kick off presidential primary season are, at once, a wonderful celebration of citizen participation in representative democracy and a rather complex system that remains a mystery to many of those outside the nation’s 31st most populous state.
It is, however, an extremely important one for presidential candidates who spend the months leading up to the event doing photo ops while awkwardly attempting to eat food from a stick. It’s the source of much momentum that can propel a candidate into the general. As such, the chaos and uncertainty following last night’s voting are all the more troubling. The day after the long-awaited and much ballyhooed caucuses, no victor has been declared (though some appear to have already declared themselves).
At the center of the confusion is an app reportedly built by a for-profit company called “Shadow Inc.” According to reporting by The New York Times, the app used by the Iowa Democratic Party was “quickly put together in just the past two months” and not subjected to the kind of scrutiny one might traditionally reserve for software used in such an important statewide contest. The app is said to be a replacement for a system wherein caucus participants called in their election. The party reportedly paid Shadow around $63,000 in two installments to build one of its “affordable and easy-to-use tools.”
We reported on the crashed app and delay late last night. “We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” Iowa Democratic Party spokesperson Mandy McClure said in a statement. “The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”
McClure was quick to point out that no evidence of a hack or other intrusion was found — an important point after the fallout from the 2016 election.
Shadow’s background is, fittingly, shrouded in some mystery. Digital nonprofit firm ACRONYM, which has been tied to Shadow, issued a statement late last night claiming to merely be an investor that didn’t provide any technology to the Iowa Democratic Party. “We, like everyone els,e are eagerly awaiting more information from the Iowa Democratic Party,” spokesperson Kyle Tharp said in a statement.
A followup statement from the Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price chalks the error up to a “coding issue.”
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. The application’s reporting issue did not impact the ability of precinct chairs to report data accurately.
Because of the required paper documentation, we have been able to verify that the data recorded in the app and used to calculate State Delegate Equivalents is valid and accurate. Precinct level results are still being reported to the IDP. While our plan is to release results as soon as possible today, our ultimate goal is to ensure that the integrity and accuracy of the process continues to be upheld.
Price also echoes the early statement regarding hacking and insists that, in spite of reports of insignificant testing, the system was vetted by security experts.
“We have every indication that our systems were secure and there was not a cybersecurity intrusion,” he writes. “In preparation for the caucuses, our systems were tested by independent cybersecurity consultants.”
The LA Times notes that Shadow began life as Groundbase, which was founded by former Clinton 2016 digital campaign staffers, Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis.
The unclear and uncertain nature of the situation has gone way toward fueling doubt among voters in a time when many are understandably already skeptical of the system.

WHY IOWA SHOULD NOT BE FIRST NOR A CAUCUS BASED PRIMARY
Iowa Caucus Night Is an Utter Disaster
FUBAR
Image result for the shadow"
SEE 

NEW DETAILS SHOW HOW DEEPLY IOWA CAUCUS APP DEVELOPER WAS EMBEDDED IN DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT

Top Hollywood celebrities and Silicon Valley investors are linked to the app that failed in Iowa
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/top-hollywood-celebrities-and-silicon.html 

The App That Disrupted the Iowa Caucuses
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-app-that-disrupted-iowa-caucuses.html

Iowa Caucus Night Is an Utter Disaster
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/why-iowa-should-not-be-first-nor-caucus.html
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