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The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

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Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#51

Post by nooron »

there_the_and wrote: post #49
sjm-lbm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems overly paranoid to me - wouldn't we want people with experience in the civics tech space to be leaders at a company working in the civics tech space? Besides, wouldn't most of the good Bernie tech people... go back to work for Bernie? There's a reason why the Hillary people need new jobs.

> This seems overly paranoid to me This is not even close to paranoid. Conflicts of interest are an important issue for nonprofits because it can cause them to lose tax exempt status, and the IRS makes a whole todo about it, and therefore so do competent boards. Trying to brush this under the rug because of politics is disgusting and would not be tolerated at ethical and competent organizations.

There is a very small pool of engineers who work full-time in politics because it is a small and highly cyclical industry with extraordinarily small margins. I have personally worked with many competing campaigns and nearly all vendors in the space do. Many organizations grapple with these conflicts of interest in and outside of politics, and do so successfully. From my perspective, it is quite paranoid.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#52

Post by metabagel »

generalpass wrote: post #43

Should Google or Apple take the app off the app store? Seems like a scam...

It's not on an app store.

"The app was not deployed through traditional app stores or even sideloaded using an enterprise certificate. Instead, it was deployed through the TestFairy testing platform, which is similar to Apple’s TestFlight and used predominantly for Android and iOS apps that are not yet finalized."

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-...

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#53

Post by nooron »

tmpz22 wrote: post #14

This should really be getting more attention, here is an alternative breakdown: https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX . The jest of it is one of the most important institutions in the United States (the Democratic National Committee) uses a highly nepotistic and incompetent system for managing IT which leads to colossal failures in marketing, canvassing, and security. Not to mention massive PII violations as millions of…

tmpz22, where do you work in this space? I started Tuesday Company. I would love to talk more with you and hear about your experiences, I am sure we have a lot in common.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#54

Post by brootstrap »

mdavidn wrote: post #38
oblib wrote: post #6

I think the author's take on this is a bit heavy with hyperbole, but there's no doubt Iowa was a mess last night. My son was there working as volunteer, and so was his ex-girlfriend, who's still a close family friend. I was chatting with them both throughout the evening and into the wee hours this morning. They worked different locations in the Des Moines metro area and the results they reported to me were pretty clo…

Any database should work just fine for this application. 1678 precincts. 11 candidates. 2 rounds. That's 37 thousand records to fully represent everything.

But david this is a perfect application for a noSQL db.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#55

Post by bluGill »

jariel wrote: post #41
pmoriarty wrote: post #4

How long will it take our society to realize that democracy is threatened when machines are involved in voting or vote counting? Going back to voting exclusively by ink on paper and hand counting is imperative.

Paper ballots with scanned results in the booth. No scan means redo your vote. That way you have a track record + instant results. Folks can take home the stub to ensure non-repudiation etc.. They can look up the serial number on the stub they take home to see for sure it was recorded. FYI we should also have basic ID requirements for voting. The arguments against it are kind of ridiculous, and federal or state ID sh…

This is a caucus not a primary. From what I understand there are no ballots at all - you physically walk around the room until you find the group you want to support, if your group is large enough to choose delegates (generally there are more slots than people to fill them) to the next convention. The delegates are in theory (in practice it is different) not required to vote for you, so when your group chooses people you need to make sure they are like minded.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#56

Post by bluGill »

walshemj wrote: post #34
pmoriarty wrote: post #4

How long will it take our society to realize that democracy is threatened when machines are involved in voting or vote counting? Going back to voting exclusively by ink on paper and hand counting is imperative.

Um hand counting in primary elections - you think the Blackadder episode where they try to get Baldric elected to a rotten borough is a good idea.

This isn't a primary. There are no ballots.

The Republicans do ballots - on paper, but the democrats don't have a ballot at all.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#57

Post by briandear »

ch4s3 wrote: post #22
tmpz22 wrote: post #14

This should really be getting more attention, here is an alternative breakdown: https://imgur.com/gallery/ycOC0HX . The jest of it is one of the most important institutions in the United States (the Democratic National Committee) uses a highly nepotistic and incompetent system for managing IT which leads to colossal failures in marketing, canvassing, and security. Not to mention massive PII violations as millions of…

> But in 2016 it wasn't Well, you aren't technically wrong here, but I disagree with the sentiment. The RNC leveraged a the same kind of data used by the Obama team in '12 to squeak out an Electoral College win in `16. I think it's easy to get overly ambitious with civic tech and deliver expensive garbage. However, when people stay focused and deliver then I think the results speak for themselves. While the '12 and '…

> to squeak out an Electoral College win in `16.

304 to 227 wasn’t a “squeak”

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#58

Post by whylie »

nooron wrote: post #44

I started a company that was asked to write a proposal to make what became the app that failed last night. I declined because it was outside of our core skillset. You can read my prior comments or look at my profile to validate this. If you want my perspective as someone who started a Democratic software company, you should keep reading. This app emerged from a mandate to make the caucus more accessible and transpare…

>Shadow is a firm that makes custom software for Democrats and progressives.

If I can ask, why the specific nature for their clientele? Isolating your solutions to a specific political party seems strange to me especially if the emphasis on making money. If anything, money normally supersedes political leanings at the end of the day which makes the whole fiasco even stranger to me. Wouldn't you want to provide a solution for both parties by default? Not doing so seems nefarious on it's own.

It sounds like pairing products with political leanings is not a good business decision? Which may explain where all the 'hate' is coming from - it's just bad business and sows the seeds of doubt in their credibility in the minds of many.

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#59

Post by war1025 »

nooron wrote: post #44

I started a company that was asked to write a proposal to make what became the app that failed last night. I declined because it was outside of our core skillset. You can read my prior comments or look at my profile to validate this. If you want my perspective as someone who started a Democratic software company, you should keep reading. This app emerged from a mandate to make the caucus more accessible and transpare…

I don't know whether I heard correctly or if the number was accurate, but I heard someone throw out $60k as the amount paid for the app development this morning on the radio.

That sounds like a lot of money to a lay-person, but assuming $100/hr, which seems like at least a reasonable ballpark rate, that breaks down to 600 man-hours, or 15 man-weeks.

That is a very tight deadline to turn out a critical app like this. Especially since I assume it wasn't just a single person doing the coding.

People don't realize that software is expensive and a custom built application is probably not the correct choice for a single-use product. I'm sure whoever was in charge felt that $60k was a quite generous offer to build this. In reality it's basically nothing.

I used to have acquaintances approach me and say, "Hey I've got this great app idea you could help me with."

The response I found shut them down real quick was, "Great. Do you have $100k lying around to get the first beta out the door?"

Re: The Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night

#60

Post by briandear »

pmoriarty wrote: post #4

How long will it take our society to realize that democracy is threatened when machines are involved in voting or vote counting? Going back to voting exclusively by ink on paper and hand counting is imperative.

And elections had more integrity before electronics?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_13_scandal

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