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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

#271
post #30

My coworker has an alternate theory that frankly makes a lot more sense than “the app broke.” The Iowa caucus is not a paper ballot. People stand in groups in a large multipurpose room and raise their hands for who they vote for. Depending on the viability threshold, people move to new groups and are recounted. The exact rules are complicated and the process is run by unpaid humans. Moreover, in 2020 everyone has sma…

That's just silly. The process has a lot of faults, but they're mostly around their inclusiveness. If anything, the fact that a bunch of people can visibly see the results of their respective caucuses, can report (e.g. tweet) on them real-time means that the ability to manipulate them is much, much harder. Picture it, there's 100 people in a room who all have to move themselves around to their respective candidates a…

I don't think the hacking malicious. People just make mistakes.

Random example: if candidate is below the viability threshold, that group is supposed to disband and join another group. You could have a mistake where, on the 2nd round, two non-viable groups merge and form a viable group.

For example, maybe Biden is at 14% and Klobuchar is at 2%. Under rules, those groups are both non-viable. But you could easily see a mistake where the caucus operators allow the 2% Klobuchar group to "merge" with the Biden group.

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

#272
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

$60K would probably be enough to create a landline boiler room phone bank staffed with volunteers to answer the phones from people reporting results. It wouldn't have the "wow" factor, but it would be a lot more secure.

"...Iowa Democrats, on the advice of the national party, abandoned plans to have caucus results called in by phone because of security concerns and instead build an app..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/us/politics/iowa-caucus-s...

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

#273

Let me get this straight. A company deeply embedded in the Democratic establishment (0) that has worked directly with Buttigieg — the candidate with close ties to Facebook aka the company undermining democracy since 2016 — managed to totally screw up, potentially undermining the campaign of Sanders, the anti-establishment candidate. Yeah, democracy is fucked. 0. https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-sha…

I'm pretty sure caucus votes are public anyway, it's not a secret ballot.

You can't really rig votes even with an app. Hanlon's razor probably applies here; never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

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

#274

The owners and staffers at Shadow INC have a severe conflict of interest. The company is loaded with former Clinton staffers and the CEO sent a tweet in support of Buttigeig, who recently paid tens of thousands to the company. Other suspicious dealings are a premature victory announcement by Buttigeig's campaign and a leak of a picture of paper tallies which included a PIN allegedly used to login to the tally app. Lo…

If there was some grand conspiracy here, wouldn't it make more sense to release a working front end, and do whatever evil machinations / rigging behind the scenes...

Intentionally releasing a broken app is an idiotic excuse for a conspiracy.

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

#275
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…

Is there a world where this type of software could be open source?

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

#276
post #192
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At this point, I hate politics so much, I think every nation needs a 'caretaker' Pres/PM from the bureaucracy - someone who can clean out the cobwebs, get rid of a bunch of old laws, clean up the tax code, take on the public unions (I mean reform not destroy, I mean teachers probably need higher salaries) and basically do a big, operational house cleaning that has nothing to do with politics. You realize that every s…

Why would an operational house cleaning be political?

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

#277
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret? I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, so here’s your chance: any particular reason we shouldn’t dismiss you as not being serious?

>You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret? No, I think it's questionable when a CEO publicly discloses a strong political bias, receives private funds from the personally favored candidate, has cordial photos with the candidate at social events, and then is hired by the DNC and charged with being unbiased in a secret,…

> charged with being unbiased in a secret, electronically controlled ballot.

The Iowa Caucuses are neither secret (like absurdly not) nor electronic?

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

#278
post #63

Checked their LinkedIn and the employees who work there. The founder is non-technical and there are two developers: one who is a "back-end intern" and the other is a front-end developer (both are fresh from bootcamps). ...Yikes.

The career path of prep cook -> software certification mill -> wrecking american democracy is the best thing I've ever seen.

> wrecking american democracy

It's a reporting tool. How the heck did you get to this position?

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

#279
post #231
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app was sent out through the free version of a beta testing platform. https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-...

Why? Ponying up $100 for a developer certificate is too much?

It is when you workhorse dev is an intern I guess...

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

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be an awful lot of work for such a tiny gain. And it doesn't scale. AT ALL. What moron would go to the trouble? Iowa picks corn, not presidents.

What hard work? How many devs do you have to pay off to write a handful of lines of code manipulating a secret ballot, especially when they may be willing because of personal bias? We know electronic voting in its current implementation is severely vulnerable to tampering, both external and internal.

Good thing Iowa used paper ballots then. This was a tally tool, not a voting tool, luckily.

I think Georgia might be the most notorious for the behavior you describe.

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