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Iowa caucus conspiracies

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s the perfect situation for the incubation of conspiracies.

First, we have a process that few people understand in the first place: the Iowa caucuses.

Next, we have a contentious race, many candidates (adding to the complexity), and a residue of distrust from the campaigns in 2016 and even earlier.

Then, we have a nearly-unprecented intensity on the part of Democrats to beat the evil Trump.

Lastly, we have a truly epic snafu and excuses that don’t really explain much of anything.

Is anyone – except the announced winner, when one finally emerges – going to accept and trust the results? Of course not. And this will further poison an already-tense race among the Democrats. I don’t know whether what’s happening in Iowa will ultimately matter much in terms of picking a nominee, but it certainly sets a tone of incompetence and/or corruption (fools or knaves, as it were).

Who to blame? Apps? Organizers? Clinton’s people? One of the candidates? Perhaps my favorite is this:

Because of course we all know that Russia would rather Trump get elected than Bernie.

Comments

Iowa caucus conspiracies — 36 Comments

  1. That’s hysterically funny! Russia! Sure.

    No one can say with authority what happened, but also, very few people are going to believe whatever explanations are offered.

  3. The Iowa Democratic Caucus is the weird one. The Republican caucus counts all of the votes for every candidate.

    The Democratic caucus goes by rounds. If a candidate at a precinct does not have the support of at least 15%, the voters have to get others to join them to reach the threshold, move to other candidates or leave entirely thereby losing their vote. Only “viable” candidates have any votes reported.

    This means Democratic voters who wanted other candidates are excluded from being heard.

    If you look at the Republican caucus, you will see that voters for the lower candidates had their votes reported even though they did not receive any delegates from the caucus.

    “All votes count” certainly does not apply to the Iowa Democratic Caucus. The Republican model shows the desires of the voters more and is easier to report.

    I believe this incident will remove Iowa as first in the nation.

  4. The Democrat caucus is always somewhat chaotic. It frequently goes on for hours and hours. The Republican caucuses are usually over in an hour or less. There is a great deal of anger amongst the left in Iowa, and conspiracy theories multiple. It warms my heart.

  5. One of the things I heard on the radio during this morning’s commute was that the Iowa caucus is NOT some antiquated hold-over from the pioneer days, but was actually created in the 1960’s.

  7. As an Iowan I enjoy the Republican caucus. I was a Cruz caucus captain in 2016. I had 5 minutes to explain why I was supporting him. When all those who wanted to speak for a candidate finish people vote. The votes are quickly counted under 3 watchful eyes and swiftly reported. Easy peasy. But I can only speak for my precinct.

    BTW, the GOP usually does not hold a caucus when an incumbent president is seeking a second term. This year we did. Trump statewide won 97% of the vote.

  8. Who to blame?

    The buck stops with Tom Perez, the Democratic National Chairman, and Troy Price, the Iowa state chairman. They did not ask of their subordinates the questions they needed to be asking. Those questions were subsidiaries of these two: ‘Can you prove to me this software will not break down?’ and ‘Why are we using this software instead of more conventional methods?’ (E.g. reporting preliminary results via e-mail and then hand delivering hard-copy tally sheets to Des Moines for audits).

    Note that the state committee in Iowa has maintained for decades this rococo process when it could have developed a much simpler two-stage process of precinct caucuses to elect delegates to district caucuses which would in turn elect the convention delegate. It held the caucuses on a Monday rather than being sensible and holding them on a Saturday.

  9. The Democrat caucus is always somewhat chaotic. It frequently goes on for hours and hours. The Republican caucuses are usually over in an hour or less.

    I bet you that’s because the Republican attendees run the gamut occupationally while the Democratic attendees are a mix of college students, lawyers, social workers, mental health tradesmen, union staff, and the salaried functionaries of local school districts, local colleges, and miscellaneous NGOs. When your party is the electoral vehicle of people who work in places where operational measures of competence are unknown and where there are an inordinate number of meetings where people spin their wheels and fuss unnecessarily over petty bits of office turf, this is what you get.

  10. Neo, there is one better. A reporter said that the mess in Iowa was caused by, wait for it, RACISM! You know, all those white voters.

  11. “where operational measures of competence are unknown and where there are an inordinate number of meetings where people spin their wheels”

    Ha! Maybe Art Deco did not mean it to be that funny, or I’m too jaded, but that’s good stuff.

    I find eeyore’s estimation of the long term result intriguing. Maybe it is the real motive: remove Iowa from the early primary states. It is the most retail of the primaries, though NH comes close.

    As a counterexample, Robert Shrum ran the Grey Davis campaign for gov. of the state of California many years ago, which he won. Aside from perhaps one debate appearance, the entire campaign could have been run for a computer generated “Max Headroom” candidate.

  12. Decision Desk HQ has started posting results. So far Sanders and Buttigieg are more or less neck and neck, then Warren then Biden.

    On the other hand, the “Results By County” table shows seven counties with >100% reporting. WTF?

  13. From what I could tell, both Sanders and Buttigieg had good ground games. By the beginning of January I was getting annoyed by their canvassers coming onto the porch setting the dogs into a frenzy to repeal the invaders, so I put a sign on the screen door. REGISTERED REPUBLICAN NOT INTERESTED.

  14. President Trump is living rent-free inside of all democrat heads.

    The D’s sure look like a bunch of hosers today.

  16. Oh this is utter and complete incompetence with no conspiracy needed to fail. It had full fail going in when they decided to name the company behind the app “Shadow.”

  17. As a Nebraskan and a member of the GOP, the fact that the Iowa Dems totally screwed this up is not at all surprising.

  19. Cornhead
    As a Nebraskan and a member of the GOP, the fact that the Iowa Dems totally screwed this up is not at all surprising.

    Speaking of relations between neighboring states, I read a recent web article which implied that Senator Klobuchar, being from Minnesota, should have been able to garner more support in neighboring Iowa. Having listened to Prairie Home Companion for years, which had its fair share of jokes poking fun at Iowa, I suspected that for some Iowans, her being from Minnesota could have been a liability. 🙂

    While this fiasco occurred in Iowa, I don’t see Iowans at fault for this. The DNC and Shadow/Acronym should have field-tested the app much more rigorously. Perhaps they assumed that as they were Democrats, and of such superior intelligence, that anything they did would turn out perfectly on the first try.

    I am reminded of the hanging chads in Florida in 2000. Democrats in Democrat-controlled counties had designed the ballots, only to find out that a lot of their constituents had trouble understanding them. Had the Democrat muckety-mucks tested the ballots with survey groups, they wouldn’t have been unpleasantly surprised come election time,

  20. Democrats are hell-on-wheels using tech in their campaigns, but seemingly crap when it comes to mere pedestrian tech tasks like counting votes, providing a healthcare website or safeguarding classified data.

    My theory is cronyism.

    Like putting an Hispanic schoolteacher/Obama political director in charge of the Office of Personnel Management. Then a serious data breach in 2015, probably by the Chinese, of 21.5 million personnel records of government employees. Oops!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach

    Those employees may now be targeted for blackmail or their information otherwise used for hostile purposes. But no biggie. It’s almost entirely forgotten today.

  21. huxley on February 4, 2020 at 9:38 pm said:
    Democrats are hell-on-wheels using tech in their campaigns, but seemingly crap when it comes to mere pedestrian tech tasks like counting votes, providing a healthcare website or safeguarding classified data.
    * * *
    The campaigns affect them directly; the other stuff is only for us peons.
    As for counting votes – why do they care what the actual voters chose, since their victory resides in the “forgotten” ballots in someone’s car trunk?

  22. Since our own home-grown socialist is now (maybe) leading the pack, it is vital to watch and share this video by four young men who went to Cuba.
    I have no idea how they got out with these pictures, when they barely got out at all.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/02/bernies-socialist-paradise.php

    Good thing I said (almost) –
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/02/finally-meaningful-iowa-results.php

    Approximately 24 hours after the Iowa caucuses began, we finally know who did well and who didn’t. Pete Buttigieg did well. With about two-thirds of the vote counted, he leads with 27 percent.

    Bernie Sanders did pretty well. He’s second to Buttigieg at 25 percent.

    Sanders apparently turned out significantly more caucus-goers than Buttigieg did. But the former mayor picked up significantly more support in the second round of caucusing, after supporters of candidates who fell short of 15 percent at various polling places moved on to a second choice candidate.

    Buttigieg is not as old a socialist as Sanders, but he promises to be just as stupidly ideological about it.

  23. Barry – very interesting story at Zerohedge. I liked this part.

    Other reports claim Bernie campaign staffers went around recording vote totals at many Iowa precincts – unbeknownst to the party machine. When their early tallies didn’t match the recorded results from campaign workers, his campaign sent 5 lawyers to complain.

    These are the people who want states to give all their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote nationwide – and can’t get the count right in Iowa.

  24. huxley on February 4, 2020 at 9:24 pm said:
    It seems a bit odd, but the Iowa results are being released piecemeal, like the votes are being counted in real-time the day of. I just assumed they would release the final results in one whack.
    * * *
    Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has a theory that they are doing it to shape the narrative to keep Sanders from winning the nomination.
    “The Club” is his name for the Democratic pooh-bahs who run the party, and hope to continue doing so.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/02/04/perfect-club-engineering-iowa-democrats-release-partial-results-buttigieg-lead-bernie-screwed-biden-covered/

    Perfect Club Engineering – Iowa Democrats Release Partial Results – Buttigieg Lead, Bernie Screwed, Biden Covered…
    Posted on February 4, 2020 by sundance
    A key point of reference is ABC reporter Kendall Karson revealing the DNC came in and took over the tabulations of the Iowa Caucus result prior to this release. “One Democratic official I spoke to is being told that the DNC is “taking over” the accounting of results. The official said this that to their knowledge, this has never happened before.” (link)

    This is important because it highlights that The Club decided what partial results, from what locations, showing what outcomes, the Club wants to put forth. Put another way, the DNC is releasing a specific 62% of the result to generate a specific Iowa narrative.

    So what did they release:

    Graphics follow.

  25. Very interesting article, if you’re interested.

    https://theoutline.com/post/8636/acronym-shadow-iowa-caucus-results-disaster

    Faced with Republican opponents that now actually know how to campaign on social media, the non-profit digital strategy organization intended to offer an effective Democratic countermeasure, guided by digitally savvy hands of the Obama 2012 and Clinton 2016 campaigns.

    After the disastrous Iowa Caucus on Monday, it’s hard to imagine that anyone is buying this story now. A faulty smartphone app, developed by the Acronym subsidiary “Shadow,” failed to correctly tabulate Iowa caucus votes. Though the Iowa Democratic Party says the vote counts are unaffected, the confusion has given ailing campaigns room to maneuver that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. Pete Buttigieg took the opportunity to declare victory, apparently based on nothing more than a gut feeling. Joe Biden, who has been slipping in polls for the past couple weeks, has asked for the actual votes to be invalidated.

    According to an Acronym staffer, who spoke under condition of anonymity because of a non-disclosure agreement, Acronym is “far and away the most disorganized place I’ve ever been a part of.”

  28. Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has a theory that they are doing it to shape the narrative to keep Sanders from winning the nomination.

    AesopFan: Several hours later and only 70% of precincts are reporting. Maybe they’ve knocked off for the night? One would think they would be desperate to put this debacle behind them ASAP.

    Bizarre.

    Is it all right to get back to conspiracy theories? Even if the votes are straight, if the DNC is selectively releasing votes over time, It’s a Conspiracy!*
    ____________________________________________________
    *A girlfriend once gave me a birthday present of that title:

    “It’s a Conspiracy!: The National Insecurity Council”
    https://www.amazon.com/Its-Conspiracy-National-Insecurity-Council/dp/1879682109/ref=sr_1_2

    Fun little book.

  30. So it’s next morning and still only 70% of precincts reporting. But Sanders has pulled ahead of Buttigieg by a point — 26.25% / 25.19%.

    A cafe friend who supports Bernie is unhappy and suspects the worst from the DNC. I don’t have a dog in that fight, but it looks suspicious to me too.

    Charlie Martin at PJMedia is a savvy programmer who has a good run-down on how elementary the app was, yet failed:

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/coding-the-iowa-caucus-for-fun-and-profit/

  31. my own theory is that most Dem politicians are corrupt, and with so many of them (and their supporters) in Iowa, vote corruption by one was met by vote corruption by another, and so on. I dunno about the app.

  33. huxley:
    So now it’s going into the night and only 86% of precincts reporting. Buttigieg leads by over a point — 26.7% vs 25.4% .What the heck is the delay?

    Two days and they can’t get it right? I read somewhere that Bernie’s campaign workers had taken the votes from the 1,600 precincts and sent them to campaign headquarters. Which means that they should be able to push back against this apparent fraud. I say “apparent,” as fraud and delayed election returns go hand in hand.

    Such as the delay in Bolivia’s first round of elections last fall. The delay appeared to be fraud, and the OAS later agreed that it was fraud. When Morales stepped down to prevent further bloodshed, Bernie called it a “coup.” Bernie Sanders Is the Only Presidential Candidate to Call Bolivia President’s Ouster a ‘Coup.’

    “I oppose the intervention of Bolivia’s security forces in the democratic process and their repression of Indigenous protesters. When the military intervened and asked President Evo Morales to leave, in my view, that’s called a coup,” wrote Sanders.

    Bernie made no comment about the electoral fraud that Morales used to try to get elected last fall. Bernie Sanders, others call it a coup, but never denounced Morales’ election fraud in Bolivia.

    That’s why over the years I have criticized both rightist and leftist coups, including those of Pinochet, Argentina’s dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, and — yes — the 2002 coup against Venezuela’s late strongman Hugo Chávez.

    In all of those cases, the military toppled or forced the resignations of democratically elected presidents.

    Bolivia’s Morales, by comparison, was an unconstitutional president clinging to power way beyond his constitutional term limits. In addition, he blatantly rigged his latest election victory. It’s hard to argue that there can be a “coup” against a coup monger.

    Under Bolivia’s constitution, Morales, who took office in 2006, was allowed to serve only two consecutive terms. But he twisted the laws to stay in power way beyond these term limits.

    In 2016, he held a referendum to let him run for a fourth consecutive term. He lost, but ran anyway.

    Evo Morales got a judge to rule that Evo’s “human rights” were violated by not being permitted to run for President as many times as he wanted. Talk about chutzpah!

    Then, he rigged the Oct. 20 elections, according to his own government-invited 92-member electoral observation mission from the Organization of American States. A subsequent audit by a separate 30-member OAS team, also invited by the Morales government, corroborated that he had not won the first-round vote, as he claimed.

    Massive protests had erupted, and the country was almost paralyzed after Morales had proclaimed himself the winner. His supporters say that Morales’ departure was a coup because the military suggested that he quit to prevent further violence.

    Morales critics, however, argue that the military never put a pistol to his head or threatened to use violence against him, but merely made a suggestion that he leave office to allow free elections and solve the crisis.

    While Bernie may well be the victim of some fraud in Iowa, Bernie was “no problema” with regard to the fraud in Bolivia’s recent election.

    If Bernie starts complaining about fraud in the Iowa caucus- and it could well be fraud- he should be asked why he made no objection to the fraud in the recent Bolivian election.

  34. Gringo: Thanks for the good stuff. Bernie is a leftie tool all right.

    Still, there is an odor of decay in Denmark…and Iowa and the Democratic Party.

    I used to figure both parties were more or less equally corrupt because humans. Now I’m giving Democrats a clear edge in that contest.

  35. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/02/05/more-manipulation-national-dnc-club-takes-over-iowa-caucus-accounting-from-iowa-democrat-party/

    Honest question for Democrat voters: Can’t you see how the national DNC is controlling the outcomes of your elections? As we have repeated for years, the DNC and RNC are private clubs with complete control over the processes, rules and application of standards within the political races they convene. [Go Deep] There is no oversight over the Club.

    By now everyone knows the Club agenda: •Eliminate Sanders; •support a Never Bernie alternative; •stop any hostile takeover of the Club; •hide the previous manipulation of Joe Biden’s candidacy; and, •in case of emergency – Bloomberg. As we noted yesterday, the National DNC (Club) has taken control of the results from the Iowa Democrat Party.

    Here’s the latest results:
    …
    Bernie Sanders is winning the popular vote (both rounds); however, Pete Buttigieg holds the most State Delegate Equivalents (SDE’s). Elizabeth Warren has only won 1 county.

    NOTE: There are 41 state delegates available and the New York Times has dropped their delegate distribution graphic. This appears to be an intentional decision to hide a reality that Biden may receive ZERO delegates.

    The Des Moines Register shows the delegate distribution with 92% Reporting:
    …
    Also note how the DMR manipulates the graphic below making Biden, Buttigieg, and Warren have almost the identical shade of blue. By making the three look the same, this makes it look like Bernie Sanders was massively defeated.

    Again, this is by design. Look:

  36. “Faith and future”, he said with a laugh. Corey (Sparacus) Booker had control of ~$100,000,000 donated to the Newark (NJ) public schools. He skimmed almost all of that to unions, consultants, political hacks, so they made him into a Senator where he could accumulate some real money. It was an “investment” in the future. There was apparently big money sent to Shadow/Acronym for a DNC controlled caucus app. Without any faith in a future, some amateur “script kiddies” were hired to prepare the app for chump change, while the big money disappeared. Looks like the “Inner Party” sees a big crash up ahead. No one can be trusted to hold the pot for the next round.

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