Today, Explained - Iowhaaaaat?!

Episode Date: February 4, 2020

Iowa caucuses? More like caucus chaos. Or a raucous caucus. Or an Iowasca trip. Somebody's got some explaining to do. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs. And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600.

Visit connectsontario.ca. 20, 20 explained. 20 explained. Zach Beecham, Vox, we were all sitting here in the newsroom last night expecting some results from Iowa. Was that our first mistake? I think we were being pretty reasonable. Last night when we were all yelling at the television, in some cases, quite literally cough, cough, Nataglacius, cough, cough. We had expected results at that point, reasonably based on every prior Iowa caucus. Right. Right.

These things don't normally take until well into the next day to count. And at the time we're taping this, we still don't have a result. And this is like Tuesday afternoon. Yeah. So, like, by all precedent, this makes no sense. At the time we're taping this, we still don't have a result. And this is like Tuesday afternoon. Yeah. So like by all precedent, this makes no sense. So what went wrong last night? When it comes to the actual source of the errors, it's actually not fully clear what went wrong.

So I will give you two theories, one of which seems obviously true but is disputed by the Iowa Democratic Party. And the one is what the Iowa Democratic Party's official line is but we're not sure if it's true. So the disputed version is that there was a problem with the app itself's basic functionality. The app is a new thing that the Iowa Democratic Party was using to calculate and send in results. And it was developed by this firm called – and I'm not making this up. It is called Shadow. And nobody had heard of it before in major public life. But it is a very new app. Development started around two months ago.

And there were lots of reports from people on the ground in Iowa, including like precinct captains who were in charge of doing this reporting, that they couldn't download the app, that they couldn't get it to work, couldn't get it to open, couldn't get it to send results. The backup plan was to just call in the results manually. Sean Sebastian is joining us right now from Story County. He's a precinct secretary out there. What can you tell us about this delay in getting any results, Sean? Well, Wolf, I have been on hold for over an hour with the Iowa Democratic Party. One precinct captain got held up for an hour on hold, and then he was talking to CNN. When he got off hold and when he tried to switch, they hung up on him.

What are you hearing? I know you're listening to a conversation from the Iowa Democratic Party. This is a real coincidence, Wolf. I just got off hold just now. So I've got to get off the phone to report the results. All right, go ahead and report the results. Can we listen in as you report them, Sean? Yep. All right, let's listen. All right. Okay. Hi. Hello? They hung up on me. They hung up on me. Okay. The Iowa Democratic Party says that the app's basic functionality was not the problem. They say the problem is that some combination of the app and the precinct captains themselves were not doing the calculation of the final vote tally correctly. And this is a little bit complicated.

So there were some rule changes that were kind of confusing people last night. What exactly changed? Basically, the Iowa Democratic Party for the first time said they'd be sending out three different results of the caucus and releasing them publicly. The first one is the first alignment, sort of where people were standing, who they wanted to vote for at first in the literal physical caucus room. The second result is the second alignment, which is what happens after people get to choose based on who got eliminated the first time around. Because they're coming in and they're conversing.

So their minds are going to change. Right. And they're also, candidates get eliminated in between alignments if they didn't in their area get over 15%. Okay. So if I went into caucus for Joe Biden and Biden only got 13%, then I would be free to go pick, I don't know, whoever else I wanted. So that was the second thing.

But then there's the third and I think most important result, which is the delegate hall. And there's a formula that converts in different precincts the second alignment into this delegate count, how many delegates you get from winning this particular area. This is all math. Yes, it's all math. Big Q, the yang hat. According to the Iowa Democratic Party, there were some weird discrepancies in these three numbers. They just weren't matching up in the way that they were supposed to. Okay. And so some statements suggested that this was user error. Some statements suggested that this was like a problem with the app's tabulation. It's still kind of opaque. Okay, two theories. One, the new app was crap.

The Iowa Democratic Party certainly isn't cosigning that. Theory two, that Iowa likes, people couldn't handle the new rules. Correct. But either way, the combination of this app and the rule changes really spelled disaster here. Did anyone see this coming? There were reports coming up in the weeks and day before saying that the app was experiencing some problems. But a lot of them were focused on cybersecurity, that the app was not well vetted or tested by cybersecurity experts and that it was vulnerable to a hack. But nobody had any idea that it would be this bad.

Also, nobody had any idea that their backup plan of these phone lines would be so broken. You'd think it would be really easy to just call and be like, hey, in my precinct, here are the three different numbers. Seems like a good backup plan. Yeah. But for whatever reason, the Iowa Democratic Party completely screwed it up and the calls weren't coming in effectively. And so in the absence of an effective app and an effective backup system, we just have complete chaos. Why were all these changes implemented in the first place? Did something go so badly wrong in 2016 that they needed an app plus a bunch of rule changes? Not so badly wrong, but there have been longstanding complaints about the inefficiency and unfairness of the caucuses for a lot of reason.

And last time around, the Sanders campaign in particular was unhappy with the way that the process treated them. And they had long been arguing that the process was sort of unfairly stacked in Hillary Clinton's favor. And so these transparency efforts, I think, were in part a response to that critique. So what is the latest from the Iowa Democratic Party? Everyone thinks the Iowa Democratic Party screwed up royally, except, according to their own press statements, the Iowa Democratic Party. Classic.

This is from the Iowa Democratic Party communications director, Mandy McClure. Ready? This is our first official explanation from the Iowa Democratic Party Communications Director, Mandy McClure. Ready? This is our first official explanation from the Iowa Democratic Party. Ready? The integrity of the results is paramount. We've experienced a delay in the results due to quality checks and the fact that the Iowa Democratic Party is reporting out three data sets for the first time. What we know right now is that around 25% of precincts have reported, and early data indicates turnout is on pace for 2016.

Where did this mess leave the candidates in this race? It left the candidates trying to spin whatever happened in their favor based on the preliminary results that their campaign has been able to tabulate and they've been able to get access to. And so what you've got is Buttigieg declaring victory. We don't know all the results. But we know by the time it's all said and done, Iowa, you have shocked the nation. You have the Biden campaign saying that this was an absurd outcome because it seemed like

they did relatively poorly. The Iowa Democratic Party is working to get this result, get them straight. And I want to make sure they're very careful with their deliberations. You have the Sanders campaign billing this as going well for them, but not being as definitive. I have a good feeling we're going to be doing very, very well here in Iowa. And the Warren campaign taking a more neutral line. It is too close to call,

so I'm just going to tell you what I do know. You won! More in a minute with Zach on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting

time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P dot com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with

BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM,

a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex ontario

at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with i gaming ontario 2020 2020 okay zach so peteigieg was the only candidate to really come out and declare victory last night, but everyone was trying to sort of spin the results in their favor. Who did this delay in Iowa really benefit and who did it really hurt? We've been talking about the four leading candidates, right? Buttigieg, Biden, Warren, Sanders. Iowa was significant to all of them. It was, I would say, most significant to Buttigieg, who really invested in the state and had not been doing well in the not especially white states later down the calendar and needed to do well

in a state that was demographically very favorable for him. So it really mattered for him. And unsurprisingly, he was the one who came out and declared victory. Yeah, shocker there. Yeah. Sanders also wants to win early because he needs to develop a sense of momentum to fully displace Biden because, like Buttigieg, he's not doing as well in Nevada and South Carolina as he is in New Hampshire and Iowa, the two earlier states. Warren needed to have a strong showing to show she isn't out of it. And for Biden, it was the least important because he's been doing well in these later states. Warren needed to have a strong showing to show she isn't out of it. And for Biden, it was the least important because he's been doing well in these later states.

But a really, really bad showing might crater his support, which people have been warning has been soft the whole time. It has not seemed true because he's been leading the polls for so long. But if he really cratered in Iowa, it's possible this could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So those are the four people. It's all important to them to varying degrees. And now everyone's off to the next one. Their fight right now is New Hampshire. And New Hampshire now is much more important than it was previously, which is kind of a crazy thing to say because it was already very important.

Iowa matters a lot not because of its delegate count, which is pretty low, but because of its role in setting media and donor expectations. If you do well in Iowa, you can sort of start a bandwagon and people get to support you in other places because you look plausible. Likewise, you get a lot of favorable media coverage, which gets you more attention, more donors, etc. But in the absence of a declared result in Iowa, nobody is getting these benefits. Nobody is getting this narrative momentum that they wanted to get the night of. And plus, we have a bunch of news this week coming up, including the State of the Union and another Democratic debate, which could end up overshadowing or at least somewhat displacing the Iowa results, which means the New Hampshire campaign will kind of become the first meaningful media narrative primary. Not entirely, again, because Iowa results will come out at one point and those will matter, but the delay has sort of screwed up the timeframe that the media needed and that candidates needed to take advantage of whatever happened in Iowa.

Is there any chance that something like what happened in Iowa could happen in New Hampshire? Did they just change a bunch of rules and introduce a funky app? Not that I'm aware of. And it's a primary, not a caucus, so it's relatively straightforward. It's just standard electoral counting, right? People vote, and then those vote tallies go in, and then that determines who gets what. Is anyone going to trust Iowa to lead the pack? I mean, we talked to our colleague Lee Zoe on the show on Monday about how there's already this momentum behind changing the primary process,

not letting Iowa go first because it's not really representative of the rest of the country. Now that everyone saw them flipping coins and punting the results and having this app snafu, is it all but sure that Iowa is going to be reexamined as the leader of this process? I think the party would be just totally irresponsible if they didn't. There were always good reasons to move Iowa out of the slot. It's absurd that a state that has such a white electorate in the Democratic Party, which is incredibly diverse nationally, that should go first. And Lee has a good piece to that effect on Vox.com. But it's not just that. The caucus system itself is biased towards a very small number of people. But if Iowans are stubborn about this, they should not have this much influence over the national political environment. Beyond just the, you know, obvious inconvenience to the candidates,

to the Democratic Party with these delays, I wonder just how bad this looks for our democracy right now, that the very first thing in this election got bungled. I mean, especially recovering from an election where we have confirmed Russian interference in our presidential election. Yeah, I can't overstate how bad it is from that point of view. The campaigns didn't help matters. So the way that elections work in a democracy at a really basic level is that you have public faith in the process, and that displaces any sense that your opponents won unfairly, right? In other countries where they don't have faith in their democratic process, you end up getting results contested and that often leads into actual conflict because people don't believe that the other side has a fair claim to leadership

and they're willing to dispute that claim using force. I'm not suggesting we're close to that in the United States. I'm just using that to underline the theory as to why the legitimacy of elections is so important and what happens in the worst case when it gets compromised. And here, we not only have the legitimacy obviously compromised, an official statement and a Biden spokesperson have said that there are serious questions about what's going on and that there are reasons to be concerned about the outcome. Buttigieg declaring victory created some significant conspiracy theories online. And so this idea that the app is causing problems, Buttigieg is declaring victory

when nobody knows what's happening, but it looks like Bernie may have actually won, has led a lot of Bernie people on Twitter to say, this is outrageous. This app rigged it in favor of Buttigieg. Oh, gosh. There's no evidence for that. But the fact that he is so aggressively setting expectations

added a lot of fuel to that fire. The number one hashtag nationwide in the United States on Twitter was Mayor Cheat. And it illustrated how little faith there was after the results of last night among lots of people in the outcome. And that's the kind of body blow to the democratic legitimacy of an election that's difficult to recover from. Because once that trust is lost, it's difficult to gain back. That's sort of in the nature of trust itself. Did we have to trust the company called Shadow? Yeah, that was very dumb.

Just very dumb on so many levels. At least change the name before we make the app together. Can you hire like Light of Day Incorporated or like We Are Honest? I mean, there's just so many other things they could have called it. Trustworthy. I don't know. If you call it trustworthy, I feel like it has extreme lots of questions that are already answered by this t-shirt

vibes to it. Shadow had to be amongst the worst names. Yeah, it was real bad. It's just real bad. Is anyone going to trust these results when they actually come out whenever that is Halloween Thanksgiving, you know Christmas.

Yeah, yeah. They're released on the eve of the next Olympics. Yeah. I think people have good reason to trust them. I really don't think that there's, all conspiracy theories aside, any reason to believe that the Iowa Democratic Party is rigging this election in one way or another or that their incompetence will like irretrievably screw up the basic results. I think there will be a very long paper trail that one can use to confirm that the tallies end up being accurate. I think the issue is that people will not believe it. It's weird that you have to hold these two ideas together in your head at the same time, both that the process was totally mismanaged and also that the end result of it, though it's delayed and though there were lots of irregularities, has really good reasons to be seen as trustworthy. But we do need to hold both of those ideas in our head at the same time.

One thing seems sure to me that this probably helped Donald Trump more than anyone else. Oh, yeah. The Trump campaign is loving this. Both of the president's large adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric, have tweeted that the process is rigged. His campaign manager, Brad Parscale, also suggested it was rigged. First of all, they're trying to obviously stoke divisions inside the Democratic Party. Trump has done this before. He thinks he can weaponize the Team Bernie anti-establishment sentiment against the party itself.

I don't think any Bernie fans really take Trump seriously on this point, but he's certainly trying to make these things worse. Second, you know, the more infighting there is among Democrats, even if Trump isn't stoking it, the better things are for the Trump campaign. And today they got their best Gallup result in some time. I think it was like a 49 percent approval rating. Is there anything the Democrats can do in the coming weeks to sort of band together and support each other through this mess? Or is that unlikely considering that the competition is getting, you know, as thick as it's been? Yeah, the best thing Democrats can do going through is hold good elections. Don't do this. Have fair, transparent, open, non-irregular processes. And then eventually the Iowa stuff will be displaced by a narrative of an actual real campaign.

But that's the best thing that they can do is make sure that everything is airtight in the upcoming states. Another screw up like this, I don't even want to speculate as to how bad that could be. Zach Beecham is a senior correspondent at Vox. He also is one of the hosts of our Worldly podcast. I'm Sean Ramos for him.

This is Today Explained. explained.