Inside the Epic Iowa Meltdown That Paralyzed 2020 Democrats
- Debacle casts a pall on Iowa’s place in the presidential race
- Lack of results meant that many candidates could claim victory
The first signs of trouble in the Iowa Democratic caucuses emerged early Monday afternoon when a handful of county chairs had problems downloading and logging onto a new app designed to report results.
“A lot of us are going to be doing it on paper and calling it in,” Kelcey Brackett, chairman of the Muscatine County Democratic Party, told Bloomberg News on Monday afternoon. “The app was to most of the chairs a very new thing. They were looking forward to being able to use it, but we’re back to using pen and paper.”
Within hours, the glitches cited by local officials mushroomed into a statewide breakdown that by Tuesday morning had paralyzed the nation’s first Democratic presidential nominating contest. The election debacle prompted questions about the integrity of Iowa’s caucus system and the technological competence of the Democratic Party, particularly in light of the Russian hacking and disinformation campaign directed at it in 2016.