Clash between app, Iowa Dems’ database resulted in caucus count problems, CEO says
DES MOINES — A data formatting error resulted in a verification system controlled by the Iowa Democratic Party rejecting Monday caucus results reported via a smartphone app, the head of a company that designed the program said in an interview published Wednesday by a tech news website.
His explanation is the most detailed so far of a key problem with the app that contributed to the lengthy delay in reporting caucus results.
“We have this independent verification step,” Gerard Niemira, the CEO of Shadow Inc., told Motherboard, an online imprint of news website Vice. “In the course of doing that, we had some code that would look at our results database and then move that over to the IDP’s quality control check environment. In the process of doing that, we had some faulty code that took the data and put it into a format that made it fail the checks by the IDP. That was throwing up flags, which took time to resolve.”
The party has said it verified results using by using paper records to ensure that no data was lost and there were no discrepancies.
Many caucus chairs also complained that they were unable to log into the app. Niemira told Motherboard he believed the problem lay in a combination of a short training window for many of the chairs and a complicated log-in process.
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He said users had to enter three different six-digit codes. “There were some issues with not knowing where to put what credentials, which is a difficult thing to design around,” Niemira told Motherboard.“Having to sign in with three different six-digit numbers is confusing on the best day, but it was a call that was made in order to help keep this process as secure as possible.”
Shadow, a company linked with key Iowa and national Democrats associated with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, designed the app for the Iowa Democratic Party. It began its work in August but “didn’t have a final production version” until “pretty close to caucus time,” Niemira told Motherboard. He and other Shadow officials did not respond to the Des Moines Register’s repeated requests for comment Wednesday.
Shadow issued a public apology via Twitter on Tuesday, saying its officials “sincerely regret” the delay.
Security watchdogs had called on Iowa Democrats to be more transparent about the development and testing of the app prior to Monday’s caucuses. But Democrats declined to name the developer or provide testing details, saying top cybersecurity experts advised against releasing too much information because it could result in the vendor being targeted.
The Register uncovered the name of the vendor by obtaining a copy of the app and analyzing its metadata.
Experts have said the program had other problems, including vulnerability to hackers due to the way it was “sideloaded” onto user phones. The term is used to describe apps that do not come from a source like Google Play Store that vets programs for cybersecurity risks.
More:Iowa Democrats say they were inundated with outside calls that clogged caucus results reporting
Microsoft backed out
The Iowa Democratic and Republican parties both used a software application to aid in reporting results for their caucuses for the first time in 2016. Both used the same program, provided by a Microsoft-led initiative to introduce technology into the caucus process.
But the computer giant declined to participate in the 2020 caucus cycle, and alerted the parties by early summer that the app would not again be available, Republican Party of Iowa spokesman Aaron Britt told the Register on Wednesday.
The Republican Party found a new vendor by August, with an app that for the most part was already built and just needed some tweaks, Britt said. He declined to name the developer of the app, citing security concerns, but said it was not the company used by the Iowa Democratic Party.
Microsoft said in a statement that its participation in the 2016 caucuses was not intended to be long-term, and the company has since focused its election security efforts on other tools.
“We had a great partnership with the Iowa political parties in 2016 that we think helped showcase our technology and helped power the voting process in new ways,” the statement said.
The Democrats in the 2016 caucuses relied not only on the Microsoft app but on an automated phone system that precinct chairs who chose to could use to call in results. About half the volunteer precinct chairs reported results via the app, and the other half called them in.
Also in 2016, Democratic precinct chairs only needed to report the delegate equivalents being awarded, rather than the raw vote totals that were required in addition to the delegate equivalents this year as the result of a rule change.
The Democrats had a phone reporting system this year as a backup to the app. But it was manually staffed and it was overwhelmed when precinct chairs experienced problems with using the app.
“Everyone’s talking about the app. That’s not the full problem. There needed to be a backup to the backup to the backup.” said Lara Henderson, the former Iowa state director for U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who ended her Democratic presidential candidacy in August.
Among other revelations Wednesday:
- Buttigieg connection: Tara McGowan, a strategist with direct ties to the new app, is the sister in-law of Ben Halle, the Iowa communications director for Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s campaign acknowledged Wednesday in an interview with the Register. McGowan is the founder of Acronym — a nonprofit that has invested in caucus app developer Shadow Inc. She did not return calls Wednesday and Halle declined to comment. The Buttigieg campaign has paid at least $42,500 for services to Shadow in 2019, according to federal election data. Halle’s relationship with McGowan had no influence on the campaign’s decision to do business with Shadow, Matt Corridoni, a spokesman for Buttigieg, said Wednesday.
- Reconsidering Shadow: Multiple political groups said Wednesday they will reevaluate their relationship with Shadow, which has received more than $200,000 from Democratic and liberal-leaning advocacy groups in the past year, according to Iowa and federal campaign reports. Among those that will reevaluate or perform security performance reviews is the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and For Our Future, a coalition of organizations that include labor unions, spokespeople for the groups told the Register on Wednesday.
- Unanswered questions: The Iowa Democratic Party on Wednesday had yet to answer key questions about its use of the app, including the identities of the national cybersecurity experts it says it used to evaluate the program prior to Monday’s caucus and whether the party’s payments of $63,184 in late 2019 to Shadow represent the party’s total cost for the app. IDP Spokeswoman Mandy McClure said Wednesday that she would attempt to answer those and other questions at a later date.
Staff writer Brianne Pfannemstiel contributed to this article.
Nick Coltrain is a politics and data reporter for the Register. Reach him at ncoltrain@registermedia.com or at 515-284-8361.
Jason Clayworth is an investigative reporter for the Register. Reach him at jclayworth@registermedia.com or 515-699-7058.