Democratic caucuses and primaries

I need a gif of that scene from the Simpsons where the teachers are all just dancing in a line singing "Caucus Caucus Caucus" over and over.

BTW, the Caucus race in "Alice In Wonderland" was intended as a satire on the cuscusus in British Politics when Lewis Caroll wrote the book.
 
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Another fun moment from the caucus.

Pete supporter wants to retract their support after they learn Pete is gay. Totally unaware that Pete is gay and is married to another man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTQlwARreXc&feature=emb_logo&fbclid=IwAR1aF9EC-gG5SE5jws7LIq2ax668mfBe0ehj55CRXXryG5nMHIWHpbXVWbM

Because Pete has kept it such a carefully guarded secret?

*Picks up a magazine, flipping through it while taking a sip of my drink. Suddenly spits my drink out* Holy crap Obama is black?
 
"The Gang Runs an Election"

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One volunteer's account of unsuccessfully trying to use the election app:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/04/my-chaotic-infuriating-night-running-an-iowa-caucus/

After 9 p.m., disorder really descended. The app for reporting results wasn’t working. When I’d downloaded it on Jan. 31, the installation instructions had been convoluted: You had to fill out a survey, which then got you a link, and then you had to download a different app, and enter in a code from your email, and then you would get the real app. This was meant to keep everything secure. But we have caucus chairs who need their grandkids to program their DVRs, and the training for the caucus chairs hadn’t included any guidance. The party didn’t really roll out the app so much as drop it on the doorstep. On Monday, I fielded calls all day from chairs trying to download the app and getting blocked. When I tried to sign in myself, I was told that my PIN wasn’t valid. In our county, only two of the 22 caucus leaders were able to use the app successfully.
 
What in the blue hell is a "client success representative"?
I don't know by but my wife is currently applying for a job as a one. Seems to be what software companies call client managers.
 
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There seems to be a bit of confusion over the App. The voters weren't voting with an app, they were doing the whole usual go stand in the right corner thing. The Reporting of the vote was done by the App. It was the communications between the officials on the ground and the Party Officials who were totaling the incoming votes what fell over due to a poorly tested app that a lot of the Caucus Chair s had no idea how to use, a phone system that overloaded, and for some reason, they turned away those that took over the results physically.

As much as I think that Caucuses are silly for a number of reasons, what happened here is not something that is the result of the Caucus itself.
 
While I have no CT to advance on this, a major loss for everyone is this bodes ill for general attitudes about integrity of electorsl process.

That's a worry people have lately, they will express it through weaving every story imaginable. That will really get the intra-party boiling.
 
While I have no CT to advance on this, a major loss for everyone is this bodes ill for general attitudes about integrity of [electoral] process.

2020_Iowa_Democratic_caucusesWP were always going to be a clusterfuffle.

tl;dr - The process is as follows...

3 Feb: "11,402 county convention delegates are awarded proportionally on the basis of the results of the 1678 precinct caucuses and 99 satellite caucuses."

21 Mar: County convention delegates select 2,107 District and State Delegates (SDE) for district conventions

25 Apr: District conventions select the 27 pledged congressional district delegates

13 Jun: State Democratic convention selects the remaining 9 pledged at-large delegates and 5 pledged PLEO delegates

When it's all said and done more than 152k Iowans have been gradually compressed down to 41 pledged delegates to the DNC through an iterative process with multiple stages, at each of which various candidates' shares have been rounded up, down, or zeroed out.

tl;tl;dr - If you were confident in this process, you didn't understand it.

ETA: It looks like Pete might have a decent shot of getting the most SDEs, but he's in a virtual tie with Bernie.
 
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While I have no CT to advance on this, a major loss for everyone is this bodes ill for general attitudes about integrity of electorsl process.

That's a worry people have lately, they will express it through weaving every story imaginable. That will really get the intra-party boiling.

And it's giving the comedians a field day.
 
While I have no CT to advance on this [...]


I can help you with some dot-connecting:

Max Blumenthal said:
At the time of publication, twelve hours after voting in the Democratic Party’s Iowa caucuses ended, the results have not been announced. The delay in reporting is the result of a failed app developed by a company appropriately named Shadow Inc.

This firm was staffed by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaign veterans and created by a Democratic dark money nonprofit backed by hedge fund billionaires including Seth Klarman. A prolific funder of pro-settler Israel lobby organizations, Klarman has also contributed directly to Pete Buttigieg’s campaign.

The delay in the vote reporting denied a victory speech to Sen. Bernie Sanders, the presumptive winner of the opening contest in the Democratic presidential primary. Though not one exit poll indicated that Buttigieg would have won, the South Bend, Indiana mayor took to Twitter to confidently proclaim himself the victor. [...]

Hours later, journalist Lee Fang reported that a previously unknown tech outfit called Shadow Inc. had contracted with the Iowa Democratic Party to create the failed technology. The firm was comprised of former staffers for Obama, Clinton and the tech industry, and had been paid for services by the Buttigieg campaign. [...]

As Democratic elites like the Sussmans braced for a Bernie Sanders triumph in Iowa, a mysterious piece of technology spun out by a group they supported delayed the vote results, preventing Sanders from delivering a victory speech. And the politician many of them supported, Pete Buttigieg, exploited the moment to declare himself the winner. In such a strange scenario, the conspiracy theories write themselves.


#MayorCheat is trending, and while I can't see a practical scheme behind this with any ... next step ... profit! intention, the facts are bizarre enough. Shadow, Inc, really?
 
I don't see anything unusual about Democratic insiders using their money to develop technology for their primary election.

But that fact it was a caucus and having to operate an untested app at a particular time at a particular place probably wasn't a good idea.
 
2020_Iowa_Democratic_caucusesWP were always going to be a clusterfuffle.

tl;dr - The process is as follows...

3 Feb: "11,402 county convention delegates are awarded proportionally on the basis of the results of the 1678 precinct caucuses and 99 satellite caucuses."

21 Mar: County convention delegates select 2,107 District and State Delegates (SDE) for district conventions

25 Apr: District conventions select the 27 pledged congressional district delegates

13 Jun: State Democratic convention selects the remaining 9 pledged at-large delegates and 5 pledged PLEO delegates

When it's all said and done more than 152k Iowans have been gradually compressed down to 41 pledged delegates to the DNC through an iterative process with multiple stages, at each of which various candidates' shares have been rounded up, down, or zeroed out.

tl;tl;dr - If you were confident in this process, you didn't understand it.

ETA: It looks like Pete might have a decent shot of getting the most SDEs, but he's in a virtual tie with Bernie.

That process, of course, is pretty much how delegates were chosen by both parties all over the country until the past 30 or 40 years.
 
The CTs won't be about how quirky a caucus is. There will be low-hanging fruit like the coin toss (which I'm almost certain has happened before).

The ones that worry me grow from whatever moron made a statement about "quality control" of the numbers they were getting and then most of a day delay. Get ready for 500 different theories about "massaging the numbers."
 
The company that wrote the software says it "regrets the glitches".
No S*** Sherlock.
You might as well start filling out the bankruptcy forms now....
 
Democrats face-plant on impeachment, then immediately pivot to a face-plant on counting their own caucus votes due to "coding problems". LOL. I would say when Biden told the coal miners to "learn to code" he was addressing the wrong audience...
 
Democrats face-plant on impeachment,
I wouldn't say they face-planted on impeachment. Putting a positive spin on their doomed effort to remove the president requires some nuance and finesse, though. They were doing alright, but this caucus business kind of blows all that nuance and finesse out of the water.

then immediately pivot to a face-plant on counting their own caucus votes due to "coding problems". LOL. I would say when Biden told the coal miners to "learn to code" he was addressing the wrong audience...
This, on the other hand, is great. I can't get enough of "learn to code" jokes at the expense of progressives.
 

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