Election tech was supposed to clean up the Iowa caucus instead, it may have killed it

The morning after the Iowa caucus, the political world is a frazzled mess. The results of the caucus have been indefinitely delayed, thanks to a series of cascading technical failures. Analysts are already predicting that the fiasco will cost Iowa its privileged place as the first state to hold its primary. It’s a major public failing of the state’s election infrastructure, with basic technical errors compounding into a system-wide fiasco. And for anyone nervous about how US election infrastructure will hold up in 2020, it’s a terrifying preview of what’s to come.

So far, much of the attention has focused on the app that Iowa Democrats were using to report their results. According to a statement by the Iowa Democratic Party on Tuesday...

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