By: Annika Singh, Nandini Krishnan
Nine months before the US election, Democrats in Iowa gather in different precincts across the state for the Iowa caucuses. A lot of Iowa’s importance comes from being the first real electoral test and the disproportionate media attention, even though it doesn’t have too big a role to play in terms of the number of delegates awarded in the Democratic primary. It is nonetheless important because campaigns use Iowa to determine their game plan until the Democratic primary nomination. This year, the Iowa caucus was held on February 3rd - and the Democratic Party in Iowa decided to use a smartphone app so that precinct leaders could submit their precinct’s results electronically. As a Plan B, caucus headquarters had phone lines so that precinct leaders could call in to record the figures. But a lack of training for caucus leaders, not enough testing for the app, and changes in the system led to a collapse in the smartphone app, and overloaded phone lines. What would usually take a couple of hours to calculate dragged on for a couple of days, and added confusion over who ‘won’ the Iowa Caucuses. While the data may not have been accurately recorded, the winner was determined: Pete Buttigieg won the Iowa Caucuses. This result has been disputed by Bernie Sanders, who was an extremely close second.
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