<story><title>Democrats Declined DHS Offer to Test Caucus App</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-04/iowa-democrats-say-results-to-be-released-today-campaign-update</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pessimizer</author><text>The app&amp;#x27;s entire purpose is to allow 1700 people to type in 21 numbers, and to send those numbers to a database. I don&amp;#x27;t know how that&amp;#x27;s more than a week&amp;#x27;s work, with another month or two added to design the walkthrough.</text></item><item><author>riazrizvi</author><text>Incompetent is a bit harsh. I think you need to be quite good to hit a home run with a new app&amp;#x2F;system that will be rolled out at an event to lots of users.</text></item><item><author>pessimizer</author><text>My bet is that the contractors were incompetents who were hired based on political connections, and they both 1) just finished the app within the past week, and 2) never tested it after it was officially finalized. By bet is that they tested it weeks ago, it failed, they blamed the failure on a few bugs, they eventually marked those specific bugs fixed, then just prayed after shipping it. I know I&amp;#x27;m being too specific, but &lt;i&gt;past trauma&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Major sign: Not only wasn&amp;#x27;t there a dry run before d-day, but they didn&amp;#x27;t even train the people expected to use the app on the app.&lt;p&gt;The corruption is traditional corrupt procurement (apparently connected to Buttigieg and the Clinton complex) rather than an attempt to fix the primary. Primary fixing will be done out in the open with sudden rule changes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>riazrizvi</author><text>From a technical perspective where only informed and good actors are involved, I suspect many of us could code up a working website in less than an hour. But if you look at the issues reported on at the Des Moines Register [1] it seems the job was about creating a reporting system in an environment where people are actively trying to disrupt the system, possibly some of the reporters themselves cannot be trusted. I think you&amp;#x27;d need to sit through a few meetings with the right people before you&amp;#x27;d even understand what was required. You&amp;#x27;ve got to find tech&amp;#x2F;security people from previous campaigns to understand what the dirty tricks are that people use to f with the results for example.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.desmoinesregister.com&amp;#x2F;story&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;elections&amp;#x2F;presidential&amp;#x2F;caucus&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;election-2020-iowa-caucus-problems&amp;#x2F;4618371002&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.desmoinesregister.com&amp;#x2F;story&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;elections&amp;#x2F;presi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Democrats Declined DHS Offer to Test Caucus App</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-04/iowa-democrats-say-results-to-be-released-today-campaign-update</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pessimizer</author><text>The app&amp;#x27;s entire purpose is to allow 1700 people to type in 21 numbers, and to send those numbers to a database. I don&amp;#x27;t know how that&amp;#x27;s more than a week&amp;#x27;s work, with another month or two added to design the walkthrough.</text></item><item><author>riazrizvi</author><text>Incompetent is a bit harsh. I think you need to be quite good to hit a home run with a new app&amp;#x2F;system that will be rolled out at an event to lots of users.</text></item><item><author>pessimizer</author><text>My bet is that the contractors were incompetents who were hired based on political connections, and they both 1) just finished the app within the past week, and 2) never tested it after it was officially finalized. By bet is that they tested it weeks ago, it failed, they blamed the failure on a few bugs, they eventually marked those specific bugs fixed, then just prayed after shipping it. I know I&amp;#x27;m being too specific, but &lt;i&gt;past trauma&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Major sign: Not only wasn&amp;#x27;t there a dry run before d-day, but they didn&amp;#x27;t even train the people expected to use the app on the app.&lt;p&gt;The corruption is traditional corrupt procurement (apparently connected to Buttigieg and the Clinton complex) rather than an attempt to fix the primary. Primary fixing will be done out in the open with sudden rule changes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jbattle</author><text>A similar intuition may have led this team to skip spending the last few months on rollout &amp;#x2F; training &amp;#x2F; testing</text></comment>