Local Iowans Disappointed Over Caucuses App Glitch

Over 100 Iowans from all over Southern California gathered at the Palm Springs Library on Monday night, one of only two places in the state for them to participate in the long awaited Iowa caucuses.

Jim and Karen Rathje, who live part time in La Quinta, were excited to participate.

On Tuesday morning their excitement turned to disappointment after hearing results would be delayed because of a glitch with the app used to report the data. 

“It tends to devalue the nature of our caucus again because our results weren’t in immediately but it makes it appear what’s the matter in iowa why don’t we have them,” said Jim. 

There are reports there were problems during the testing of the app, still the phone banks to do a manual count weren’t fully staffed.

“Inadequate knowing that there was a potential problem here they should have stepped it up, they should have had more staffing, maybe prepared for the paper results period as opposed to using the phone app … there’s some real questions on the democratic party in relying on this technology excessively,” says Jim.

“They shouldn’t have counted on that,” says Karen

Scott Kirkpatrick, the Palm Springs satellite Iowa caucus chair, says the app worked great on his end but discrepancies in the count were caught thanks to a paper back up that’s new to the process, “We took a picture of it and it was also sent to the IDP that was a lifesaver for them because that’s how they realized … that it was differing from the sheets that we took pictures of and sent in to them.”

They hope the delay doesn’t create mistrust in a system sacred to our democracy and hope the lessons learned are applied before the presidential election.

“They’ve got to get it right, we can’t have another blow up like we had in the last election, we’ve got to get it right before November 2020,” says Karen.