App Used to Tabulate Votes Is Said to Have Been Inadequately Tested

[Kablooie]

Source: NY times

The app was quickly put together in the past two months and was not properly tested at a statewide scale, according to people briefed on the matter.
.....
The app used by the Iowa Democratic Party was built by Shadow Inc., a for-profit technology company that is also used by the Nevada Democratic Party, the next state to hold a caucus, as well as by multiple presidential campaigns. Shadow’s involvement was kept a secret by Democratic officials through the caucuses.
......
Matt Blaze, a professor of computer science and law at Georgetown, said that introducing apps in the midst of an election posed many problems. Any type of app or program that relies on using a cellphone network to deliver results is vulnerable to problems both on the app and on the phones being used to run it, he said.
......
Any technology, he said, should be tested and retested by the broader cybersecurity community before being publicly introduced, to test for anything ranging from a small bug to a major vulnerability.
“I think the most important rule of thumb in introducing technology into voting is be extremely conservative,” he said.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/us/politics/iowa-caucus-app.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

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Good god! The app was cobbled together in the last two months by a Company connected to the DNC.
There no way you can program a solid secure app in two months.
The DNC is playing Keystone Kops again in this election.
When will we get some responsible people running things for us?

https://shadowinc.io/about

[LittleGirl]

1. Wtf?

We worked for years to get apps working properly!

[Kablooie]

2. Developed in 2 months and released 2 days ago to over a thousand Iowans.

And they expected it to work and said it was secure.

It’s as if the whole thing was secretly managed by Republicans on purpose.

[LittleGirl]

4. It's offensive

To those that worked for years in IT!
What were they thinking?
Rhetorical question.
I’m just so upset. Ugh

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

3. They could have created a group on DU to report precinct results.

Tested, secure, economical, safe from Russian bots.

Oh, wait ... Russian bots. Hmm.

[Jokerman]

5. We seem to have lost the ability to hold fair, competent elections.

I'm not bashing Iowa or the democrats, this has been a growing mess since at least 2000.

[JudyM]

10. Party leadership should have had this as a main priority ever since Gore/FL. And then the Ohio

blackout-and-flip for shrub...

Priorities matter. Fair and secure election infrastructure/process.

The system has been demonstrably broken. Hello??!

[lagomorph777]

13. We seem to have lost all trace of common sense.

As you say, this became obvious in 2000, and way worse after HAVA. Are we completely incapable of learning that tech and elections do not mix?

PAPER PLEASE!

[rockfordfile]

6. No kidding.

[hadEnuf]

7. Maybe, maybe not. This whole debacle doesn't pass the smell test. It has a Trump stink all over it.

At least we may know how Trump and the corrupt GOP plan to steal the election. The first seeds were planted today.

[angrychair]

8. This is insane

Democrats have been screaming about election integrity for years now and the DNC undermines the very first caucus out of the gates by introducing a shit app, slap together on the fly and put on people's phones not more than a day before the election.

Whomever is in charge at the Iowa state Democratic party needs to resign as soon as this mess is cleared up.

[haydukelives]

18. I heard

the DNC made Iowa use the stupid app, developed by Hillary supporters

[IronLionZion]

9. Our party has learned nothing from the ACA rollout

not a good look. I feel that enough of our people should know better about new software rollouts by now to stop repeating these mistakes.

GOP is already claiming Democrats can't be trusted with this sort of thing.

[lagomorph777]

14. Not to mention the HAVA rollout!

PAPER PLEASE!

[lagomorph777]

11. With all the chaos brought on by e-voting (hack-enabling) systems, WTAF?

Why are Dems playing around with all this tech garbage? Are we actually trying to help Putin hack the election?

PAPER, GODDAMMIT!

[Politicub]

12. They would have been better off using Google docs

Just type in the numbers.

Or, they could go really futuristic and use this 30 year old spreadsheet application Excel.

Still another option would be a Numbers sheet in IOS... so modern and mobile.

[Old Terp]

15. A couple of questions:

When were the specs developed and provided to the app developer?
Did the candidates sign off on the specs?
When did any candidate requesting changes to the system provided their final proposals and agreement for the data to be tabulated and the methodology for tabulation.
If you keep changing the rules, you probably won't get the change you want. If you don't test the changes, you don't know what you are going to get.

[Kablooie]

17. It seems the app was developed in the last 2 months and released a few days ago for the first time.

So I would assume no candidates were part of the decision.

I've done some programming and 2 months might be enough so get an alpha demo of a simple app but it certainly wouldn't be enough to fully debug it and make it secure. That would take many months of testing, debugging and having it scoured for security leaks.

You also have to have a solid enterprise level network to send the data over. I'd doubt that all the rural communities have this level of connectivity.

And they released it a couple of days ago to 1,400 Iowans. I'd bet a large percentage are older rural folks who are not adept at new digital devices.

This would be completely predictable by anyone knowledgeable with developing computer apps.
These people were absolute idiots choosing this route at this time.

[honest.abe]

16. Also, why did it have to be a phone app??

A web based system would have been much simpler and more secure and more reliable. All they would need would be a laptop and internet connectivity. I would think all the caucus sites would have that.

[mahina]

19. This just in!

There is no need for a damn app at all