By FABIAN CHITAY
Staff Writer
Iowa’s Democratic caucuses ran into many issues yesterday, causing a delay in the reporting of the outcome. The delays were a result of unprepared caucus chairs and technical difficulties with the app used to record data and report results.
The app was built by Shadow Inc., a tech firm that had partnered with the Democratic nonprofit company Acronym. During the caucuses, local representatives were having a difficult time using the app and claimed that it was only reporting partial data. They switched to manual data entry, which took longer than expected.
Many of the candidates had close supporter counts, so many of the ties were determined by a coin flip.
Pete Buttigieg announced his victory on Twitter, claiming that their own data suggested that he had won in the Iowa caucuses. Many felt that this was suspicious when taking into account Buttigieg’s ties with Acronym and donations made to them. In addition to this, the Iowa communications director for his campaign, Ben Halle, posted a caucus math worksheet on Twitter that contained an access PIN to the app, which could possibly open up the results to interference.