Trump Won the Iowa Democratic Primary

The Iowa caucus is…to use a military term, FUBAR. The optics are terrible. The company that made the software that failed is called Shadow. The Pete Buttigieg campaign has some ties to it. However, there are more links to centrist political action committees. It is part of the effort to build infrastructure. However, the optics are bad.

From filings with the Federal Elections Commission, Democratic presidential candidates using Shadow include Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Vice President Joe Biden, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (who dropped out last fall). The Texas Democratic Party is also a customer, as is Super PAC For Our Future, which plans to spend $90 million targeting swing states for Democratic candidates.

In the hours and days to come, we will certainly see forensic efforts to understand just what went wrong, and what role Shadow played. But in the initial aftermath, the Democratic Party’s efforts to demonstrate its digital house is in order seem the first big casualty of Monday’s voting misfire

Nevada is also using the same app. The campaigns are also using this app. And the app is showing some issues. In fact, it was developed to help political teams build on what they have, including secure peer to peer communications.

Of course, at this point, the app may go in life support, since it’s at the heart of the mess. Given that Nevada already said they will not use it, the process of ditching it has begun.