Imperial Fruit: Bananas, Costs and Climate Change

The curved course of the ubiquitous banana has often been the peel…

The problems with a principled stand

In the past couple of weeks, the conservative parties have retained government…

Government approves Santos Barossa pipeline and sea dumping

The Australia Institute Media Release   Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Department has approved a…

If The Jackboots Actually Fit …

By Jane Salmon   If The Jackboots Actually Fit … Why Does Labor Keep…

Distinctions Without Difference: The Security Council on Gaza…

The UN Security Council presents one of the great contradictions of power…

How the supermarkets lost their way in Oz

By Callen Sorensen Karklis   Many Australians are heard saying that they’re feeling the…

Purgatorial Torments: Assange and the UK High Court

What is it about British justice that has a certain rankness to…

Why A Punch In The Face May Be…

Now I'm not one who believes in violence as a solution to…

«
»
Facebook

Muddling Democrats: Chaos in the Iowa Caucus

Whatever the claims by the Democratic pollsters on the ground, the party has all the work to do ahead of selecting a candidate to make a fist of it come November. Pity for them, then, that the opening in Iowa proved to be a spectacular shambles, notably for those obsessed with the live news cycle. The Iowa Democrats claimed that the delay in voting results across the 1765 precincts had arisen because of a “reporting issue”.  At this writing, the “results” page is barren, characterised by the glorious absence of results. The pollsters, rather than the voters, have taken the high ground.

The Iowan branch was doing its best to trumpet the value of the event, claiming that President Donald Trump was “terrified” at the prospects of losing “the Hawkeye State” come the elections. (To keep an eye on things, he had “sent near 100 of his buddies” to campaign on his behalf in the state.)  “So exciting to see high turnout – Iowa Democrats are fired up!” went one tweet. Another expressed pride that the caucus “has been more accessible this year than ever before.” 

One of the Democratic contenders for the nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, could not resist a touch of embellishment. “The whole world is looking at Iowa today. They are looking to see whether the people of Iowa are prepared to stand up and fight for justice.  Let’s win this together.” Rival contender Senator Elizabeth Warren, mindful of Trump’s state of the union speech on Tuesday, was taking things beyond the man in her address: “Our union is stronger than Donald Trump. And tonight, as a party, we are a step closer to defeating the most corrupt president in American history.”

As things slowly panned out, Warren seemed mistaken. Iowa Democratic Party spokeswoman Mandy McClure seems to put a dampener on everything by revealing in a statement that “inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results” had been identified. “In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate the results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report.” Mindful about the leap into conspiracy territory and accusations of foul play, she put it all down to a hiccup in reporting, rather than any malicious intrusion or hack. Suggestions that this had arisen because of a faulty app were dismissed, a view not shared by various county chairs.

Local party chairman Troy Price was hoping to give the whole show an air of fastidiousness; to be thorough was not to err. “We are validating every piece of data we have against our paper trail.” As he explained to reporters, “At this point, the [Iowa Democratic Party] is manually verifying all precinct results.  We expect to have numbers to report later today.” Former state party chair Gordon Fischer, sensing the storm of discredit enveloping the entire process, told CNN’s Gloria Borger that a delay “to make sure the results are accurate” could hardly be a bad thing.

None of this thrilled the candidates, whose personnel were getting stroppy.  Dana Remus, campaign general counsel for Joe Biden, demanded “full explanations and relevant information” in a letter sent to Price and IDP Executive Director Kevin Geiken.  No level of fastidiousness could hide the fact that a meltdown had taken place. “The app that was intended to relay Caucus results to the Party failed; the Party’s back-up telephone reporting system likewise failed. Now, we understand that Caucus Chairs are attempting to – and in many cases, failing to – report results telephonically to the Party. These acute failures are occurring statewide.”

The entire counting and reporting debacle invariably drew criticism about the very idea of having caucuses to begin with. President Barack Obama’s chief election strategist David Axelrod questioned their viability. Jim Geraghty of The National Review deemed them “a terrible way to pick a nominee. There is no secret ballot, so every nosy neighbour and busybody who prefers another candidate knows who you’re supporting.”

It was a day of non-concession speeches and not entirely convincing victory ones either. The Iowa caucus had not spoken with any clarity, but that did not prevent candidates from having a stab at the result. Senator Bernie Sanders suggested that he was ahead of former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, according to internal polling data, and doing “very, very well.” Buttigieg, in turn, spoke of marching victorious to New Hampshire, since “all indications” pointed in that direction. “Tonight, Iowa chose a new path,” he pronounced, though adding, for good measure, that it had “shocked the nation”.

This was all money for jam for the Republicans, who now have some material to work with. “It would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of the process,” chortled Trump campaign manager and social media specialist Brad Parscale. “And these are the people who want to run our entire health care system?”

Everyone seemed to think they had won something, though Biden preferred to remain more cautious, hoping to discredit any result that will not favour his case.  In truth, the eventual victor of Iowa will have little to go on by the time New Hampshire comes around. There will be no momentum to speak of, no electoral gush to push the victorious candidate on to the next round. But the one person counting himself lucky in this opening election shot will be the man giving the state of union address on Tuesday. “Big WIN for us in Iowa tonight. Thank you!”

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

2 comments

Login here Register here
  1. Pingback: Muddling Democrats: Chaos in the Iowa Caucus #newsoz.org #auspol - News Oz

  2. New England Cocky

    “Iowa Democratic Party spokeswoman Mandy McClure seems to put a dampener on everything by revealing in a statement that “inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results” had been identified. “In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate the results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report.” Mindful about the leap into conspiracy territory and accusations of foul play, she put it all down to a hiccup in reporting, rather than any malicious intrusion or hack. Suggestions that this had arisen because of a faulty app were dismissed, a view not shared by various county chairs.”

    Here is the best reason to keep the ponderous manual hand written Australian compulsory secret ballot voting system as little changed as possible. It works and is very difficult to corrupt inside the polling station.

    Inside an Australian polling station, the usual corruption is “loss” of completed valid ballot papers for one candidate mysteriously turning up “in error” in garbage bins. This is a traditional favourite strategy in New England elections used by the Nazianal$ paid “volunteer” booth workers.

    In Australia voting corruption occurs mainly outside the polling station with both sides of politics specialising in casting votes for the dead, husbands voting for absent wives, following the “vote early vote often” slogan by multiple voting at many booths having a wide geographic distribution and every other form of vote rigging.

    However, the use of computerised voting in the USA (United States of Apartheid) since it inception at the 2000 Shrubya Bush election has proven to be too easily corruptible, with scams such as computer vote changing, invalid votes going to “preferred candidates”, proportional “balancing” of vote numbers in favour of preferred candidates, and other corrupt practices programmed into the system.

    Other “democracies” are reported as having “paired voting boxes” that mysteriously give the desired outcome regardless of the people’s vote. This may have been caused by the polling station box somehow quite miraculously getting swapped for the required outcome box in the back of the transport taking the votes to a central counting location to give the voting outcome required to maintain the sitting government by a small, usually less than 10 percent, margin.

    Now stop thinking 2019 Australian Federal elections, you naughty imaginative people!!

    Enthusiasm for spectacular vote rigging has waned significantly from the days of Ferdinand Marcos in the Phillipines when outcomes of 90% plus were claimed and accepted by foreign governments providing finance to the corrupt local government.

    The core problem of computerised voting is the inability of securing the voting network between polling booths, meaning any entity having the necessary computing skills may access the network and cause the required voting outcome which may NOT be the same as the votes cast by Australian voters.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The maximum upload file size: 2 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop file here

Return to home page