You're Allowed To Think This Is All Bullshit
A pre/post-mortem of Iowa, and American democracy.
(Photo via Wikimedia Commons.)
With about 24 hours removed from polls closing in Iowa, here is an objective summary of what we know about the results.
Two days before the caucus, the Pete Buttigieg campaign had the Des Moines Register poll — the gold standard of Iowa poll accuracy, as I touched on last week — spiked due to procedural complaints.
Later, FiveThirtyEight reported the poll showed Buttigieg in third.
Only about 2 percent of results have been counted, as opposed to previous years, where upwards of 90 percent of vote totals were known by the end of caucus night.
This is because votes were tabulated this year using an app.
Before caucus night, the public did not know who made this app.
Nor did we know the name of the app, what its interface looked like, what security measures its creators took, or how the app works.
Later, HuffPost reported that the app was owned by a company named Shadow.
Shadow’s CEO, Tara McGowan, is married to one of Pete Buttigieg’s top advisers, Michael Halle.
McGowan herself is a fan of Buttigieg.
Ben Halle, brother of Michael and fellow employee of the Buttigieg campaign, tweeted out several pictures where the PIN for the app was clearly visible.
On Monday night, with about 2 percent of the results counted, Buttigieg declared himself the winner of Iowa, citing no evidence.
With the caveat that this is very much still a developing story — and incompetence is usually a more accurate explanation than malice — none of this is compatible with a healthy democracy. Whether or not our political elites are acting in good faith is irrelevant; in any other country, this would have been grounds for United Nations or CIA intervention. Evo Morales was ousted as president of Bolivia for less.
And yet, in the United States of America — the richest country in the world, mind you, as well as the birthplace of much of modern technology — elites have answered the righteous anger and earnest confusion over this catastrophic caucus by telling the rabble to pipe down. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post took the time to decry the spread of conspiracy theories on Monday night.
Disinformation is a barrier to a healthy society, and its proliferation should be named and shamed whenever possible. But when our institutions fail, people will naturally lose faith in them. In the absence of transparency, conspiracy thrives. And in an age of incredible wealth disparity, it’s hard not to see why people are predisposed to the notion that their lives are being controlled by an elite cabal.
So conspiracy theories are a problem, yes. But they are its symptom, and not the disease itself. What is far more damaging to a democracy is a lack of transparency from our elites.
The Iowa Democratic Party could’ve said, “we shouldn’t have used this sketchy app, and we’re sorry;” Monday’s events do not inspire confidence this party can flip the state back from Donald Trump or defeat incumbent Republican Sen. Joni Ernst in November. Silicon Valley didn’t need to butt its head in; instead, it created the electoral equivalent of the Juciero. Voting in the Iowa caucus is conducted in public, and with a paper trail; given the wealth of party organizers and journalists in the state, it seems someone should’ve figured out the results somehow by now. And Pete Buttigieg declaring himself the caucus winner is the stuff of tinpot dictatorship.
There’s an alternate theory some on the left have about what transpired in Iowa last night: that what happened was indeed a ploy by Democratic party elites — but to demoralize the party’s activist base, not steal an election. A downtrodden populace is easier to rule over, after all.
To that, I say: do not despair. We must demand better from the people who purport themselves to be our betters. There will always be more people who think what happened in Iowa was a travesty than people who made it happen. The latter group may want you to tune out; don’t let them. Political power only exists if you use it.