App that derailed Iowa caucuses created by tech firm run by Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign staffers
The mobile app that caused the collapse of the Iowa caucuses was reportedly created by a tech firm run by alums of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
According to campaign finance records, the Iowa Democratic Party shelled out at least $60,000 for the app. And while the app was meant to “ensure accuracy in a complex reporting process,” it resulted in unprecedented reporting delays following Monday's caucuses, delaying the final results until late Tuesday afternoon.
Shadow Inc. was co-founded by ex-Clinton staffers Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis in 2019 with backing from nonprofit ACRONYM, a statement from the nonprofit indicated, the Boston Herald reports. “We are campaign and technology veterans who have built and implemented technology at Hillary for America, Obama for America, Google, Kiva, Apple, the AFL-CIO, and the DNC,” the group’s website says. “Our passion is to create a permanent advantage for progressive campaigns and causes through technology.”
During the Iowa debacle, ACRONYM founder and CEO Tara McGowan tweeted that Shadow is “an independent company ACRONYM invested in. We don’t have any information beyond the public statements the IDP has put out + like all of you, eagerly await learning what happened and who won the IA caucus.”
In a podcast published last week on ACRONYM's website, McGowan revealed that ACRONYM was Shadow's "sole investor" and that it was led by Niemira.
A coding error in the app prevented precinct chairs across the state from transmitting the results to the state party, according to Troy Price, chair of the Iowa Democrats. This meant local leaders from over 1,600 caucus sites were forced to phone in their results, thereby clogging up phone lines and causing a delay in releasing the raw vote and delegate tabulations.
Niemira wrote in a January 2019 blogpost that Shadow Inc. would “aim to give campaigns, state parties, advocacy groups, PACs and others a way to manage all of this data in one place in a way that users of all levels can act like experts.” The blog post has since been deleted.
Niemira was also quoted in an April 2019 story about the Democratic National Committee’s crumbling data operations, saying he inherited a “s***show” from the DNC while working for the Clinton campaign in 2016. According to the Wired article, the DNC spent $5 million to build a more stable data platform that wouldn’t require its own servers.
In the same story, Niemira said he believed "it’s critical for Democrats to build tools that the average field staffer can access easily.”
“In order to be successful in 2020 and beyond, we have to figure out a way to get low-skill users to be able to pull this data around the ecosystem,” he wrote.
Yesterday, it emerged that former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign had paid Shadow Inc. $42,500 for “software rights and subscriptions” while former Vice President Joe Biden paid the group $1,225 for “text messaging.”
The figures -- quoted from campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission -- also saw New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand shell out $35,000 to the company for technology services for her short-lived presidential campaign. And last year, Shadow Inc. received $58,000 from the Nevada Democratic Party for similar services.
“We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of (the) Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers," Niemira said in a statement released on Tuesday on Shadow Inc.’s website.
“We will apply the lessons learned in the future,” he added, “and have already corrected the underlying technology issue. We take these issues very seriously, and are committed to improving and evolving to support the Democratic Party’s goal of modernizing its election processes."