EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 2099
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farvacola
United States18845 Posts
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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ChristianS
United States3278 Posts
On February 08 2020 19:00 GreenHorizons wrote: There isn't going to be an investigation unless you have some information I haven't seen? We don't have international observers typically (or ever for primaries) so they can't write one either. It is just going to be a completely botched election, with a sketchy grifter app, questionable counting/reporting, and so error riddled the AP won't call it. No, I haven’t heard anything you haven’t, and as I said, if they don’t do one, I think it’s yet another massive mistake in a long run of massive mistakes this primary. Maybe the biggest yet. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23588 Posts
On February 09 2020 01:18 ChristianS wrote: No, I haven’t heard anything you haven’t, and as I said, if they don’t do one, I think it’s yet another massive mistake in a long run of massive mistakes this primary. Maybe the biggest yet. You would agree that while the long string of incompetence may not be maliciously guided, there is a deliberate effort to keep those incompetent people in positions of power, influence, and profit (rather succinctly encapsulated in the massive failures around the app, companies, and relationships between involved parties) particularly within the Democratic party? ACRONYM and Shadow inc.'s (and their investors/donors/employees) involvement in the party and Democratic party politics doesn't end at Iowa and Nevada. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26225 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23588 Posts
On February 09 2020 01:40 Wombat_NI wrote: That the company is called Shadow is the kind of thing you would change in a political drama for being too silly And "ACRONYM" one you use to fill in the script until you come up with something clever and comparably nefarious sounding EDIT: The weird part is if someone had been on a trip to mars the last 6 months and you just explained what we already know about the situation and the result they would laugh at you for being ridiculous and be waiting for you to tell them what really happened. But as it seems, we're just rolling into the next week. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On February 09 2020 01:42 GreenHorizons wrote: And "ACRONYM" one you use to fill in the script until you come up with something clever and comparably nefarious sounding EDIT: The weird part is if someone had been on a trip to mars the last 6 months and you just explained what we already know about the situation and the result they would laugh at you for being ridiculous and be waiting for you to tell them what really happened. But as it seems, we're just rolling into the next week. If I encountered time-travelling me half a decade ago and he told me that the President would frequently use social media to interact with the populace and there’d be a Space Force that rips off the Star Trek logo I’d have told him ‘wow the future sounds cool man’. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3278 Posts
On February 09 2020 01:26 GreenHorizons wrote: You would agree that while the long string of incompetence may not be maliciously guided, there is a deliberate effort to keep those incompetent people in positions of power, influence, and profit (rather succinctly encapsulated in the massive failures around the app, companies, and relationships between involved parties) particularly within the Democratic party? ACRONYM and Shadow inc.'s (and their investors/donors/employees) involvement in the party and Democratic party politics doesn't end at Iowa and Nevada. I mean, incompetent people usually go out of their way to keep their jobs. But also without an investigation, it’s pretty easy to wind up firing the wrong people. In a lot of cases of massive organizational failure like this, most people were just doing what they thought their job was, and either some large portion of the organization stopped doing an important part of their job, or they hadn’t established protocols for some specific unanticipated scenario. A lot of times a bunch of people still get fired, but that’s usually as a PR move, not an attempt to fix the problem or avoid it in the future. And I don’t think they need to make a PR move, I think they need corrective and preventive action. From what I’ve read so far, the starting point for all this was catastrophic failure in both their main system and backup system for reporting precinct results. It’s understandable they didn’t expect that, especially when the backup system was the same system that they’d used for years without incident. After that it seems like people started improvising. Apparently a lot of results got reported by snail mail? Then at whatever HQ was handling all this they were starved for results on election night, then suddenly inundated with a ton of results, all coming in weird formats they weren’t expecting, all while there was probably immense pressure from up top to report results as soon as possible. So they presumably started hurrying to enter the results that got faxed or e-mailed or snail mailed or whatever into something like big excel sheets, hopefully run at least a couple sanity checks on the data (but probably not even that), and upload them quick so they could move onto the next results. A lot of the errors probably got introduced in this data entry stage, but to make matters worse, it sounds like a lot of them were already there in the original reported data. The caucus rulebook sounds like it was enormously complex; Nate Cohn at NYT was complaining some about the satellite caucus rules, which he and his team read in detail in designing their model, but which the IDP then interpreted some other way which Nate thinks probably violates the rulebook (If it matters to anyone here, the result of that alternate interpretation was something like +4 SDE to Sanders, iirc). What seems most likely to me, then, is that the caucuses wound up in a situation that I think happens a lot in D&D groups, where each group reads the same rulebook but winds up applying it in slightly different ways, occasionally because the rules were unclear but usually because the people applying those rules are not lawyers, so they do their best to interpret but still have to make a lot of house rules to get through it. Apparently some precincts didn’t even report the first alignment numbers, maybe because they were used to the old caucus rules and didn’t understand all the changes. Other precincts reported final alignment numbers that weren’t possible from the first alignment numbers, suggesting the viability rules were incorrectly applied. None of that was HQ’s fault, but it did put them in the unfortunate position of having faulty numbers, and needing to report those numbers, and having no way to throw those faulty numbers back to the precincts and tell them to fix their work. Which meant even if they did apply basic sanity checks to their numbers before uploading them, if those sanity checks failed they didn’t know if the error was on their end or if it came from the original results. And with constant pressure to report as soon as possible, I’d guess they probably just hit submit, and maybe thought “well I’m not even gonna bother with the sanity checks next time, what’s the point?” There’s plenty more to say even from what we know already, but public interest in this problem is moving on, mine included. I don’t expect most people will read my wall of text anyway. But I think everyone’s bored of reporting routes and rounding rules and validation checks and state delegate equivalents. And we already have the answer everyone wants out of Iowa, “how do the candidates do in a real electoral contest?” Pete and Sanders did well, Warren did meh, Biden did very bad, Klobuchar did better than expected, everyone else was irrelevant. Eventually only nerds who actually care about stuff like SDEs and validation rules, etc. will still be following news about what happened in Iowa. The DNC should pay some of those nerds to get to the bottom of it, ideally right away while people’s memories are fresh and contact info is still good. | ||
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Zaros
United Kingdom3692 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23588 Posts
EDIT: The position of: There’s plenty more to say even from what we know already, but public interest in this problem is moving on, mine included. is what I was pointing out is problematic btw. | ||
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semantics
10040 Posts
On February 08 2020 23:22 farvacola wrote: Done in a public matter with a federal government job none the less. If it wasn't so depressing the state of the white house Vindman should be happy about his plasuable multi-million dollar lawsuit.Outside of the federal executive context, Vindman's discipline/firing is textbook illegal employer retaliation. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23588 Posts
Nevada Democrats are planning to use a new caucus tool that will be preloaded onto iPads and distributed to precinct chairs to help facilitate the Caucus Day process, according to multiple volunteers and a video recording of a volunteer training session on Saturday. The new tool will help precinct chairs fold in the results from people in their precinct who chose to caucus early with the preferences of in-person attendees on Caucus Day by calculating the viability threshold and carrying out the two alignments in the caucus process, according to the volunteers and the video recording. Details about the tool come two days after Nevada Democrats said that they would not use any apps for their Feb. 22 caucus after a coding error in a similar program used by Iowa Democrats delayed the release of results from that state’s nominating contest earlier this week. In the video, a party staffer tells volunteers that the new mechanism “is not an app” but should be thought of as “a tool.” “What we’ve done after Iowa is consult with a group of tech and security folks who are helping us through this process and making sure that we’re doing this in a way that is simple and efficient and secure for all of you so that we’re giving you the best tools we can possible on Caucus Day,” the staffer said. The new tool will “flow your precinct early vote data, so that you can have the information for your precinct caucus, so that when you do your viability calculations, you’re able to get the number of people who voted early and then when you see the results of your first alignment, you’re able to key in that early vote information so that you have every piece of information you need to run your precinct caucus.” Asked by a volunteer whether results would be transmitted from one place to another, the staffer demurred. “Those are all excellent questions, and we’re still working out some of the details around those so I’ll make sure that everyone has more information as we’re able to share it,” she said. thenevadaindependent.com They are totally botching Nevada while people lose interest and move on from Iowa's debacle. Seth Morrison, who will be the site lead at Legacy High School on Caucus Day, said he “debated long and hard” whether to express his concerns about the caucus process. “For me, I volunteered to do this because I’m a loyal Democrat, and there’s nothing more I want to do than defeat Donald Trump,” Morrison said. “But if we allow this to go down and it’s another Iowa, what does this do for my party?” Morrison said that there was “not a bit of proof” at the training that Nevada wouldn’t be another Iowa. Just to be clear, I don't care if Bernie wins by 10 points in Nevada, I can't trust their results or the media to report them responsibly at this point. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23588 Posts
On February 09 2020 12:07 JimmiC wrote: TLDR - Volunteers have concerns about using technology because of Iowa. Staffer was cautious to give out too much and they are working with Tech security people to make sure it works. For those not following along, that is exactly what happened/was said before Iowa. “We knew the app was a problem last Thursday,” "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." EDIT: Granted Iowa didn't think people were stupid enough to not know what an app is. | ||
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Belisarius
Australia6233 Posts
Democracy in action. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23588 Posts
On February 09 2020 12:36 Belisarius wrote: "it's not a vote counting app, it's just a thing that runs on my ipad that counts votes" Democracy in action. When it is this easy to get away with being grossly "incompetent" on your best day, it begs the question, why try not to be? | ||
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Belisarius
Australia6233 Posts
That gives me zero confidence they know what they're doing, and if Iowa proves anything it's that you shouldn't try this if you don't know what you're doing. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23588 Posts
On February 09 2020 13:28 Belisarius wrote: The issues with electronic counting are not fundamentally different in the wake of Iowa, but it's absolutely laughable to deflect concern by pretending your thing is not an app. That gives me zero confidence they know what they're doing, and if Iowa proves anything it's that you shouldn't try this if you don't know what you're doing. literally no reason they can't just use paper and avoid all this, but instead they're still sorting out the basic functionality of a mystery | ||
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