Iowa caucuses Shadow app CEO says bug had 'catastrophic impact'
The app delayed the Iowa caucus results, which are still being calculated, by more than a day
The CEO of the app that delayed the Iowa caucus results, which are still being calculated, by more than a day and sparked national outrage admitted Thursday the technology had a "catastrophic impact."
Shadow CEO Gerard Niemira, however, defended the app whose aim is to smooth out the way voter data is transmitted to election officials.
"I’m really disappointed that some of our technology created an issue that made the caucus difficult," Niemira, 37, told Bloomberg News in his first interview since his app made national news. "We feel really terrible about that."
People wait for results at a caucus-night campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday, Feb. 3, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/John Locher)
He explained that the Shadow app, which was contracted by the Iowa Democratic Party ahead of the caucuses, precisely performed its job to quickly compile voter results, but a bug in its code that has since been fixed delayed the process of transmitting votes from volunteers to the Iowa Democratic Party.
"The app was sound and good," Niemira told Bloomberg. "All the data that was produced by calculations performed by the app was correct. It did the job it was supposed to do, which is help precinct chairs in the field do the math correctly. The problem was caused by a bug in the code that transmits results data into the state party’s data warehouse."
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That coding error that led to the transmission errors "had catastrophic impact" on the caucus results, he added.
On top of the coding error, some people were having trouble signing into the app if they had not logged in prior to caucus day, Bloomberg reported.
The Iowa Democratic Party also declined to allow officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to vet the app intended to tally votes. Party officials said they expect results to be released Tuesday afternoon, though precinct results are still being reported.
Caucus-goers check in at a caucus at Roosevelt High School, Monday, Feb. 3, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, told FOX News on Tuesday that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was established in 2018, offered to test the app from a "hacking perspective," but Shadow declined the opportunity.
"They declined, and so we’re seeing a couple of issues with it. Right now, I’d say we don’t see any malicious cyber activity going on," Wolf said. "Nobody hacked into it. What I would say is given the amount of scrutiny that we have on election security these days: This is a security event and goes to the public confidence of our elections."
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Niemira and other Shadow executives were initially silent when the error was reported Wednesday morning as some speculated on conspiracy theories over how such an error could happen amid U.S. voters' concerns of election interference.
Some speculated that 2020 Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg's campaign team had something to do with the app error since it donated $42,500 to Shadow for software and because he currently holds the most votes the over fellow candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Caucus-goers check in at a caucus at Roosevelt High School, Monday, Feb. 3, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
"We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night's Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers," a statement posted to Shadow's website on Wednesday reads.
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"As the Iowa Democratic Party has confirmed, the underlying data and collection process via Shadow's mobile caucus app was sound and accurate, but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the IDP was not. Importantly, this issue did not affect the underlying caucus results data. We worked as quickly as possible overnight to resolve this issue, and the IDP has worked diligently to verify results," the statement continued.
Niemira also admitted the app should have gone through more testing before the caucuses.
"Yes, it was anticipate-able. Yes, we put in measures to test it. Yes, it still failed. And we own that," he told Bloomberg.