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Am I right in thinking the app is used by one person per precinct as well? I'm surprised they hadn't tested even at this scale, we're not talking hundreds of t

Am I right in thinking the app is used by one person per precinct as well? I'm surprised they hadn't tested even at this scale, we're not talking hundreds of thousands of events a second here, surely. It's hard to imagine how they could be under resourced and untested for a really predictable amount of simultaneous traffic.

pkilgore 7y ago
I mean, Snapchat could handle the scale of this without a sweat, but you tell 1600 retirees to download it and post a picture (with no training) and provide them a support telephone number, I suspect you'll end up with less than 100 pictures and more than a thousand phone calls.
- gbear605 7y ago
  The question is whether the problem is a question of misunderstood usage (by the users) or an inability for the backend to handle the load. If it was the former, that’s at least understandable, for the reasons you said, though they still should have practiced it. If it’s the latter, that’s pretty inexcusable, given that they knew precisely the amount of load and that it’s a fairly low amount. I’m pretty sure a naive implementation of any backend for this could handle the load (1600 precincts each reporting a picture over the course of an hour), unless there’s some requirement of this that I’m missing. Either way, this is a pretty good indictment of this entire idea. Stick with what worked for hundreds of years, don’t try “solutions” to non-problems.
  - gbrown 7y ago
    > Stick with what worked for hundreds of years, In Iowa specifically, I’d disagree - primaries are a more robust and inclusive system than caucuses.
- appleiigs 7y ago
  A simple CRUD website wouldn’t require downloading. Updates/fixes would happen at each refresh. Even seniors know how to use a website these days.
  - hadrien01 7y ago
    For results like that you could even use a simple Google Forms and verify the paper trail afterwards
  - inkeddeveloper 7y ago
    But a simple CRUD website wouldn't reasonably cost $60k and the company needed to justify to pricetag. Not saying there is a conspiracy but there is big money in politics and they wanted a piece of it.
sailfast 7y ago
The interface was the confusing part, not the responsiveness. Caucus precinct chiefs skew older, the app was not part of their training, and they waited until the last minute to download. This doesn’t really seem like something to pin on the app exclusively - it’s a change management failure on the part of the party, underlined by the fact that even their normal phone lines were overloaded due to new data reporting requirements. I wasn’t on the ground or anything (I’m a complete outsider who read the news) but this seems like a lot to pin on some app developers when the issues were spread pretty far. It’s damnably hard to train 1800 users spread across a state with varying levels of experience.
- couchand 7y ago
  > normal phone lines were overloaded due to new data reporting requirements. I suspect their phone lines were overloaded because they optimistically assumed the app would handle the majority of the reporting. When Plan A failed, there was a knock-on effect on Plan B, causing it to subsequently fail.
- inkeddeveloper 7y ago
  I blame the app developers for pitching such an idea in the first place.
  - sailfast 7y ago
    Yeah... after more news has come out it looks like this was quite buggy. Not to mention they had two months to build it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/us/politics/iowa-caucus-shadow-app.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/us/politics/iowa-caucus-s...
- sailfast 7y ago
  Correction: as more info comes in, it looks like there were also actual bugs in the software that were tallying things improperly. Change management is still hard but baseline stuff seemed to be a problem.
cm2187 7y ago
I am confused as of how this can even be a problem. If there are just reporting actual results, even the most mediocre website running on an old server would go through a few thousands submissions in milliseconds. Granted, I have seen elephants drowning in a teacup in corporate IT, but not to that extent.
redbeard0x0a 7y ago
We are talking ~1700 users for the app, maybe closer to 2000 if you factor in various other people watching the data for reporting. That doesn't matter, 1700 users posting updates to numbers isn't something that would be difficult to write and test properly.
CWuestefeld 7y ago
From the reports, it seems that they made a priority of secrecy - they intentionally prevented people from knowing about it ahead of time. Who knows why they felt that secrecy was so important - but this seems to be a touchstone of the governing class. Even in an election - what should be the most open event in our entire society - they're trying to be gatekeepers of information.

pkilgore 7y ago

I mean, Snapchat could handle the scale of this without a sweat, but you tell 1600 retirees to download it and post a picture (with no training) and provide them a support telephone number, I suspect you'll end up with less than 100 pictures and more than a thousand phone calls.

gbear605 7y ago
The question is whether the problem is a question of misunderstood usage (by the users) or an inability for the backend to handle the load. If it was the former, that’s at least understandable, for the reasons you said, though they still should have practiced it. If it’s the latter, that’s pretty inexcusable, given that they knew precisely the amount of load and that it’s a fairly low amount. I’m pretty sure a naive implementation of any backend for this could handle the load (1600 precincts each reporting a picture over the course of an hour), unless there’s some requirement of this that I’m missing. Either way, this is a pretty good indictment of this entire idea. Stick with what worked for hundreds of years, don’t try “solutions” to non-problems.
- gbrown 7y ago
  > Stick with what worked for hundreds of years, In Iowa specifically, I’d disagree - primaries are a more robust and inclusive system than caucuses.
appleiigs 7y ago
A simple CRUD website wouldn’t require downloading. Updates/fixes would happen at each refresh. Even seniors know how to use a website these days.
- hadrien01 7y ago
  For results like that you could even use a simple Google Forms and verify the paper trail afterwards
- inkeddeveloper 7y ago
  But a simple CRUD website wouldn't reasonably cost $60k and the company needed to justify to pricetag. Not saying there is a conspiracy but there is big money in politics and they wanted a piece of it.

sailfast 7y ago

The interface was the confusing part, not the responsiveness. Caucus precinct chiefs skew older, the app was not part of their training, and they waited until the last minute to download. This doesn’t really seem like something to pin on the app exclusively - it’s a change management failure on the part of the party, underlined by the fact that even their normal phone lines were overloaded due to new data reporting requirements. I wasn’t on the ground or anything (I’m a complete outsider who read the news) but this seems like a lot to pin on some app developers when the issues were spread pretty far. It’s damnably hard to train 1800 users spread across a state with varying levels of experience.

couchand 7y ago
> normal phone lines were overloaded due to new data reporting requirements. I suspect their phone lines were overloaded because they optimistically assumed the app would handle the majority of the reporting. When Plan A failed, there was a knock-on effect on Plan B, causing it to subsequently fail.
inkeddeveloper 7y ago
I blame the app developers for pitching such an idea in the first place.
- sailfast 7y ago
  Yeah... after more news has come out it looks like this was quite buggy. Not to mention they had two months to build it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/us/politics/iowa-caucus-shadow-app.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/us/politics/iowa-caucus-s...
sailfast 7y ago
Correction: as more info comes in, it looks like there were also actual bugs in the software that were tallying things improperly. Change management is still hard but baseline stuff seemed to be a problem.

cm2187 7y ago

I am confused as of how this can even be a problem. If there are just reporting actual results, even the most mediocre website running on an old server would go through a few thousands submissions in milliseconds. Granted, I have seen elephants drowning in a teacup in corporate IT, but not to that extent.

redbeard0x0a 7y ago

We are talking ~1700 users for the app, maybe closer to 2000 if you factor in various other people watching the data for reporting. That doesn't matter, 1700 users posting updates to numbers isn't something that would be difficult to write and test properly.

CWuestefeld 7y ago

From the reports, it seems that they made a priority of secrecy - they intentionally prevented people from knowing about it ahead of time. Who knows why they felt that secrecy was so important - but this seems to be a touchstone of the governing class. Even in an election - what should be the most open event in our entire society - they're trying to be gatekeepers of information.