7 ms·

Quick observation: the vast majority of Democrats with the social connections to feel confident starting this kind of company will be affiliated with candidates

by Donald 7y ago

Quick observation: the vast majority of Democrats with the social connections to feel confident starting this kind of company will be affiliated with candidates who have won previous elections. This centralization is by design: the winner of presidential primary effectively becomes "head of party" and installs their own leadership at the national committee level.

smacktoward 7y ago
This is true, but it's also part of what's broken in the poli-tech space -- if you're starting a business there, the connections you have matter much more than your experience and/or competence in application design, UX, operations, etc. You don't get customers by building a better product, you get customers by lining up influential people behind you. So the software products that serve this space tend in general to be pretty underwhelming. This can be classified as a mutated variation of Enterprise Software Syndrome, the disease that makes enterprise software suck so badly.
- basch 7y ago
  I dont think "hiring someone who knows the social landscape" for your sales/networking position is a flaw. You really just need to plan for this if you want to start that type of company. A company needs more than just product builders.
- sky_rw 7y ago
  This is true for all business. People don't buy the objectively best product, they buy the product from the people they know best. Until you are capable of changing human nature and purchasing behavior challenging this phenomenon will be an uphill battle.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    I would say: they buy the product they trust the most to fulfill their needs (as they see them). Barring actual corruption, oftentimes ability to eventually get it done is more important to the buyer than features.
- TheKarateKid 7y ago
  It’s not just poli-tech - this is how everything connected to politics is run. It’s all about who you know.
- caseysoftware 7y ago
  That's not business, that's humanity. We work with, spend time with, and collaborate with people we trust. That trust usually comes from repeated, direct, human interaction or as a referral from someone who has that long-built trust. That applies to the vendors we choose, the babysitters we hire, and the doctors we visit. Asking someone to choose someone they don't trust is inherently risky, even if it works out.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Yup. This is no different than a bunch of blue collar tradesmen trading references. There's higher dollar amounts involved and it's a different industry but it's the same behavior.
- ploxolo 7y ago
  Broken is just your judgement. I would rather say that quite objectively, it's just the way the world works, one can play with it or try to change it, but better be sure it's not just human nature.
tempsy 7y ago
Buying software services from an ideologically driven consulting firm is the mistake here. The DNC is supposed to be completely neutral in this situation, so to hire former Clinton tech people is a poor decision.
- GVIrish 7y ago
  The challenge there is that if you're hiring people who are a venn diagram of developer and politically active/connected, you're always going to be getting people who have some sort of history with candidates. Maybe it's just generally a hand grenade to hire any company that does political IT. Or maybe there's an opportunity for a truly neutral company to make inroads there.
  - tempsy 7y ago
    Why does the developer have to have any political tilt to it? You're paying a contract developer to develop an app that tallys numbers together...I would pick a shop that has experience with security over any political tilt.
    - eropple 7y ago
      > Why does the developer have to have any political tilt to it? Because they tend to be motivated, they (are assumed to) have congruent motives, and they tend to understand the landscape. They also tend to be cheaper, relatively speaking. (These developers also tend to mostly work on campaign, rather than electoral, infrastructure, which makes them a poor fit here. I don't consider it a defensible decision by the DNC, but it's very defensible for most candidates to want to hire people who want to see them elected.)
      - tempsy 7y ago
        It's an app that adds numbers together for a few thousand users. Maybe for more complex projects this might be true, but any moderately competent developer could have built this. I believe the Iowa DNC paid around ~$50K for this app. I have a hard time believing that isn't something any good dev shop would bid for given how simple the app is.
slg 7y ago
Another observation: caucuses arguably have only one single advantage over traditional voting and that is making it incredibly hard to commit voter fraud or any type of election stealing. The public nature of the voting and tallying means that there is large group of witnesses to the results. It would take pretty brazen and easily provable fraud for someone to report numbers that didn't match the results that everyone witnessed. That plus Hanlon's razor should be enough for us to require some type of evidence beyond circumstantial connections between political operatives before we accuse someone of nefarious behavior.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> This centralization is by design: the winner of presidential primary effectively becomes "head of party" and installs their own leadership at the national committee level. That's not really true; the winner of the general election becomes effective head of their party; a primary winner who loses the general generally has less (but significant) influence. Hillary Clinton has less control of the DNC after the 2016 election than before it (she had unusual influence before the election for a number of reasons); the reform eliminating first-ballot superdelegate voting rights was due to influence gained by the Sanders-aligned faction.
GoodJokes 7y ago
If only there was an independent entity to run elections, cough the federal government cough

by Donald 7y ago

smacktoward 7y ago

This is true, but it's also part of what's broken in the poli-tech space -- if you're starting a business there, the connections you have matter much more than your experience and/or competence in application design, UX, operations, etc. You don't get customers by building a better product, you get customers by lining up influential people behind you. So the software products that serve this space tend in general to be pretty underwhelming. This can be classified as a mutated variation of Enterprise Software Syndrome, the disease that makes enterprise software suck so badly.

basch 7y ago
I dont think "hiring someone who knows the social landscape" for your sales/networking position is a flaw. You really just need to plan for this if you want to start that type of company. A company needs more than just product builders.
sky_rw 7y ago
This is true for all business. People don't buy the objectively best product, they buy the product from the people they know best. Until you are capable of changing human nature and purchasing behavior challenging this phenomenon will be an uphill battle.
- ethbro 7y ago
  I would say: they buy the product they trust the most to fulfill their needs (as they see them). Barring actual corruption, oftentimes ability to eventually get it done is more important to the buyer than features.
TheKarateKid 7y ago
It’s not just poli-tech - this is how everything connected to politics is run. It’s all about who you know.
caseysoftware 7y ago
That's not business, that's humanity. We work with, spend time with, and collaborate with people we trust. That trust usually comes from repeated, direct, human interaction or as a referral from someone who has that long-built trust. That applies to the vendors we choose, the babysitters we hire, and the doctors we visit. Asking someone to choose someone they don't trust is inherently risky, even if it works out.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Yup. This is no different than a bunch of blue collar tradesmen trading references. There's higher dollar amounts involved and it's a different industry but it's the same behavior.
ploxolo 7y ago
Broken is just your judgement. I would rather say that quite objectively, it's just the way the world works, one can play with it or try to change it, but better be sure it's not just human nature.

tempsy 7y ago

Buying software services from an ideologically driven consulting firm is the mistake here. The DNC is supposed to be completely neutral in this situation, so to hire former Clinton tech people is a poor decision.

GVIrish 7y ago
The challenge there is that if you're hiring people who are a venn diagram of developer and politically active/connected, you're always going to be getting people who have some sort of history with candidates. Maybe it's just generally a hand grenade to hire any company that does political IT. Or maybe there's an opportunity for a truly neutral company to make inroads there.
- tempsy 7y ago
  Why does the developer have to have any political tilt to it? You're paying a contract developer to develop an app that tallys numbers together...I would pick a shop that has experience with security over any political tilt.
  - eropple 7y ago
    > Why does the developer have to have any political tilt to it? Because they tend to be motivated, they (are assumed to) have congruent motives, and they tend to understand the landscape. They also tend to be cheaper, relatively speaking. (These developers also tend to mostly work on campaign, rather than electoral, infrastructure, which makes them a poor fit here. I don't consider it a defensible decision by the DNC, but it's very defensible for most candidates to want to hire people who want to see them elected.)
    - tempsy 7y ago
      It's an app that adds numbers together for a few thousand users. Maybe for more complex projects this might be true, but any moderately competent developer could have built this. I believe the Iowa DNC paid around ~$50K for this app. I have a hard time believing that isn't something any good dev shop would bid for given how simple the app is.

slg 7y ago

Another observation: caucuses arguably have only one single advantage over traditional voting and that is making it incredibly hard to commit voter fraud or any type of election stealing. The public nature of the voting and tallying means that there is large group of witnesses to the results. It would take pretty brazen and easily provable fraud for someone to report numbers that didn't match the results that everyone witnessed. That plus Hanlon's razor should be enough for us to require some type of evidence beyond circumstantial connections between political operatives before we accuse someone of nefarious behavior.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> This centralization is by design: the winner of presidential primary effectively becomes "head of party" and installs their own leadership at the national committee level. That's not really true; the winner of the general election becomes effective head of their party; a primary winner who loses the general generally has less (but significant) influence. Hillary Clinton has less control of the DNC after the 2016 election than before it (she had unusual influence before the election for a number of reasons); the reform eliminating first-ballot superdelegate voting rights was due to influence gained by the Sanders-aligned faction.

GoodJokes 7y ago

If only there was an independent entity to run elections, cough the federal government cough