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The owners and staffers at Shadow INC have a severe conflict of interest. The company is loaded with former Clinton staffers and the CEO sent a tweet in support

The owners and staffers at Shadow INC have a severe conflict of interest. The company is loaded with former Clinton staffers and the CEO sent a tweet in support of Buttigeig, who recently paid tens of thousands to the company. Other suspicious dealings are a premature victory announcement by Buttigeig's campaign and a leak of a picture of paper tallies which included a PIN allegedly used to login to the tally app. Looking for the tweet now... >https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/02/04/shadow-hillary-staffers-n2560675 https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/02/04/shado... Edit: I'm not necessarily trying to suggest anything, but I'd like to point out that this post went from +10 to +2 in a matter of minutes.

sl1ck731 7y ago
Should a company's employees/CEO have to be apolitical? I'd be surprised if there is such a company where none of its employees are involved in politics in any way. Especially if its a company whose sole purpose is developing software for a political party.
- jedberg 7y ago
  They don't have to be, but much like with insider trading rules, it's better to avoid even the appearance of a possible conflict.
- allovernow 7y ago
  No, but until recently it was professional to keep your politics private and, more importantly, when there are inconsistencies disproportionately favoring an otherwise less popular candidate, public support from employees and especially the CEO, in conjunction with a money trail, these personal indicators of bias become relevant for justification of suspicion.
  - jmull 7y ago
    How is this even helping Buttigieg? There doesn’t seem to be any indication this was anything but a regular screwup. Throwing around suggestions of a vague conspiracy looks unwarranted. You’re suggesting that to avoid suspicion companies providing services to political campaigns must be apolitical and to have never previously provided services to a candidate in the race or any previous opponent of a candidate in the race. How could that even be possible?
    - allovernow 7y ago
      No, I'm saying those in support of ostensibly neutral third parties should not be making tweets indicating strong bias for one of the parties they are charged with treating neutrally. Is it really so difficult to keep your public persona neutral and vanilla if you're a damn CEO? Wasn't this standard practice until recently? What, because Trump vomits on Twitter 24/7 everyone else needs to as well?
      - jmull 7y ago
        You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret? I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, so here’s your chance: any particular reason we shouldn’t dismiss you as not being serious?
        allovernow 7y ago
        >You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret? No, I think it's questionable when a CEO publicly discloses a strong political bias, receives private funds from the personally favored candidate, has cordial photos with the candidate at social events, and then is hired by the DNC and charged with being unbiased in a secret, electronically controlled ballot. There are tens of millions of dollars changing hands in the ramp up to the election. This is not a complex scheme involving millions of mouths to keep shut and olympic mental gymnastics to justify. A handful of politically leaning and/or paid off devs add a package to the code and you have whatever results you want. Ask yourself, do you really think corruption only exists outside of the United States? The bottom line is there are many discrepancies which happen to align toward a possibly calculated malicious intent. This feels like a "conspiracy theory" because there are so many tenuously linked components and no hard proof - but that's how any real life unfolding event looks until people have poured over it for months post facto and sorted through everything. In any case what I'm saying is that there's plenty of incompetence and bias here to at least be prudently suspicious.
- dv_dt 7y ago
  If you're in the vote counting business, it's a conflict of interest to also be in the vote making business for candidates.
  - asdff 7y ago
    Good thing they are in the tally business and not the counting business, then. What is the difference, you might ask? One failed last night while the other one is occurring right now.
    - dv_dt 7y ago
      I'm not really feeling the difference between counting and tallying, but even keeping that distinction, it still sounds to me like they're mostly not in the tally business for lack of performance. If they had performed, it would still be a conflict of interest, just one none of us would likely have heard about. I feel that doesn't make anything better.
- redisman 7y ago
  It's easy to find a connection (left-leaning-politics-tech is a small network) and it makes for juicy conspiracy headlines.
- shevek_ 7y ago
  It is not a controversial statement to say that an election shouldn't be run with closed software made by a private company with financial, personal, and professional ties to one of the candidates. If something like this happened elsewhere in the world the US would use it as pretext for intervention.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Okay, then, my aunt's church group elected a treasurer using that website that used some online poll type thing with a password. I'm sure that residents of Leicestershire are quaking in their wellies awaiting the inevitable arrival of the 101st Airborne.
davidwitt415 7y ago
Apparently, the app wasn't wasn't released until Feb 1. Also, The New York Times reported that the Iowa Democratic Party was secretive about using the app, and that it asked that Shadow’s name be withheld from the public. "According to a person familiar with the app, its creators had repeatedly questioned the need to keep it secret, especially from the Iowa precincts where it would be used." This doesn't necessarily mean there is a huge conspiracy, but the optics -and the reality- of the party machine functioning properly is terrible, and the choice is between incompetence or malfeasance. Either way, they shot themselves in the foot, and it's not a good look.
- stevenwoo 7y ago
  As someone is not a huge fan of Democratic party - no conspiracy but total incompetence by Shadow - https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-caucus-voting-app-android-testfairy-screenshots-app-store https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-... It's like they had no one on their staff who actually released an app through the Android or iOs app stores.
hcknwscommenter 7y ago
" I'm not necessarily trying to suggest anything" Aren't you though? I mean, your post is essentially "CLINTON" "ALLEGED" "SEVERE" "LEAK" . Lot's of words meant to imply some grand conspiracy. The reality is almost certainly that the developer (who has an unfortunate name) probably just didn't have enough time/budget to put out a decent product. Not everything is an actual conspiracy.
- allovernow 7y ago
  Is it really difficult to believe that a group of people in charge of something may be biased? Calling it a "conspiracy" theory is just dismissive slander at this point. People have conspired successfully to achieve far greater and more malicious goals.
  - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
    That would be an awful lot of work for such a tiny gain. And it doesn't scale. AT ALL. What moron would go to the trouble? Iowa picks corn, not presidents.
    - allovernow 7y ago
      What hard work? How many devs do you have to pay off to write a handful of lines of code manipulating a secret ballot, especially when they may be willing because of personal bias? We know electronic voting in its current implementation is severely vulnerable to tampering, both external and internal.
      - asdff 7y ago
        Good thing Iowa used paper ballots then. This was a tally tool, not a voting tool, luckily. I think Georgia might be the most notorious for the behavior you describe.
        allovernow 7y ago
lastpingstandin 7y ago
If there was some grand conspiracy here, wouldn't it make more sense to release a working front end, and do whatever evil machinations / rigging behind the scenes... Intentionally releasing a broken app is an idiotic excuse for a conspiracy.
- asdff 7y ago
  If there was some grand conspiracy there wouldn't even be a news story. We'd have read Iowas results in the early hours of the morning and moved on with our lives.

sl1ck731 7y ago

Should a company's employees/CEO have to be apolitical? I'd be surprised if there is such a company where none of its employees are involved in politics in any way. Especially if its a company whose sole purpose is developing software for a political party.

jedberg 7y ago
They don't have to be, but much like with insider trading rules, it's better to avoid even the appearance of a possible conflict.
allovernow 7y ago
No, but until recently it was professional to keep your politics private and, more importantly, when there are inconsistencies disproportionately favoring an otherwise less popular candidate, public support from employees and especially the CEO, in conjunction with a money trail, these personal indicators of bias become relevant for justification of suspicion.
- jmull 7y ago
  How is this even helping Buttigieg? There doesn’t seem to be any indication this was anything but a regular screwup. Throwing around suggestions of a vague conspiracy looks unwarranted. You’re suggesting that to avoid suspicion companies providing services to political campaigns must be apolitical and to have never previously provided services to a candidate in the race or any previous opponent of a candidate in the race. How could that even be possible?
  - allovernow 7y ago
    No, I'm saying those in support of ostensibly neutral third parties should not be making tweets indicating strong bias for one of the parties they are charged with treating neutrally. Is it really so difficult to keep your public persona neutral and vanilla if you're a damn CEO? Wasn't this standard practice until recently? What, because Trump vomits on Twitter 24/7 everyone else needs to as well?
    - jmull 7y ago
      You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret? I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, so here’s your chance: any particular reason we shouldn’t dismiss you as not being serious?
      - allovernow 7y ago
        >You think it’s OK for CEOs of companies providing services to political campaigns to have political opinions as long as they keep them secret? No, I think it's questionable when a CEO publicly discloses a strong political bias, receives private funds from the personally favored candidate, has cordial photos with the candidate at social events, and then is hired by the DNC and charged with being unbiased in a secret, electronically controlled ballot. There are tens of millions of dollars changing hands in the ramp up to the election. This is not a complex scheme involving millions of mouths to keep shut and olympic mental gymnastics to justify. A handful of politically leaning and/or paid off devs add a package to the code and you have whatever results you want. Ask yourself, do you really think corruption only exists outside of the United States? The bottom line is there are many discrepancies which happen to align toward a possibly calculated malicious intent. This feels like a "conspiracy theory" because there are so many tenuously linked components and no hard proof - but that's how any real life unfolding event looks until people have poured over it for months post facto and sorted through everything. In any case what I'm saying is that there's plenty of incompetence and bias here to at least be prudently suspicious.
dv_dt 7y ago
If you're in the vote counting business, it's a conflict of interest to also be in the vote making business for candidates.
- asdff 7y ago
  Good thing they are in the tally business and not the counting business, then. What is the difference, you might ask? One failed last night while the other one is occurring right now.
  - dv_dt 7y ago
    I'm not really feeling the difference between counting and tallying, but even keeping that distinction, it still sounds to me like they're mostly not in the tally business for lack of performance. If they had performed, it would still be a conflict of interest, just one none of us would likely have heard about. I feel that doesn't make anything better.
redisman 7y ago
It's easy to find a connection (left-leaning-politics-tech is a small network) and it makes for juicy conspiracy headlines.
shevek_ 7y ago
It is not a controversial statement to say that an election shouldn't be run with closed software made by a private company with financial, personal, and professional ties to one of the candidates. If something like this happened elsewhere in the world the US would use it as pretext for intervention.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Okay, then, my aunt's church group elected a treasurer using that website that used some online poll type thing with a password. I'm sure that residents of Leicestershire are quaking in their wellies awaiting the inevitable arrival of the 101st Airborne.

davidwitt415 7y ago

Apparently, the app wasn't wasn't released until Feb 1. Also, The New York Times reported that the Iowa Democratic Party was secretive about using the app, and that it asked that Shadow’s name be withheld from the public. "According to a person familiar with the app, its creators had repeatedly questioned the need to keep it secret, especially from the Iowa precincts where it would be used." This doesn't necessarily mean there is a huge conspiracy, but the optics -and the reality- of the party machine functioning properly is terrible, and the choice is between incompetence or malfeasance. Either way, they shot themselves in the foot, and it's not a good look.

stevenwoo 7y ago
As someone is not a huge fan of Democratic party - no conspiracy but total incompetence by Shadow - https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-caucus-voting-app-android-testfairy-screenshots-app-store https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-... It's like they had no one on their staff who actually released an app through the Android or iOs app stores.

hcknwscommenter 7y ago

" I'm not necessarily trying to suggest anything" Aren't you though? I mean, your post is essentially "CLINTON" "ALLEGED" "SEVERE" "LEAK" . Lot's of words meant to imply some grand conspiracy. The reality is almost certainly that the developer (who has an unfortunate name) probably just didn't have enough time/budget to put out a decent product. Not everything is an actual conspiracy.

allovernow 7y ago
Is it really difficult to believe that a group of people in charge of something may be biased? Calling it a "conspiracy" theory is just dismissive slander at this point. People have conspired successfully to achieve far greater and more malicious goals.
- hcknwscommenter 7y ago
  That would be an awful lot of work for such a tiny gain. And it doesn't scale. AT ALL. What moron would go to the trouble? Iowa picks corn, not presidents.
  - allovernow 7y ago
    What hard work? How many devs do you have to pay off to write a handful of lines of code manipulating a secret ballot, especially when they may be willing because of personal bias? We know electronic voting in its current implementation is severely vulnerable to tampering, both external and internal.
    - asdff 7y ago
      Good thing Iowa used paper ballots then. This was a tally tool, not a voting tool, luckily. I think Georgia might be the most notorious for the behavior you describe.
      - allovernow 7y ago

lastpingstandin 7y ago

If there was some grand conspiracy here, wouldn't it make more sense to release a working front end, and do whatever evil machinations / rigging behind the scenes... Intentionally releasing a broken app is an idiotic excuse for a conspiracy.

asdff 7y ago
If there was some grand conspiracy there wouldn't even be a news story. We'd have read Iowas results in the early hours of the morning and moved on with our lives.