In either case, at the end it all goes into a black hole. Party officials dial a result into a cell phone, which goes we don't know where, following a telecommunications routing that is unspecified, and is totalled up in a central tabulation program made by a vendor no one knows the name of, programmed by we don't know who, and voila! The result is announced.
Understand something simple here: Entering data into a cell phone, from whence it is automatically tabulated and then announced, is just a cell phone-initiated form of central tabulation. It's computerized, someone wrote the program, we have no way of knowing whether that program accurately tabulates or not.
And the county convention delegates don't act as a valid check and balance, because candidates have dropped out by then (the conventions aren't until more than a month after Super Tuesday, which itself is more than a month after the Iowa caucus.) The delegates are changed at the county convention to reflect the new candidate selections.
IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY CAUCUSES - ISSUES AND POTENTIAL PROBLEMS:
1) The overcomplexified, overcomputerized:
Again, we see the Amazing Randi in action -- look here, don't look there. Your attention will be drawn to the transparent "count the warm bodies" procedure at the precinct, with no explanation of exactly how the results were arrived at on the other end, after they go into a computerized central tabulation black hole.
Here, in part due to pressure from Black Box Voting, the Iowa Democratic Party says it is at least making an attempt to publicly and promptly release the precinct results. But then comes the overcomputerized, unexplained, overcomplexified process that is front-loaded with reasons it might not happen.
The concept here is simple: THE PUBLIC needs to be able to see the precinct results before they leave the precinct and after they are accumulated into the total. The precinct results BEFORE should match the precinct numbers AFTER, and all of these should match the final total.
WHAT TO DO: Encourage your local county Democratic Party to add the simple step of posting a copy of the signed precinct results at each location.
2) About the results web site: the Democrats are saying there will be a special Web site that precinct totals will be posted on. The catch? They have yet to publicly announce the name of the Web site or even confirm publicly that this will happen. There has been some talk of using a password only for the media and/or caucus attendees to be able to see, which would be inappropriate. The public needs to see.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IF THE PRECINCT RESULTS ARE POSTED PROMPTLY: Get screen captures of any wandering tallies or changes in figures during the tally process.
IT MIGHT NOT BE PUBLIC: Look for a rationale in the form of "overloading the Web server."
And realize that there is NO REASON to withhold precinct results from the public because you are creating an automated special program that may get overloaded. Let's think about this:
The results can be extracted as a simple spreadsheet and posted as a PDF file that is only about 25 pages long. There is no earthly reason for the simple uploading of precinct results to become a techno-extravaganza, nor to give out special passwords just for the press or for caucus attendees. It needs to be made available to everyone.
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