Sign up for our daily briefing
Make your busy days simpler with Axios AM/PM. Catch up on what's new and why it matters in just 5 minutes.
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Denver news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Denver
Des Moines news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Des Moines
Minneapolis-St. Paul news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Twin Cities
Tampa Bay news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Tampa Bay
Charlotte news in your inbox
Catch up on the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Charlotte
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
The stakes aren't quite the same, but the Iowa Caucuses are increasingly looking like Florida 2000.
Why it matters: Apps are the new hanging chads, and good luck convincing people to vote with apps after what they saw play out this week.
The big picture: The Iowa Democratic Party has a crisis of its own making, with ramifications that affect the national party as well as the future of voting.
- The app glitched on caucus day, with precinct leaders struggling to send in their results.
- The Iowa Democratic Party botched their planning, with confusion reigning on election night and a lack of viable backup options to stop the bleeding.
- Posters on 4chan reportedly shared the phone number of the caucus results line and encouraged readers to "clog the lines."
- When results finally came out 48 hours later, they included a series of errors that the state party didn't catch during what it claimed was a thorough process.
- Now the state party and DNC are at loggerheads over a "recanvass," with the state party saying the DNC doesn't get to decide.
Between the lines: The issues on election night have combined with a series of errors that make it unclear whether there will ever be a "completely precise account" of Iowa 2020, the N.Y. Times notes.
- "[M]ore than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, that were missing data or that were not possible under the complex rules."
- "In some cases, vote tallies do not add up. In others, precincts are shown allotting the wrong number of delegates to certain candidates. And in at least a few cases, the Iowa Democratic Party’s reported results do not match those reported by the precincts."
Go deeper: For those who need a reminder about hanging chads, this NPR story will help.