The app, according to several news reports, was developed by the secretive for-profit tech firm Shadow Inc., which has ties to and receives funding from ACRONYM, a Democratic digital non-profit organization. Shadow’s CEO is Gerard Niemira, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“State campaign finance records indicate the Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow… more than $60,000 for ‘website development’ over two installments in November and December of last year,” HuffPost reported late Monday. “A Democratic source with knowledge of the process said those payments were for the app that caucus site leaders were supposed to use to upload the results at their locales.”

Shadow has also been paid for services by the Nevada Democratic Party and the presidential campaigns of former Vice President Joe Biden and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Kevin Gosztola
@kgosztola
I'm not the only one sharing this screen shot, but it seems important for this to get around to as many people as possible.

This is the "About" page for Shadow Inc, which was contracted to make the app for #IowaCaucuses. No staff named. This outfit is inexcusably secretive.

Link to tweet

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The New York Times, citing anonymous people who were briefed on the app by Iowa Democratic Party officials, reported that the app was hastily constructed in just two months and “not properly tested at a statewide scale.”

“The party decided to use the app only after another proposal for reporting votes—which entailed having caucus participants call in their votes over the phone—was abandoned, on the advice of Democratic National Committee officials,” the Times reported.

“The secrecy around the app this year came from the Iowa Democratic Party, which asked that even its name be withheld from the public,” according to the Times. “There were concerns that the app would malfunction in areas with poor connectivity, or because of high bandwidth use, such as when many people tried to use it at the same time.”
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