'Shadow' app that failed in Iowa caucus was doomed from the start, say those forced to use it

Update: Nevada Dem. Party abandons the app, 1025AM Pacific time/125PM Eastern.

An Iowa Caucus disaster in 3 bullets:

• Precinct captains were first allowed to test the app 16 days before the caucus
• And they only got detailed instructions at 1pm yesterday,
• Then the two-factor verification broke.

"We have the name and screenshots of the Shadow Inc. app that failed in Iowa last night, it is worse than you could possibly imagine," tweets Jason Koebler of VICE News.

Get a load of this:

Wow.

"On the ground, it went great," Green, the chair of the Democractic presidential primary caucuses in Iowa's Fremont Township and Lone Tree precincts and an IT systems administrator for a financial services firm, told Vice News:

"I got pissed off four years ago at how my precinct was run, which is why I volunteered to do it this time around," he said. "We had 113 people and everyone was pleasant. I had to recruit a secretary once we were going—I couldn't find one ahead of time. Everyone was patient and in good cheer. I know that's not likely the case today. My girlfriend, especially, is distraught. She has poured her life and soul into this thing, and for naught."

Green, like many other precinct chairs, faced problems reporting the results of the caucus to Iowa's Democratic Party using the app. Due to a coding error, the app, created by a company called Shadow Inc., wasn't reporting the correct data, according to the Iowa Democratic Party. The error resulted in the Democrats delaying all public reporting of the results of Monday's caucuses, and has sown chaos and confusion in a hotly contested and deeply important primary. But the app wasn't just plagued with data reporting errors, the app didn't work properly on Green's phone.

Green shared an email with Motherboard that shows that he was first invited to test the app on January 18. The invite was sent via TestFairy, a mobile app testing platform for Android that is similar to Apple's TestFlight, which allows developers to test and share apps before their official release. The email refers to it as IowaReporterApp 1.1 and says that it is 26.43MB. The email also says that the app is being sent by jimmy@shadowinc.co. That email address did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more:
Here's the Shadow Inc. App That Failed in Iowa Last Night
[Jason Koebler and Emanuel Maiberg, Feb 4 2020, 11:10am]