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Hell yeah. Let's give a bunch of people who still call their 40-year-old kids to ask how to launch Netflix on their TV proprietary apps on a iPad to handle election results. What could go wrong? https://t.co/cUmd4J4y9M

— jordan (@JordanUhl) February 9, 2020

Nevada Democrats debut to volunteers new iPad-based ‘tool’ to calculate math on Caucus Day in the wake of Iowa fiasco

Nevada Democrats are planning to use a new caucus tool that will be preloaded onto iPads and distributed to precinct chairs to help facilitate the Caucus Day process, according to multiple volunteers and a video recording of a volunteer training session on Saturday.

The new tool will help precinct chairs fold in the results from people in their precinct who chose to caucus early with the preferences of in-person attendees on Caucus Day by calculating the viability threshold and carrying out the two alignments in the caucus process, according to the volunteers and the video recording. Details about the tool come two days after Nevada Democrats said that they would not use any apps for their Feb. 22 caucus after a coding error in a similar program used by Iowa Democrats delayed the release of results from that state’s nominating contest earlier this week.

“What we’ve done after Iowa is consult with a group of tech and security folks who are helping us through this process and making sure that we’re doing this in a way that is simple and efficient and secure for all of you so that we’re giving you the best tools we can possible on Caucus Day,” the staffer said. The new tool will “flow your precinct early vote data, so that you can have the information for your precinct caucus, so that when you do your viability calculations, you’re able to get the number of people who voted early and then when you see the results of your first alignment, you’re able to key in that early vote information so that you have every piece of information you need to run your precinct caucus.”

Asked by a volunteer whether results would be transmitted from one place to another, the staffer demurred.

“Those are all excellent questions, and we’re still working out some of the details around those so I’ll make sure that everyone has more information as we’re able to share it,” she said.

Seth Morrison, who will be the site lead at Legacy High School on Caucus Day, said he “debated long and hard” whether to express his concerns about the caucus process.

“For me, I volunteered to do this because I’m a loyal Democrat, and there’s nothing more I want to do than defeat Donald Trump,” Morrison said. “But if we allow this to go down and it’s another Iowa, what does this do for my party?”

Morrison said that there was “not a bit of proof” at the training that Nevada wouldn’t be another Iowa.

Another volunteer, who asked for anonymity to speak openly about the training process, said the general sentiment in the room at the training was frustration and confusion.

“We got very little information. It was just a preview. There was no hands on,” the volunteer said. “We were not given the program to work with or practice with. All we have were a few slides to look at while they told us that they’re planning to develop it further.”

Look I have no problem with using better tools for rigging tallying the votes. However I do have a problem with deciding to use it on the fly during one of the most important elections in our lifetimes. Anything new should have been tested and retested a gazillion times to make sure it works not just throw something together at the last minute like we have been seeing. Gee it's almost like democrats don't care if they lose to Trump and let him ram through his agendas (with their help) for 4 more years.

PS..I just re found this article on Pete that might interest you guys.

It also provides irrefutable evidence that no serious progressive should want Pete Buttigieg anywhere near national public office.

Before I dive into Shortest Way Home’s account of the life and career of Peter Buttigieg, let me be up front about my bias. I don’t trust former McKinsey consultants. I don’t trust military intelligence officers. And I don’t trust the type of people likely to appear on “40 under 40” lists, the valedictorian-to-Harvard-to-Rhodes-Scholarship types who populate the American elite. I don’t trust people who get flattering reams of newspaper profiles and are pitched as the Next Big Thing That You Must Pay Attention To, and I don’t trust wunderkinds who become successful too early. Why? Because I am somewhat cynical about the United States meritocracy. Few people amass these kind of résumés if they are the type to openly challenge authority. Noam Chomsky says that the factors predicting success in our “meritocracy” are a “combination of greed, cynicism, obsequiousness and subordination, lack of curiosity and independence of mind, [and] self-serving disregard for others.” So when journalists see “Harvard” and think “impressive,” I see it and think “uh-oh.”

ETA: This is telling.

9/11 happens while Buttigieg is an undergraduate and the rest of the book’s Harvard portion is spent musing on war and peace. One of the few things that does disturb him about the school is that its students are no longer expected to serve in the military. (In an extreme conservative tone, he suggests there was no excuse for a student like him not to voluntarily join the armed forces.) He says that he would spend time looking at the names of Harvard students who died in the Civil War, and that “I sometimes paused to recite a few of them, under my breath, between eating breakfast and going to class.” After the World Trade Center fell, he says, he realized that:

The infinite peace of Cold War promise was in fact a mirage, and we would be dealing with matters we thought our grandparents’ generation had settled, having to do with war, terror, and freedom.

His book review

The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has written the best political autobiography since Barack Obama

Yeah we know what happened after we thought Obama was the second coming of FDR after hearing his speech at the DNC convention.