The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: 2020 nevada caucuses
Nevada Democrats Announce Telephone Voting In 2020 Caucus

Nevada Democrats Announce Telephone Voting In 2020 Caucus

On July 8, the Nevada State Democratic Party announced that it would be holding the 2020 presidential election’s “first in the West Virtual Caucus,” where party members can vote early by landline phones and smartphones in the third nominating contest.

“Earlier this year, the Nevada State Democratic Party released a delegate selection plan that laid out our blueprint to make 2020 our most accessible, expansive and transparent caucus yet,” Nevada State Democratic Party Chair William McCurdy II said. “Today, with the announcement of our virtual caucus process, we are one step closer to making our blueprint a reality.”

“Nevada Democrats will have three options on making their voice heard next February,” he continued. “They’ll be able to vote in person at any [predetermined] location in their county on any of the four early voting days between Feb. 15 and 18, vote from home or on the go using their phone by way of our virtual caucus, or attend, in person, on caucus day [Feb. 22], at their assigned precinct.”

Nevada officials, like those in Iowa, whose caucuses launch the 2020 season and will also offer a “virtual caucusing” option, hope that their early and off-site voting will increase participation. But Nevada’s upbeat announcement revealed little of the complexities and unresolved aspects of their proposed overall phone and online system. A key national party committee has not approved its plans, but has raised serious concerns that remain to be addressed.

“Technology, ranked-choice voting, recounts—those are the issues we really have to drill down on, because we are kind of skimming the surface,” said Lorraine Miller, co-chair of the Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) of the Democratic National Committee from Texas, after the panel spent more than an hour questioning Nevada’s plans on June 28 and then granted “conditional” approval.

“Our technology questions are not just security questions. That’s [only] one way to look at technology,” said James Roosevelt III, an RBC co-chair from Massachusetts, echoing Miller and saying the DNC staff would have to more deeply assess Nevada’s proposal before the RBC meets next in late July, when it may vote to approve its plans.

But you would never know of these concerns from listening to the Nevada party (NSDP) officials at their July 8 press conference, nor from reading their press materials, which included a quote from DNC Chair Tom Perez praising the state “for stepping up and taking action to expand access.” Indeed, key parts of Nevada’s envisioned 2020 virtual voting system only exist on paper and have not yet been evaluated for security or usability, but have led to tangible consternation for the DNC Rules Committee.

“It seems to me a pretty gargantuan task,” said Harold Ickes, one of the national party’s top procedural experts and an RBC member from Washington, D.C., after a long exchange over a to-be-created app to be used by volunteer caucus chairs in 1,700-plus precincts. The app will report the early and virtual vote results for that precinct, which will be transmitted from vendors at party headquarters. The chair then will have to enter the room’s in-person voting results in each successive round of voting—all while maintaining order as candidates are eliminated during the presidential caucus.

Following DNC Instructions

Only a few state Democratic parties will hold caucuses in 2020 to choose a nominee. The first contest, in Iowa, and third, in Nevada, are in this group. The state party—not local election officials—will oversee the process. In short, the party will rent the voting system from a mix of private vendors to reach the participation goals in national party directives. These requirements include 2020 rules that allow “the casting of ballots over the Internet” in caucuses for those unable to physically attend, and “a paper record” trail of the votes cast, should a presidential candidate demand a recount.

The Nevada party, like its counterpart in Iowa, has embraced this call for modernizing their caucuses. In recent months, the NSDP has hired staff and aggressively worked with vendors to develop their plans. This overall system includes a registration component; voter contact and vetting when they log in; ballot interfaces for voters using landline telephones or smartphones to make their choices; the recording, transmitting, tabulating and encrypting of the presidential votes—where candidates are ranked but votes for disqualified candidates won’t count; and where remote votes are blended in with the rounds of live voting at about 1,700 local caucuses. And there’s to be a paper record of votes in case of a recount.

It is not an understatement to suggest that the NSDP, responding to the DNC’s 2020 Delegate Selection Rules, is trying to stand up one of the most sophisticated new voting systems in America—and do it in record time. It is also true that as the complexity of this task has crystallized before the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which wrote 2020’s rules—which are goals and procedures, not technicalities for making it work—that a tension has emerged.

The Rules Committee’s most vocal members seem to realize that their caucus states may be taking on too much—even if they are following their 2020 rules. These members are well aware that in today’s political world, any hiccup or error, no matter the cause, will be used to undermine an election’s credibility. Meanwhile, state parties in Iowa, and especially Nevada, are digging in and saying that they and their vendors will successfully modernize and deploy the most modern phone- and internet-based systems.

The friction could be seen in Pittsburgh in late June, when the RBC reviewed the 2020 delegate selection plans from 22 states, but spent most of the time on Iowa and Nevada. Both states’ party officials answered questions about goals and details and won “conditional” approval. But the DNC’s voting procedure experts did not enthusiastically support Nevada’s plan to deploy telephone voting and an online vote-counting infrastructure. Many complex issues had to be resolved before granting formal approval, the co-chairs said. Nonetheless, Nevada’s party held a telephone press conference on July 8, “to announce the first in the West virtual caucus,” enthusiastically promoting their 2020 plans.

“The NV Dems’ virtual caucus allows participants to confirm [their candidate] selections every step of the way,” said Caucus

“There’s a big delta [gap] between this group’s technical expertise as it is related to delegate counting and our technical expertise as it relates to technology,” Yohannes Abraham, an RBC member from Virginia, said before the panel “conditionally” endorsed Nevada’s plan. “If it is in our purview to sign off on both the technology and the actual delegate selection, and obviously those things cannot be disaggregated, I don’t think we can do that in good conscience prior to the July meeting without a real in-depth briefing.”

Back in their vote-counting wheelhouse, the RBC’s most vocal members asked how volunteers who serve as the caucus chairs and their assistants in the 1,700-plus precinct caucuses would manage possibly unruly rooms after announcing results from the early and virtual voting—voters not physically present—and then do the vote-count math as the candidate elimination rounds continue.

The virtual results, from four days of early voting and two other days of early phone voting, would be sent by the party vendors and appear on the app given to each precinct chair. These votes, could, conceivably, alter the outcome in the room, where contenders with less than 15 percent of the vote are eliminated from future rounds. The chairs were also to use a calculator on the app to record and determine the results during every ensuing round, where only the still-viable candidate votes (from early and virtual ballots) had to be processed along with the votes inside the caucus rooms.

“That’s a lot of information for the precinct chairman,” said Ickes, one of the DNC’s top procedural experts and an RBC member from Washington, D.C., launching a detailed discussion.

Shelby Wiltz on the press call. “It allows all voters the ability to participate using a landline, a cell phone, or the ability to dial in using Skype or Google Hangouts.”

Nevada and the Rules Committee

At late June’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting, some of the most seasoned and vocal members were skeptical about Nevada’s proposed virtual system and vote-counting procedures. Some said that they could not evaluate cyber-security issues, saying the DNC technology and security staff would have to assist them, and called for “a real in-depth” briefing before revisiting Nevada’s proposal.

“There’s a big delta [gap] between this group’s technical expertise as it is related to delegate counting and our technical expertise as it relates to technology,” Yohannes Abraham, an RBC member from Virginia, said before the panel “conditionally” endorsed Nevada’s plan. “If it is in our purview to sign off on both the technology and the actual delegate selection, and obviously those things cannot be disaggregated, I don’t think we can do that in good conscience prior to the July meeting without a real in-depth briefing.”

Back in their vote-counting wheelhouse, the RBC’s most vocal members asked how volunteers who serve as the caucus chairs and their assistants in the 1,700-plus precinct caucuses would manage possibly unruly rooms after announcing results from the early and virtual voting—voters not physically present—and then do the vote-count math as the candidate elimination rounds continue.

The virtual results, from four days of early voting and two other days of early phone voting, would be sent by the party vendors and appear on the app given to each precinct chair. These votes, could, conceivably, alter the outcome in the room, where contenders with less than 15 percent of the vote are eliminated from future rounds. The chairs were also to use a calculator on the app to record and determine the results during every ensuing round, where only the still-viable candidate votes (from early and virtual ballots) had to be processed along with the votes inside the caucus rooms.

“That’s a lot of information for the precinct chairman,” said Ickes, one of the DNC’s top procedural experts and an RBC member from Washington, D.C., launching a detailed discussion.

“It is,” replied Wiltz. “But we really look forward to the process.”

“But you haven’t developed that system of integrating all this information so the precinct chair can handle it efficiently and clearly, yet?” Ickes said, referring to what Wiltz later described as “a secure calculation tool, a caucus app and calculator to allow precinct captains to do the math at their precincts on caucus day.”

“No, not yet,” Wiltz replied, “but we’ve been spending the last two months working closely to review proposals from vendors that are going to assist us with that task.”

The exchange was met by silence. Minutes before, questioning by Ickes revealed that the state party had not yet developed the voter registration and vetting system that it said would be used so that a voter could not vote twice—but also could participate in precinct caucuses if they signed up to vote virtually but did not vote that way. Wiltz said that system “does not yet exist,” but would be “similar to caucus tracking systems” the party used in 2016.

These disclosures raised concerns, which, in some cases, could not be addressed because there was not enough available information. Specifically, it’s hard to evaluate an app or other parts of a wider voting system, when those elements exist on paper or were last used by another client but are awaiting customization for 2020.

Jeff Berman, an RBC member from Washington, D.C., followed the exchange between Ickes and Wiltz by asking how local precincts would be staffed “to handle this more complicated calculation,” referring to the vote-counting elements and stages.

Wiltz replied that “precinct captains and site leads” would receive extensive training, and the highest-profile caucus sites would have NSDP staff present. The party would also set up a hotline “to assist with any issues” and “deploy additional volunteers as necessary to help put out any fires,” she said.

Berman replied, “I’ll just say in 2016 I observed a caucus in Iowa and it was, for some reason, a location where nobody was the chair of—so basically there were about 100 people in the room and [they were] equally divided between the two main candidates, trying to figure out what to do. And that was without electronic information coming in that somebody was supposed to master.”

At that point, Artie Blanco, Nevada’s Rules Committee member, stepped in to stop the escalating doubts and express her confidence that the state party and its caucus plan would succeed—increasing participation and capably managing the process.

“We have been working on what this system will look like,” said Blanco. “Like Shelby has mentioned, we have been working lockstep with the DNC technology department; to ensure that the vendors that we are reviewing—that we are seriously in consideration with—and have already discussed the potential technology that will be used on that day. I know you have questions, but it will result—we feel very confident that it will result in a system that will work for our volunteer precinct chairs.”

“I don’t doubt your commitment, and the commitment of your colleagues, but I wonder how the person who is the precinct chair, or managing [the caucus], handles the figuring out of the threshold,” replied Ickes, referring to the count math that disqualifies candidates.

“Because that [voting] is going to be coming in from three different sources: One, the people who walk in; two, the people who vote early; three, the people who voted virtually. And the latter two, as I understand it, are going in ranked order,” he said. “So here you’ve got a precinct chairman, managing the people in there, and sometimes it can get quite boisterous, and then having to figure out the threshold by integrating all of this information. In theory, can it be done? The answer is yes. …[A]nd the system, according to you, has not even been designed yet. It seems to me a pretty gargantuan task to do.”

Wiltz replied that she understood Ickes’ concerns, but said Nevada was responding to “the requirements that the DNC has given to all states, and requirements that we are excited about taking on.”

She continued, “One of those requirements is to provide people with an option to participate virtually or absentee. One of those requirements is to allow an early vote process. In order to do that, we have to make a decision about how… we count the votes of people who participate in those processes. This is something that any [caucus] state like us would grapple with. We have the option to give those folks their own precinct. We also have the option to have those votes counted in-person at their precinct. We have obviously chosen the latter.”

As the discussion continued, other RBC members had questions about slight variations in the candidate ranking process to be used by the early and virtual voters, compared to those in caucus rooms. Wiltz told everyone not to worry, as a vendor would do all the vote-counting math, including on the app given to the caucus chairs.

“Harold, the math is not going to be dependent on the precinct chair,” she said, addressing Ickes. “That is, the technology that is being built, the math will be set in a system that will be part of our [overall] technology. So that’s the point to your question.”

Other Issues and Questions

As the review continued, RBC members raised still other concerns. One question was whether Nevada’s plan to add early and virtual votes into the results in about 1,700 local precincts was preferable to the approach taken by Iowa. It was creating four new precincts across the entire state, where early and remote votes would be counted separately and added into statewide caucus totals. During Iowa’s presentation, its officials said they made that choice to simplify the process, even though it was a departure from caucus tradition.

It also emerged that NSDP officials had not yet decided how many candidates these voters were to rank. In Iowa, the virtual voters are to rank five top choices. Iowa officials said that ranking five of the choices was likely to include at least one viable candidate from that voter’s precinct caucus—if they chose to attend that event.

The volume of candidates to be ranked would affect the process’s complexity—starting with the time required by older voters using phone keypads to repeatedly enter their choices after hearing a list of the candidates read out (after logging into the phone system). There are currently two-dozen presidential candidates.

“We are working with our vendors to understand what the threshold is for the number of choices or preferences that we need to provide someone who votes early or virtually,” Wiltz said. “We have not yet set that number.”

There were still other questions. Longtime RBC member Donna Brazile of Washington, D.C., who stepped in as DNC chairwoman in 2016 and managed Al Gore’s presidential campaign, asked why the registration deadline for early voting was November 30, 2019, when the state government’s registration deadline was in early February—and the NSDP would allow same-day registration for early voters and in-person caucus participants. Wiltz replied that the early deadline was needed to create voter rolls ensuring that nobody could vote in more than one setting.

“The security issue I am worried about comes up not when somebody tries to vote twice,” said David McDonald, an RBC member from Washington. “It’s when the opposition campaign shows up and tries to vote in your name, and then you go to your caucus and you’ve been disqualified by a security procedure.”

McDonald also asked about potential “Wi-Fi issues” in precincts that could interfere with the use of an app by the chair. During Iowa’s presentation, he asked how the electronic voting would produce a paper trail of all of the votes, but that issue did not surface in discussing Nevada’s proposal.

Both Iowa and Nevada said they would be introducing presidential preference cards in their precinct caucuses, where voters would list their first and final choices, as a way of documenting the votes. During Iowa’s review, McDonald expressed concerns about the collection and custody of those cards, which would have to be turned in from roughly 1,700 caucus sites in each state.

Iowa and Nevada party officials also said that they were talking to vendors about emailing a ballot summary receipt to virtual voters, which Wiltz called a “voter verified paper record” in her opening remarks summarizing their proposed system. RBC members did not ask about that receipt.

Members of the DNC’s technology and security staff sat behind the RBC members and took notes, but wouldn’t comment to the press about how they conducted their reviews that lead to making recommendations that all of the state’s 2020 plans before the panel be conditionally approved—including Nevada’s plan, which has central elements that do not yet exist.

Pressing Ahead

As the Nevada review continued, state party officials stressed they were planning to undertake unprecedented levels of training for the caucus volunteers and the party’s partners—such as the 58,000-member Culinary Workers Union Local 226. In addition to online training, and new training materials in several Asian languages, Wiltz said there would be “150 training sessions between now and February 22.”

“Everything we are doing in 2020 is more aggressive,” she said. “And it’s bigger. And it also ensures that we are meeting the requirements of the DNC and that we are committing ourselves to the values that we have as a party—which is to expand the process for people that otherwise would not be able to participate.”

After an hour, Artie Blanco, the lone RBC member from Nevada, made the formal motion to conditionally approve the state’s 2020 plan. The RBC gave its assent, but not before members voiced concern, including Co-Chair James Roosevelt III, who looked to the panel’s next meeting and said, “We’ve got a lot of stuff, for lack of a better word, that we probably should get ironed out.”

“It just strikes me that we are not going to find resolution on a lot of these things without a more detailed briefing from our technology staff at the DNC,” Virginia’s Abraham added.

“We are thinking along the same lines,” replied Co-Chair Lorraine Miller, after comparing her notes with Roosevelt.

The Rules and Bylaws Committee will next meet in late July and will consider more details from the Nevada State Democratic Party and the DNC technology and security staff. If satisfied, it may then formally approve both Nevada’s and Iowa’s virtual voting plans.

But in the meantime, Nevada party officials have begun telling the press and public to expect they can vote to nominate a presidential candidate using their landline phone or smartphone.

“Our virtual caucus will offer Nevada Democrats the opportunity to participate in the caucus from home, whether it be those overseas serving in our military, those homebound due to a disability or illness, or any Democrat unable to attend on caucus day,” said NSDP Chair William McCurdy II on July 8, at the beginning of the press conference announcing virtual voting.

 

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Iowa 2020 Democratic Caucuses Move One Step Closer To Vote-By-Phone

Iowa 2020 Democratic Caucuses Move One Step Closer To Vote-By-Phone

The Democratic National Committee is moving ahead with plans to offer a telephone voting option during 2020’s first presidential contest, the Iowa caucuses, even though big questions remain about the system’s technology, security, and vote-counting procedures.

The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee granted “conditional” approval to Iowa’s 2020 plan after spending two hours discussing the proposed “virtual caucus” system on June 28. The DNC staff highlighted their concerns and questions, ranging from a ranking of the top five candidates on the telephone ballot to the voting system’s technology and security. Top Iowa state party officials described and defended their proposal, expressing confidence in their likely vendors, prospective training, and other implementation details, but said they need the panel’s full approval before they can sign contracts and start building the actual customized system. Some Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) members—the party’s voting procedure experts—said that they need much more in-depth assessments before granting final approval.

“Is there any anticipated go/no-go date with the technology itself?” asked RBC member Yohannes Abraham, from Virginia, before the panel voted to give Iowa a month to work with DNC staff and return with answers. “This strikes me as not a simple thing to stand up, and there will be a point at which we’re game-time ready or not.”

Top Iowa party officials replied that they had been working with vendors to design a system to increase participation by offering a remote voting option, but that they were not making contingency plans because they are anticipating its successful deployment.

“We’ve had enough conversations with at least a couple of vendors that they are very confident that they can do this process because they’ve done much larger versions of this process,” replied Scott Brennan, an RBC member from Iowa and former state party chair. “We don’t anticipate there will be the need to have a go/no-go date, because we’re making unique changes to the Iowa caucuses, but the process that we are using is not necessarily earth-shattering.”

Some RBC members were skeptical, however. Many had lines of questioning in three areas flagged early by longtime DNC member and party lawyer Harold Ickes, from Washington, D.C., about “system overload,” “security” and “counting.” As former DNC chair and ex-presidential campaign manager Donna Brazile said midway through the discussion, the party is undertaking a daunting task.

“This is the most interesting proposal I’ve seen in my 20-plus years on Rules and Bylaws,” Brazile said. “I must tell you, it is as complicated as it appears on paper. So I am not ready yet. I’m concerned about the safeguards. And I’m also worried that we don’t have enough time to get to this point in 2020. This is the future, but I don’t know if we are there yet.”

But other RBC members were less perturbed, saying the still-developing caucus state plans were to be expected—from Iowa, and from Nevada, 2020’s third contest and one whose proposed off-site voting system is more complex than Iowa’s plans.

The DNC’s Unity Reform Commission created after 2016’s controversial nominating season directed that steps be taken to increase voter participation. That instruction led to the RBC’s 2020 Delegate Selection Rules issued in late 2018, which required that a new remote voting option be offered in caucus states, and that a paper trail of the voting be created in those states—in case the results are challenged and a recount ensues.

“I do want to reiterate that Iowa is doing this because we basically told them to,” said New Hampshire’s Kathleen Sullivan. “You [fellow RBC members] might want to keep that in mind.”

Iowa Presents Still-Developing Plans

The Rules Committee’s agenda at its June meeting was to review plans by 22 states to elect delegates to the party’s 2020 national convention, where the presidential ticket would be formalized. Three states were holding caucuses, which is not the same as primary voting.

Caucuses are like traditional New England town meetings where citizens gather, make speeches, and vote. Those present employ rounds of voting, where a candidate must surmount elimination thresholds (15 percent of the vote in the room) to stay viable, in contrast to winner-take-all balloting in primary elections. This process ends when no candidate has less than 15 percent of the total vote. Depending on the resulting percentages, the precinct caucus will then allocate a set number of delegates representing those candidates to the next stage in the process: Iowa’s county conventions. In between the voting rounds, the campaigns try to persuade voters to switch from their initial choices.

In 2020 the Democrats’ caucus states will include Iowa, which opens the nominating season on February 3; Nevada, which is third, comes on Feb. 22; and Alaska in April. Unlike most primary elections, which are run by government election officials, the state parties run caucuses and rent the voting system from vendors.

“Our goal is simple: to address the challenges that we knew exist in our process while preserving the spirit of the Iowa caucuses,” said Iowa’s Brennan, in a 20-minute opening presentation. “The plan before you does exactly that. Included in this plan will be the most significant changes in the Iowa Democratic Party caucuses since its inception in 1972. These changes will make the 2020 caucuses the most accessible, transparent and secure caucuses ever.”

“On caucus day, precinct caucuses in all 1,677 precincts [across Iowa will be] almost unchanged from the experience of the past 48 years,” Brennan said, emphasizing that most 2020 participants would not be voting remotely—but in precincts. But, for “those previously excluded—shift workers, single parents, people with disability or mobility issues, people working out of state or serving overseas—and others,” there will be six sessions of “virtual” or phone-based voting caucuses, where people who register beforehand can vote in varied time slots.

“During the virtual caucus, participants will find it similar to a precinct caucus,” he said. “Participants will find how to get more information on the candidates, the chance to be a delegate at the district or state level or an alternate to the [party] convention, and instructions on how to submit platform planks. And rank the top five choices for president, compared to [in-person caucuses and] precinct choices where people will rank their top two.”

The Iowa party envisions that people who want to vote early or by phone will register by mid-January. Registration will be online, as many states now handle voter registration. These voters will get an email with instructions and credentials—including PIN numbers—to access the phone-based voting system. Once inside that system, the voters will be presented with 23 candidate choices (the current number) and asked to rank their top five using their keypad.

The party has not said what kind of remote interface voters will use. It generally has called the process a “tele-caucus,” meaning one would listen to recorded instructions and type in numbers to make choices—as one might pay a bill over the phone. But hints were dropped that voters with other digital devices, such as smartphones or tablets connected to cellular signals or the internet, also would be able to use them. Brennan said there would be options for “real-time closed captioning, as well as language translation [and] ESL [English as a second language] interpretation for those that request it.” In other words, the system may work with older push-button landline phones, but it could offer features supported by a smartphone app or webpage—which is online voting. Those technical details were envisioned, not yet finalized, he said.

“We are still going through our RFP [request for proposal] process to determine the vendors who will be instrumental in making this process happen,” Brennan said. “Once that [process] is complete, we will be able to further determine exactly what the registration process, the order of events and the [count and delegate allocation] reporting will look like. Also, we will be able to build the security protocols around these systems for greater protection around hacking and outside bad actors.”

As Iowa Democratic Party Executive Director Kevin Geiken elaborated after the committee review, the system will have four main technical components. “There is the registration process,” he said. “There is the technology of hosting that small pool of people on a virtual caucus system, where they have to press certain numbers to get certain results. There’s the third challenge of being able to tabulate those votes in a way that follows our [candidate ranking and proportional representation] rules. The fourth is how do we project all of those [new features and results] out into the world. Some vendors play in one or two of those buckets.”

Brennan told the RBC that the state party has no credible way to estimate how many people would actually use the remote voting option, even though it had consulted with a range of experts. The past estimates have suggested one-quarter or more of 2020 caucus participants might vote remotely.

Brennan and Geiken turned to the vote-counting process and said that the state party decided that it would be simpler to create four new statewide precincts for telephone voters—one for each of Iowa’s U.S. House districts—where the virtual votes would be separately tallied, and then added to the statewide results from the precinct caucuses to determine the night’s winner: the candidate with the most delegates awarded to the process’s next stage. The virtual bloc would be allocating 10 percent of the delegates statewide.

The challenge before the Iowa party was to create a remote voting process that closely copied what occurs in the physical caucuses, the Iowa officials said. The solution is to have a version of what was called a ranked-choice ballot, where telephone voters will list their top five candidates. Geiken said that somewhere among the voter’s top five choices was likely to be one candidate who was viable and crossed the 15 percent elimination threshold.

Geiken noted that the party was “working with vendors to see if it’s possible to send voters back an email receipt” of their choices, which one RBC member, David McDonald of Washington state, questioned as possibly not satisfying the Rules Committee’s 2020 requirement for a paper-based vote count audit trail—for possible recounts. Geiken and Brennan also explained that participants at the 1,677 caucus sites would fill out a paper form—not a ballot—that listed their first and final presidential choices, which would comprise a paper record of the precinct voting.

Security and Ranked-Choice Voting

The most vocal RBC members raised concerns about the intricacies of this overall process—such as what were the plans for collecting all of those presidential preference cards from the 1,677 precincts in a manner where none would be lost or suddenly appear in a close or contested vote. But, overall, the two main areas of concern were the virtual system’s security and its ranked-choice voting.

On the cyber-security front, Virginia’s Abraham was not the only RBC member to ask about backup plans, in case something forced the Iowa party to shut down the virtual voting process.

“You get up to the last day, when you have a virtual and actual [precinct caucuses] happening at the same time—what code red activities do you have in place if everything falls apart?” asked Yvette Lewis of Maryland. “What do you have in case the system breaks down, or something goes screwy? I think you need a code red contingency in case things fall apart on the last day.”

“We are spending a lot of time talking about the virtual caucuses, but it is my belief that the majority of Iowans will participate in the caucuses like they always have,” replied Brennan. “It is a smaller universe of people that will participate in the virtual caucuses.”

“I get that,” Lewis countered. “But I think we are spending so much time on it because it is new and we need to work out all of the bugs in it now… All of the other parts you have done before… [are] like walking in your sleep. This isn’t. It is something that can skew the numbers. We need to flesh this out.”

Lewis and Abraham were not alone in expressing big-picture reservations as more details emerged about operating a new system of remote voting and allocating presidential convention delegates.

“We are being asked to certify that the party has the technical ability, the skill, the expertise, the finances, and all these security issues will be in place, and nobody will be disenfranchised, and whether there’s a red plan,” said RBC member McDonald after the previous exchange. “I am reluctant to give a carte blanche out of here and say, ‘Yeah, it’s all okay, trust it.’”

These concerns surprised Iowa officials. They said that they expected to win full RBC approval, which they say they needed before signing any contracts with vendors who will build and customize the actual voting system. They also noted the DNC’s 2020 rules never specified creating a backup system.

There were also more customer-service oriented questions about whether voters using the telephone system for the first time could become confused by the volume of the choices and ranking them.

“I’m not sure how it would really work,” said Frank Leone, an RBC member from Virginia. “Currently, there are 23 candidates. So how do you—does the [pre-recorded telephone] vote listing list all 23 candidates, and then you put in the number 12 or something, and then you do this five different times, and somehow it all gets put together at a statewide level, and then re-sorted five different times to come up with results? It seems to… create a great deal of confusion and effort, certainly on your part and on the part of the voter, who is trying to call in and negotiate somehow.”

“From my perspective as a prospective voter, how do you plan to translate all of this to the public?” RBC Co-Chair Lorraine Miller of Texas asked immediately after Leone’s question and remarks. “Give us a little synopsis at the end of the presentation.”

Geiken responded that the party’s messaging would be simple.

“It’s really less about what are the changes in the process and more so from a perspective of ‘how can I participate in the caucus?’ That is a relatively easy answer,” he said. “Every Iowa Democrat who wants to caucus should caucus. If you want to caucus on February 3 and you are available and able to caucus in person, you show up to your caucus site.”

“If you can’t go on February 3 and want to participate virtually, here’s how you do that. You register with us somewhere between January 6 and January 17,” he continued. “At the point of registration, you get the instructions, access code, some other security questions. You call into that caucus session… rank candidates, then [answer] party business questions… That is [how] the simplicity of the process for the Iowa caucus goes.”

The public education would emphasize the process’s positives, not negative “what-if” scenarios, Geiken said.

“We don’t have plans to talk into the weeds, all of the scenarios,” he said. “If you are participating virtually and your phone dies halfway through, what do you do? Well, some people may want to know that. So we will have that on our website—all of what we will call ‘caucus what-ifs—frequently asked questions.’ And then from there be aggressive with pushing this information out with our partners [constituencies, campaigns], including the media.”

As the review neared the two-hour mark, it occurred to the more outspoken RBC members—a few out of two-dozen in the room—that the panel did not have sufficient explanations, or possibly the technical expertise, to assess some key unanswered concerns.

“We are not really doing the job that we have been asked to do,” said McDonald, referring to vetting the virtual voting. “We need a complete plan. Our [DNC] security people need to have seen the vendors, to make sure that they are actually able to comply with the security. Unless somebody says that can be done by [the late] July [RBC meeting], I’d suggest August, at least.”

At this point, the RBC co-chairs, Lorraine Miller, and James Roosevelt III of Massachusetts, noted that the DNC technical staff had recommended “a conditional compliance” for Iowa and began the formal process to proceed to committee endorsement vote.

“We can agree that the plan meets the spirit of the DNC rules, but has open questions that need to be resolved,” said Roosevelt. “Technical questions can be addressed by staff. Questions that are more than just technical are always brought to the co-chairs, and then we decide if it needs to go back to the committee. By conditional compliance, we endorse the framework of the plan but [are] not giving final approval to its implementation.”

“My concerns are not just technical,” interjected McDonald, who then cited the ranked-choice voting method for telephone voters, and only allocating that bloc 10 percent of the overall delegates. “Whether allocating those results only to a congressional district, as opposed to back to a precinct where the person was supposed to vote, is fair. And I do not want, by this vote of conditional compliance, to say that those things comply.”

Roosevelt agreed with McDonald, and also acknowledged that the Iowa party officials looked disappointed. “I can maybe sense by the look on your faces that you’re saying, ‘but what else?’ But, between now and then, we will ask you to see what else,” he said. “And then we’ll see… can we vote for compliance?”

“My only suggestion, for any number of reasons, [is] we need to be done with the process in July,” Brennan replied. “Whatever those issues are, we need to have them outlined for us within the next week. We can address all of those issues… if we take it to August, we’re too late.”

“I think what we’ve done today is you’ve brought forth a great deal of information, and we have satisfied some concerns—and some that are not fully satisfied,” Roosevelt said. “We know this is a big deal. That’s why we spent so much time today… We will have what we are dealing with at the July meeting.”

After that exchange, the Rules Committee conditionally approved Iowa’s plans. The biggest issues were if the proposed virtual voting system elements would be secure enough for the DNC’s security team. And would the allocation of delegates after the telephone-based ranked-choice voting have to be changed—and with it the underlying technology—so virtual votes are added into precinct results? (Allocating virtual votes locally is Nevada’s approach.)

“I don’t know that we are set back. We will have to see what the staff review comes back with next,” said Geiken afterward. “If the committee says we have to inject it [virtual voting results] into the precinct level, that significantly changes our timeline… That would significantly change the relationship with our vendor and the product we are asking for.”

“I think they [the RBC] will find that when they talk to Nevada and any other state, I think they will find that we are not any farther behind; in fact, we are farther ahead of the game in thinking of the security concerns, the actual technological solutions that are needed, than any other state right now,” Geiken said. “For all of the members, this is the first time looking at any of this… That’s not a slight on any other state. I think Nevada is quite far—they have gone down the rabbit hole as we have on this. We were, in fact, the test case in today’s conversation.”

(Editor’s note: This is the first report in a series on new technologies and voting procedures that might be used in the 2020 presidential election’s opening contests. The next report will look at Nevada’s proposed virtual caucus voting system.)

Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, The American Prospect, and many others.

IMAGE: A caucus worker holds up a sign to direct voters to their respective table during Nevada Republican presidential caucus at Western High School in Las Vegas, Nevada February 23, 2016. REUTERS/David Becker