Name: Nevada Democratic Party making changes to caucus results reporting system
Uploaded: 2020-03-16T00:26:07.000Z
Duration: 4 min 11 s
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Nevada Democrats are working to calm fears Ahead of Saturday's caucus, the party has devised a new strategy to tally the results.

The changes are in direct response to what happened in Iowa.

Basic passive voice

You'll recall the results there were delayed an app collecting the data malfunctioned.

Nevada had initially planned to use the same system as cats.

The state will now rely on Web based tools.

However, some experts are warning there could still be problems and Cat joins me now.

She's a technology policy reporter for The Washington Post.

Can you walk us through what is different this year when it comes to the caucus tally system?

Thanks so much for having me on the show.

The big change this year is that the Democrats in Nevada have made a new tool.

They're really avoiding the word app after the problems in Iowa.

And this calculator will be access through a Google form.

And this will allow, you know, precinct precinct chairs at the caucus to do a lot of the complicated math behind awarding delegates during the caucuses on Saturday, and it really shows a big scramble on Nevada.

Democrats, Part two totally overhaul their system after they had to stop their plans to use an app made by Shadow following the problems in Iowa.

And how are Nevada Democratic Party officials working with Google to ensure secure results?

They haven't disclosed a lot of details, but they're trying to reassure the public that they're seeking out expertise from professionals this time around.

And so they put out a memo last week that said that they are consulting with professionals at Google on this.

You know, it's fairly common for Google to work with paying customers like businesses on ways to keep they're tools secure and to use them most effectively.

And so they're engaging with Google for this type of consulting this time around, you know, they also said they're working with independent security experts to ensure that the calculators properly functioning and can I know you reported some election security experts are warning this shift could still cost serious problems.

There's a lot of worries that shifting to a totally new system just a couple weeks before the caucuses could be problematic.

You know, security experts are saying that typically this type of a tool, you should spend months and months testing it.

There's also always a concern about hacking when any time you're using tools that are connected to the Internet.

And so even though you know the party is taking these steps to work with security experts, they've consulted with the Department of Homeland Security.

They've, you know, purchased their own iPads to use.

In this instance, there still broad worries that this could still be a vulnerable system.

And as you mentioned, some fears have to do with this short time period in training volunteers.

Were there any solutions the party is considering to mitigate potential problems.

So they are doing extensive user testing with volunteers of all kinds of different experience levels to avoid some of those problems.

You know, as you mentioned earlier, there were a lot of technical problems with the app in Iowa, but one of the big problems there was just that people didn't know how to use it, and people had trouble downloading it on their devices.

So they're hoping by giving people ipads that the party bought with this tool already loaded on it and also doing extensive training with the volunteers over the next week that they can avoid some of the problems that we saw in Iowa.

Well, we know the state party has been consulting with the Democratic National Committee.

How much pressure is there on the DNC right now to make sure the Nevada caucuses go smoothly?

I was a really embarrassing moment for the Democrats.

The DNC has tried to distance themselves from the problems there, but through reporting from outlets like Yahoo News, we've learned that they did have some oversight over the security aspects of the APP there.

And so I think there's a lot of scrutiny over what the DNC has done on this front.

And there's certainly a lot of pressure on the party to show that they have the technical expertise to get this right this time around.

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Nevada Democratic Party making changes to caucus results reporting system

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