The Iowa caucus app never had a chance

Friday, February 7, 2020 - 15:10 in Mathematics & Economics

Building an app is hard. (Pixabay /)You won’t find the IowaReporterApp in the App Store and even if you could, its rating would likely be too low for anyone to want to download it. The software played a key role in this week’s Iowa caucus debacle and the more we learn about it, the more it seems like it never really had a chance in the first place.It was meant to make reporting results from the caucus simpler, quicker, and more transparent, but it did the opposite in each of those cases. Shadow, the company responsible for the app, reportedly had roughly two months to build the crucial app after charging roughly $60,000. Those numbers throw up an immediate warning signal for those who make this kind of software for a living.“One of the problems with software in the past decade is that many clients don’t place enough importance on...

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