Campaign officials and volunteers are raising concerns over tech issues ahead of the Nevada caucuses, alarmed they might turn out as chaotic as the vote in Iowa, reports Politico.
Three caucus volunteers described serious concerns about rushed preparations for the Feb. 22 election, including a lack of training on how to use a Google form that will compile vote totals, while campaign officials over the weekend said they had not received a basic explanation on how key parts of the reporting process will work.
“It feels like the [state party is] making it up as they go along,” one Democratic candidate's aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the process, told the Washington Post. “That’s not how we need to be running an election.”
The Nevada Democratic Party last week stopped working with Shadow Inc., the company behind the app whose coding errors created chaos in Iowa.
Instead, caucus volunteers will use a “caucus calculator” available on iPads owned by the party and “accessed through a secure Google form.”
But volunteers say they haven’t been trained on how to enter and transmit vote counts on the iPads.
Gregory Miller, co-founder and chief operating officer at OSET Institute, an election technology research organization, told Politico security is also of concern with the state party’s choice of WiFi networking.
“We hope they're not going to rely on a local building's services. That would create a nightmare to protect,” he said.