Notes From All Over, Part 4 -- February 4, 2020

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This Week In Pictures

And this one won't even need to be "photo-shopped."

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Inconsistencies

Updates

Later, 2:21 p.m. CT: note more "inconsistencies" here. 

Later, 11:00 a.m. CT: Iowa Democrat committee says it will release the "majority" of the Iowa results at 4:00 p.m. CT. "Majority" of results? What does "majority" mean, and why not "all" the results?

Original Post

 

It will be interesting to see the timeline of how things played out in Iowa.

Most concerning: "inconsistencies."

It's bad enough that the results were not provided but what is infinitely worse is that the results were held up because there were "inconsistencies."

Can you imagine this in Chicago, Baltimore, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin in the general election? Results held up because of "inconsistencies"? Immediately the press would pounce and suggest something nefarious was going on. (And, in this case, they would be correct.)

It is interesting that Iowa, so far, is getting a pass. The press is reporting, and apparently, "we" are believing that there was simply a technology error in the software, in the app, and then the telephone system failed. That's what they are telling us. The telephone system failing? Yeah, right.

What if the timeline was a bit different?

Let's say the app worked exactly as advertised (and I'm sure the developers are scrambling now to come out with exactly that story). The app would have been fairly simple, and they had four years to beta test it. Certainly the telephone system was working.

So, let's say the app worked exactly as advertised.

Let's say the initial results from the smaller precincts started coming and because of the small numbers, Sanders was winning, let's say 100% to 0%. He was taking the first 23 votes, perhaps not enough for one delegate, but it wasn't the delegate count that was the problem. The problem was the fact Sanders took all the early votes from the first small precincts. Of if not all, he was trending so far in front that the Iowa Democrat party was stunned. They had to do something.

First thing to do, crisis management. Don't report results. Don't report any results. Certainly something has to be wrong. Sanders can't be winning by this big a margin. How do "we" report this? "We" call it "inconsistencies."

And from there, the work begins to manage the Sanders crisis.

Those photographs of those paper ballots? The photographs can be photo-shopped.

We've gone from hanging shads to photo-shopped photographs.

It will be interesting to watch boxes of "original" paper ballots showing up at Iowa Democrat headquarters.

Conspiracy theorists can take this one step farther. The most influential Iowa pollster failed to release the final poll. In hindsight, their explanation seems more than a bit far-fetched.

Results will be released some time today, perhaps. But that won't end the debacle.