Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Iowa debacle ripples through the nation's democratic fabric

Iowa debacle ripples through the nation's democratic fabric

Elections experts used the Iowa caucuses vote-counting debacle as a reason to tell people to be more patient when it comes to anticipating election results.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Like the aftershocks that follow a major earthquake, the impact of the vote reporting debacle in the Iowa caucuses continues to rumble throughout the country.

Here is a look at some of the developments on three very different fronts: the new vein of disinformation about what "really" happened to this year's first voting in the Democratic nomination, the reaction to Iowa's appeals for patience, the rise of anxiety in other presidential battlegrounds. Amazingly, there was even a silver lining observed.


A disinformation debut

Only a smattering of additional results were announced Wednesday afternoon, raising the total of precincts reporting to 75 percent from 71 percent when the day began.

So it seems certain the final totals will not be disclosed by the Iowa Democratic Party until more than 48 hours after the caucuses concluded. And that has sparked an outbreak of home-grown misinformation that some saw as a sign of things to come.

Among the accusations spreading online — and that have been emphatically refuted by party officials — are that voting fraud was behind the delay and that one of the top tier candidates was planning to drop out.

NBC News reported the conservative group Judicial Watch incorrectly claimed that eight Iowa counties had more voter registrations than the number of citizens.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The group has brought several lawsuits against states and other entities claiming that they were not performing adequate work to remove from registration rolls people who had moved, died or were not otherwise eligible to vote. Federal law since 2002 has required all jurisdictions conducting elections to perform proper maintenance of their voter lists.

Iowa's Republican secretary of state, Paul Pate, sought to debunk the Judicial Watch claim, but the original accusation continued to spread across social media.

Preparations to be patient

Experts took the opportunity created by the long delays between vote disclosures — as of Wednesday afternoon results from only 71 percent of precincts had been reported — to remind voters this may be the new norm for American elections.

Edward Foley of the Ohio State University law school said delays in reporting results could become commonplace during the 2020 primary season and general election because of what he and another academic dubbed the "overtime count." One example he cited, in a piece for Politico, is the increasing use of absentee mail-in ballots. In many states, people no longer have to provide an excuse or reason why they can't make it to the polls on Election Day — effectively allowing them to always cast their ballots at home and send them in.

At the same time, some states permit absentee votes to be counted so long as they are postmarked by Election Day. That likely means many will show up after Election Day and still need to be counted — delaying an accurate outcome in very close contests.

Another example are provisional ballots, those set aside because there had been questions about the voter's ligibility. Some states mandate that those votes not be counted (if the voters turn out to be eligible) until after the election.

States of denial

Officials in various states around the country are reacting strongly to the Iowa vote reporting debacle.

Wisconsin's Democratic governor, Tony Evers, compared the Iowa caucus system to voter suppression. He pointed out that working people may not be able to attend a caucus in the evening or may be able to go but not stay the multiple hours that the events sometimes take.

And he reassured Wisconsin Democrats that the state's April 7 presidential primary is different than Iowa's system. The primary is a straightforward vote-for-your-one-favorite contest. It's conducted by local governments and overseen by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, a state agency — not the party.

Nevada's Democratic Party was quick to announce it will not use the application developed for it by the same company, Shadow Inc., that developed the one that proved so problematic in Iowa. The Iowa app failed to send the correct results from the caucus sites to the central counting location because of "a coding problem," Iowa party officials said.

Nevada Democratic officials said they already had backup plans for the state's Feb. 22 caucuses in place before Shadow's software choked up this week.

And, finally, the good news

Indiana's Purdue University on Wednesday distributed this quote from faculty member Eugene Spafford, touted as "one of the preeminent leaders in the field of cybersecurity":

"In some ways, this was the best outcome possible. Having an obvious glitch in software during a primary vote simply illustrates some of the concerns and was so much better than a problem that was hidden for weeks, unrecoverable, or even worse: hacked by outsiders."

Read More

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote" pin.
Getty Images, William Whitehurst

Most Americans’ Votes Don’t Matter in Deciding Elections

New research from the Unite America Institute confirms a stark reality: Most ballots cast in American elections don’t matter in deciding the outcome. In 2024, just 14% of eligible voters cast a meaningful vote that actually influenced the outcome of a U.S. House race. For state house races, on average across all 50 states, just 13% cast meaningful votes.

“Too many Americans have no real say in their democracy,” said Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano. “Every voter deserves a ballot that not only counts, but that truly matters. We should demand better than ‘elections in name only.’”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand Placing Ballot in Box With American Flag
Getty Images, monkeybusinessimages

We Can Fix This: Our Politics Really Can Work – These Stories Show How

As American politics polarizes ever further, voters across the political spectrum agree that our current system is not delivering for the American people. Eighty-five percent of Americans feel most elected officials don’t care what people like them think. Eighty-eight percent of them say our political system is broken.

Whether it’s the quality and safety of their kids’ schools, housing affordability and rising homelessness, scarce and pricey healthcare, or any number of other issues that touch Americans’ everyday lives, the lived experience of polarization comes from such problems—and elected officials’ failure to address them.

Keep ReadingShow less
Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump
text
Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump

Donald Trump wasted no time when he returned to the White House. Within hours, he signed over 200 executive orders, rapidly dismantling years of policy and consolidating control with the stroke of a pen. But the frenzy of reversals was only the surface. Beneath it lies a deeper, more troubling transformation: presidential elections have become all-or-nothing battles, where the victor rewrites the rules of government and the loser’s agenda is annihilated.

And it’s not just the orders. Trump’s second term has unleashed sweeping deportations, the purging of federal agencies, and a direct assault on the professional civil service. With the revival of Schedule F, regulatory rollbacks, and the targeting of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, the federal bureaucracy is being rigged to serve partisan ideology. Backing him is a GOP-led Congress, too cowardly—or too complicit—to assert its constitutional authority.

Keep ReadingShow less