I think it’s fair to say that the only people still talking about the Iowa caucuses are political historians, Democratic party officials and those who resigned or some who may have gotten a pink slip. So anxious were the Democratic candidates to leave Iowa behind, all of them rushed on to New Hampshire in a kind of campaign whiplash.

Now, one week after the Granite State’s first in the nation primary and the first real vote, the two-week old debacle in Iowa seems very far away. In what is believed to be the final tally, Mayor Pete Buttigieg just squeaked past Bernie Sanders for first place, allowing both to claim victory. Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden’s fourth place finish turned out to be a predictor of his descent to fifth place in the New Hampshire primary election.

But I’ve been looking back at Iowa for reasons that have nothing to do with the possible realignment of the winners and losers or the lingering embarrassment of both the state and national Democratic Party organizations. Right away, I focused on what went right that fateful Iowa night: right because Iowa had a Plan B. Plan B allowed state election officials to tally the winners after Shadow Inc ‘s app broke down.

You see, all of the votes cast by Iowan caucus-goers were also on paper.

Good old reliable paper ballots. You can turn up your nose if you want and decry it as old-timey, but it still works. And once it became clear that there was no coming back from the not-tested-enough app, the folks in Iowa got busy counting by hand. That, as we saw, was not a fast process, hence the next day’s delayed announcement of partial results and the days later final count.

Marian K. Schnieder of Verified Voting told the technology news website, Recode, that Iowa’s’ caucus showcased the importance of low-tech solutions as a backup for high tech applications.

Schneider said, “Mobile apps are not ready for primetime. ... Thankfully Iowa has paper records of their vote totals.”

New Hampshire voters never had to worry. Paper ballots are required by law. New Hampshire’s Secretary of State Bill Gardner put it best, noting, “You can’t hack a pencil.”

But hackers could wreak havoc on the many places across the country where paper ballot machines were replaced with electronic ones. And unlike New Hampshire, most states don’t have a legal requirement that there be a paper backup. That’s despite the many studies which show it is one of the best ways to secure the vote.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only 14 states require paper ballots, Iowa and Florida included. Seventeen states and Washington, D.C., require a voter-verifiable paper record. Nine states, including Massachusetts, either use paper ballots or machines with a paper trail, even though there’s no statutory requirement. All the rest fall somewhere in between. Iowa voting officials say there was no hacking or tampering during the caucus count chaos. But experts warn that the attempts to hack our system, documented in the 2016 presidential campaign, never stopped.

And what happened in Iowa should remind us that even the most future-forward technology can be brought down, and not necessarily by malice, but by a simple glitch. All evidence suggests our voting system desperately needs cybersecurity. I don’t understand why a common-sense national solution like a backup paper record isn’t uniform and mandatory.