Democratic Party officials in Iowa are manually verifying the results of the Iowa Caucus because of an alleged coding issue with an app that was meant to streamline the reporting process. WGBH Morning Edition host Joe Mathieu spoke with Iowa Public Radio political reporter and co-host Kate Payne to learn more about what happened. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: Have you slept yet? Should I assume not?
Kate Payne: I did get a couple hours in last night.
Mathieu: Congratulations on that. I say you're the most important reporter, Kate, because you were the first to break the story about this cell phone app that was used in the distribution of results. The reporting of results that apparently malfunction. What's the latest do you know about?
Payne: Yes, that was a story I worked on with Miles Parks of NPR. So it's a new app that the Iowa Democratic Party used for this cycle. They also used an app in 2016. But this year, there was a new developer. And so this was an app that was downloaded to precinct leaders' smartphones. The idea was for them to submit those results through their phone, and the hope was that the party would be able to get out results more quickly. We're seeing that's not the case.
Along with my colleague Miles Parks, we asked questions to the state party leadership a month ago about what vetting had been done — if law enforcement, federal officials [and] cybersecurity officials had been involved in this process. The state party said that they were doing this vetting, but they had been very close lipped about details — even about who developed the app — of fundamental basics about the construction of it out of cybersecurity concerns, the party said. Now after tonight, we are seeing these issues where a local precinct leaders across the state had difficulties in transmitting those results. And now we still don't have those numbers.
Mathieu: Well, these are some of the same questions we're asking this morning, Kate. WGBH contributor Juliette Kayyem, who used to work for the Department of Homeland Security, is asking, "Did Iowa pilot the app in the field? Did they do it with scale? Was there a stress test?" Or don't you know the answer to that?
Payne: At this point, we don't know the answer to that. Those were some of the things we were trying to get answered before caucus night. And again, the state party declined repeatedly to give specific details about the vetting that had been done. They said vetting was done and that it was in consultation with cybersecurity experts. They gave no detail on what that process was.
I will say, also, the app was made available to these local precinct leaders only within the past couple of weeks leading into caucus night. I had heard issues from some precinct leaders just in not being familiar with the process and needing more guidance — even on caucus day — in just how to operate the app. So it seems that there were a number of issues with familiarity. Other precinct leaders got error messages, as well, in trying to use the app.
Mathieu: Sounds like it was not ready for prime time. Do you have any sense of when we might start hearing numbers from the Democratic Party?
Payne: Not at this point. We did have a very brief press call with Troy Price, the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, at 1 a.m. our time. He said then that the party was in the process of manually verifying all the precinct results and earlier this morning said that they expect to have the numbers out later today. And again, they've emphasized that this is not a hack or an intrusion. They say it is a reporting issue with the app itself and not a hack.
Mathieu: The campaigns certainly are not very pleased about this, for obvious reasons. Are you hearing reactions from the campaigns? Could we have a lawsuit if this goes on longer than a couple of hours? This is pretty critical information.
Payne: I can't speak to any lawsuit, but certainly these candidates have spent months — some of them working on a year — in Iowa. A tremendous amount of effort, a tremendous amount of time [and] money. Some of these candidates really had an Iowa-first campaign strategy and were really betting on this state and historically, the boost that has been available to candidates that do well in this state.
To not even be able to try the case on the merits of the results out of Iowa is a huge blow for these candidates. Joe Biden's campaign in particular has been very vocal and very critical, demanding answers from the Iowa Democratic Party. So we'll see if we get those answers.
