Shadow Inc. Cops To Failure Of App To Deliver Iowa Caucus Results

'Shadow’s mobile caucus app was sound and accurate, but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the [Iowa Democratic Party] was not,” the company said in a series of tweets.

Shadow Inc., the company behind the app that delayed the results of the Democratic presidential caucus in Iowa, has copped to the failure of its software to deliver the results as it had promised.

“As the Iowa Democratic Party has confirmed, the underlying data and collection process via Shadow’s mobile caucus app was sound and accurate, but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the IDP was not,” the company said in a series of statements on its Twitter account, @shadowincHQ.

We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night’s Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers.

— Shadow, Inc. (@ShadowIncHQ) February 4, 2020

The company, which is led by several former members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, has come under fire from the left as the failure of its app resulted in no official winner in Iowa. While Pete Buttigieg claimed a victory, less than 2 percent of the votes were counted. The candidates have been forced to move on to battle in New Hampshire where the primary is a week away.

[RELATED: Former Hillary Clinton, Obama Operatives Behind Failed Iowa Caucus App]

In its statement, Shadow said the issues with the app did not alter voting results, and the collection of data on the app was accurate. Where the app failed was in transmitting the data to other election workers. Shadow said the use of its app was “optional for local officials.”

“The goal of the app was to ensure accuracy in a complex reporting process,” the company stated. “We will apply the lessons learned in the future, and have already corrected the underlying technology issue. We take these issues very seriously, and are committed to improving and evolving to support the Democratic Party’s goal of modernizing its election processes.”

Shadow CEO Gerard Niemira worked for Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful campaign for president between March and November 2016 where he was “(p)romoted during the campaign to lead the small but mighty team in charge of all of the campaign’s tools for field organizers and volunteers,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

The app's failure to deliver results from caucus sites to a central reporting body, coupled with the failure of the backup phone system, left the results of the first contest of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary in limbo, with no one being awarded the lion’s share of the 41 delegates that remain up for grabs.

One Iowa MSP said this was not a technology failure so much as a human failure on the part of the company that designed the app.

“I would say this company failed, not technology failed. Everything had a single point of failure. If I was designing it, there would have been multiple clusters … that’s actually a pretty common practice nowadays,” Jason Erickson, chief operating officer at ThinkSpace IT in Harlan, Iowa, told CRN. “For example, with the phone solution we provide, our phone solution is not only on redundant servers, but at redundant data centers across the U.S. I could lose a good chunk of the U.S. and my phones would still work.”