Shadow Inc., the company that built the Iowa caucus app, is apologizing on Twitter after failures in their product led to widespread chaos Monday evening.
The app, which was designed to collect and quickly transmit caucus results to the Iowa Democratic Party, was plagued with numerous bugs and errors.
The debacle has been blamed on “coding issues” that resulted in the app only reporting out “partial data.” But according to the New York Times, the app was not widely tested prior to launch and was still being built only two days before the caucus.
In response to the issue, Shadow stated on Twitter that it regretted the delay its app had caused.
“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,” the company said.
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
Shadow’s apology, however, appears to have done little to quell the anger of voters. The company’s Twitter account also included tweets sent out prior to Monday that have only added fuel to the fire.
The company retweeted one account last month, for example, that praised the work of Shadow before ironically stating that “2020 has no idea what’s coming.”
The account behind that has since made their page private.
But the meltdown in Iowa on Monday has Twitter users much less keen on praising Shadow and its team.
“You should return the $ to the Iowa and Nevada Democratic Parties after failing so spectacularly,” user @AmericasCousin said.
You should return the $ to the Iowa and Nevada Democratic Parties after failing so spectacularly.
— Brian from Pennsylvania 🎹 (@AmericasCousin) February 4, 2020
Are you going to refund whatever the IDP paid you?
— neetsbluesky.bsky.social (@nycneets) February 4, 2020
https://twitter.com/michaelsayman/status/1224788014041157633?s=20
As of Tuesday afternoon, the winner of the Iowa caucus still has yet to be announced due to the issues stemming from the app. Democratic Party officials are reportedly preparing to release at least half of the results by the evening.
The Nevada Democrat Party, which planned to use Shadow’s app during its own caucus later this month, has since reversed its decision.
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