“Caucus chaos again? Experts fear vote-counting problems in Nevada”

NBC News:

A new early-voting system, high turnout and questions about a never-before-used digital tool being used to process results could threaten the success of the Nevada Democratic caucuses on Saturday, election experts told NBC News.

“I don’t see how any technologist or any party official or any political scientist can promise that this will turn out OK,” said Mark Lindeman, the director of science and technology policy for Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit group that advocates for election accuracy and transparency.

“There are too many tools and procedures that are being rolled out, some at the last minute,” he continued. “And my impression is that the people on the ground who are charged with implementing these procedures and using these tools are not confident they can do it.”…

The Nevada Democratic Party said it will be using a digital tool they are calling a “caucus calculator” to help process the results. According to state party officials, the tool is a Google Forms program that has been pre-loaded with early vote results specific to that precinct. It’s also pre-loaded with formulas that will be used to calculate delegate allocation.

Caucus volunteers — who staff the precincts and run the caucuses — began receiving hands-on training with iPads that contain the tool on Tuesday. The training will continue until Saturday, according to the Nevada Democratic Party.

Party officials have repeatedly said that nothing used during the Iowa caucuses — including the smartphone app that caused a significant delay in reporting results due to a “coding issue” — will be used during the Nevada caucuses. Officials also said they had independent security experts test the process, but could not say what the testing looked like.

If the iPads fail for any reason, the volunteers will use paper backups.

“I think we have reason to be worried,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California-Irvine and the editor of Election Law Blog. “As was the case in Iowa, you have the party doing multiple new things at once. Here, one is new technology, and two is new rules, with the early voting.”

“It makes me queasy,” he added, calling the system “incredibly complex.”

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