Multiple county chairs blamed the app for the delayed reporting of results.
Holly Christine Brown, the Asian/Pacific Islander caucus chair for the Iowa Democratic Party, said she was only appointed precinct chair last week and first saw the app on Friday evening.
“We were just given access to the app and told, ‘Play around in there a little bit,’ and that was about as much training as we got,” Brown told NPR’s Rachel Martin. “We were able to call in and ask questions, but there was no real training on the app.”
Brown said the problems with Monday’s caucuses will “absolutely” increase calls to change Iowa’s system. “People are very upset about how this happened and how this played out,” she said.
Elesha Gayman, the Scott County Democratic chair, said the app was difficult to use for older and younger people alike.
“It was unique; it’s not something you can download in the app store,” she said. “You actually had to fill out a form. In addition to that, you got a series of PIN numbers. And so, yeah, there was a lot of layers and I think that absolutely mucked it up. Anecdotally, a few of the people I do know who used the app successfully were younger people. But I do know some young people that also had troubles, just so many layers.”
Marjie Foster, the Democratic chair of Decatur County, said her caucus “had absolutely no glitches with the app. Our app process worked great. Our chair was very well-prepared. He had trained and tested, and he was on target with it. So we had no issues with the app.”
But the app didn’t work for Des Moines County Democratic Party Co-Chairman Tom Courtney.