Trump Allies Use Iowa To Sow Distrust In The Voting System
Widespread problems in tallying the results of Monday’s Democratic caucuses in Iowa have caused confusion in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary, as officials have delayed releasing results well into Tuesday. Into the vacuum stepped President Donald Trump’s sons, his surrogates and right-wing media allies, who quickly sought to push disinformation that the caucuses were somehow rigged.
“The fix is in… AGAIN. And we get to watch it play out on live tv. Incredible,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted.
“Mark my words, they are rigging this thing,” Eric Trump tweeted.
“Quality control = rigged?” Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign director, tweeted.
The truth of what happened appears to be much more mundane. There were numerous technical and logistical issues with the reporting of results, in large part related to an app that the Democratic Party commissioned to help log the tallies.
In sending out groundless conspiracy theories, Trump’s sons and campaign attempted to turn a technical problem into a way to undermine faith in the voting process and smear the president’s political rivals.
“It’s particularly a concern for this kind of disinformation to come from those close to the president,” said Larry Norden, director of the Election Reform Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s bad enough this kind of social media environment where disinformation can spread easily, but when you have it from sources that many rely on, it’s particularly dangerous.”
There is no proof for the serious allegation that Democratic officials had interfered with vote totals and potentially violated election laws. And there’s no indication the votes are lost or nonexistent because of the app failure ― they exist as hard-copy paper ballots that will remain as evidence of caucus results.
The Iowa Democratic Party says the app had a coding problem related to the transmission of results, but did accurately collect the results...
