You’re on Facebook. Your friend shares a link to ABC, celebrating Pete Buttigieg’s win in the popular vote. You, confused, make a comment linking to the New York Times, which shows a different popular vote total.

Arguing with different mainstream sources, a friendship is soured and each supporter hardens in their negative feelings about their preferred candidate. Pete is called a cheat, the Sanders supporter walks away accused of being a conspiracy theorist. Both feel crazy, coming off four years being gaslit daily by Trump’s administration.

Sounds pretty bad, right? Well, that’s the current reality of media coverage of the Iowa caucus. We’ve got to talk about it now before we fumble the general election just as bad. We can’t afford to alienate supporters of any candidate and it’s hard to find common ground when we have conflicting facts.

Inaccurate Iowa Caucus results live on ABC as of 2/8/2020 9:11 pm (Last screenshotted February 7, 2020, 12:40 PM)

The Iowa Democratic Party reported popular vote totals, via the New York Times (Screenshot 2/10/20 12:26am)

Screenshot updates since this article was originally published:

Iowa Caucus results live on ABC as of 2/9/2020 8:45 pm, using updated but still wrong SDE totals

The Iowa Democratic Party reported popular vote totals, via the New York Times (Screenshot 2/20/20 8:45pm)

Iowa Caucus results live on ABC as of 2/20/2020 8:40 pm, again updated but still contested SDE totals

Hi. I’m just a normal person who worked in information architecture, not on staff or organizing with any campaign or org. I’m trying to get the word out about something I see as a major problem, for all candidates, especially if it translates into the general. Apologies for the length, but it’s complicated.

I originally posted this on Reddit, in a couple places, where it was removed. Why? I don’t know, perhaps people were abusing the report function. I really try to keep the tin foil tucked away, but sometimes it’s hard. This isn’t one side or another, as per the screenshot below it was also removed from r/SandersForPresident

Oh. Ok then. Believe me, I’m tired of talking about it.

Anyway. We do need to clamp down on conspiracy theories on all sides and make sure the general election in November is fair.

Many feel the “DNC” manufactured a narrative to help Pete win Iowa. I don’t actually think the blame goes there. The election was a shitshow, but I think the app developers and the establishment are more inept here than just corrupt (well, perhaps nepotism over skill is a kind of corruption, but follow me for a moment here), and honestly probably genuinely surprised by the math issues they didn’t expect.

But the coverage exposed major issues outside of the vote itself.

The mainstream media’s top notch political reporting, via CNN.

First off, while I do have a problem with caucuses, that’s more from a disability standpoint. As a disabled person, I’ve observed a couple, but was very lucky I didn’t have to actually vote through them as it would have been impossible for me in one instance that I partially observed.

And as for them “always working this way”, concerns about it being not the best method are why the party agreed to adopt the reforms that now report the popular vote on first and second alignment and collect more paperwork about how the math was calculated in each precinct. But I understand the party rules.

Basically, to those who haven’t heard it described a million times by now, you group with your candidate, and if you don’t have enough people to reach a “viable” percentage, you can align to a different candidate in the second round (you are only supposed to re-align if you are not viable and candidates are not supposed to drop under viable, per the rules.)

This process is used to pick “state delegate equivalents”, basically deciding the actual people who get to go to the party convention and assign the national delegates. This is a system that was designed in the 1800s and refined over the years, most notably in the last cycle in 2016 when the popular vote reporting requirements were added.

Now, I believe much of the chaos with reporting was because it was the official position of the party since basically ever that the SDEs were a good indicator of popular vote. In 2016, many outlets estimated a popular vote by multiplying SDEs.

We now know, with obvious data that we earned through instituting reforms, that it is NOT a good metric of popular vote, being quite off when it came down to it. So it’s quite possible the process will be further reformed.

NPR’s tweet, emphasizing that no results were available yet to the campaigns or public.

Regardless of how the votes are calculated, no official results were in when Pete Buttigieg declared victory on stage and on twitter.

Pete’s victory declaration, was seen by many as preemptive. Surrogates in various campaigns (you can find op eds from representatives of Warren, Biden, and Yang fairly easily) and several candidates openly derided the decision.

For me, following politics perhaps a little too closely, I was most frustrated because I remembered just earlier several campaigns had planted a story in Politico where they said

An unnamed campaign whose official was quoted in Politico. The Biden campaign had a quote on record.

They accused the Sanders campaign of planning to release vote totals before the official totals were out. Here’s the concern:

Note, this seems to be that they’re saying broadcasting caucuses would be a problem, but that’s actually ok by the rules — CNN broadcast several caucuses live in this election and past ones and talked about a lot of vote estimates. We had entrance polling too!

We now know that while the Sanders campaign did know they were ahead in popular vote and their math showed them ahead in SDEs (and it still does, though we deserve an independent audit), they did not declare victory without any official numbers out. Maybe this article kept them from doing so, and if so kudos. However, Pete Buttigieg did.

Sanders later that night released partial totals showing that campaign in the lead, but didn’t declare victory until several days later — once a lot of SDE math was publicly called into question. The AP “remains unable to declare a winner because it believes the results may not be fully accurate and are still subject to potential revision.” It didn’t seem anyone was happy with this, Pete’s unexpectedly strong finish lost in the hubbub, Sanders never really getting to celebrate a strong turnout. Plenty of losers, no clear winner.

Coverage on MSNBC, using some party language guarnteed to stoke conspiracy

Let’s set aside the party and the campaigns for a second. The media has it’s own independent responsibility to remain objective and report. With regards to the vote totals, that means they have a responsibility to report SDE percentages labeled as such and NOT labeled as “votes”. If they choose to report just one metric and not the others, that’s one thing, but to represent one metric as a different one, actually confuses a process when it comes to, say, gathering research to decide if it’s worth it to vote to reform the process.

Results on the caucus as seen on google.com when searching “iowa caucus” or “iowa caucus results” as of 2/8/2020 9:19

About the horse race reporting, the IDP actually HAS now gone on record saying they understand there are errors but they are a “matter of record” on “legal documents” so they won’t be correcting them without a party recanvass. Errors are reported in a full 10 percent of precincts, according to the New York Times, but the party only fixed a couple before re-releasing results.

“The incorrect math on the Caucus Math Worksheets must not be changed to ensure the integrity of the process,” said the party’s lawyer Shayla McCormally, according to an email sent by chairman of the party Troy Price to its central committee members.

That may be, but many of these errors are math errors that are easy to understand as errors — why should we have to pay (by donating to a political campaign) to have them corrected when you can simply… have them corrected and reported? It doesn’t require modifying the original documents. It seems insane that we would have to go through some intense legal process to have the party embrace basic math.

I care about verifying election results because it’s an integral part of electoral organizing. The press should too and we’re all sitting here waiting for this. Bernie supporters are being gaslit when they have every right to be upset about the coverage and the blatant public errors — especially since this exposes that Hillary’s 0.3 percent SDE win in 2016, which was widely reported as a popular vote win for her and set the pace for the whole campaign, was also probably not a popular vote win. (Also, at the time, news reported similar issues, which kind of were also brushed off in the relentless horse race reporting.)

The 2016 Iowa Caucus Results displayed as “Votes” at the Boston Globe. It’s harder to find screenshots of how it was displayed at the time, but several organizations used the “SDEs multiplied by 100” technique to label “popular vote”

Aren’t these issues that we need to approach in good faith and try to solve? Why should we just “move on” and tut tut at people raising concerns and just say “Pete won” and paste a link to an article that is blatantly misreporting the facts? Either we care about truth or we don’t, and if we’re going to be pissed at people for doing math and wanting words to be correct, we’re absolutely doomed in November.

The landing view on an article at NBC

Ok, we talked about why we care, now let’s get into it. Pete’s widely reported to be at a 0.1% lead in the error prone SDE calculations, but 3.5 percent of the vote is the Sanders lead in the popular vote — that’s 35 times the margin Pete is winning in SDEs in. The SDEs are literally just a party mechanic, the popular vote literally means more people voted for the candidate.

Going by the current NYT numbers, Pete is leading in SDEs by 0.1 percent. He is behind in the first round popular vote by 3.5 percent. To state that another way, his lead in the metric that does not directly represent voters is 35 times smaller than the lead Sanders has in popular vote.

And again, the mainstream media is absolutely in agreement that more than 0.1 percent of the SDE calculations are in doubt.

Jake Tapper at CNN

https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1225619544514998272

A CNN analysis shows errors in the count reported by the Iowa Democratic Party. Multiple counties have reported a different number of state delegate equivalents than they were supposed to have, even though all precincts in the county have been tallied.

Article at CNN: CNN analysis shows errors in Iowa results count

Nate Cohn (the NYT numbers guy) https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1225603454296633344

Article at New York Times: Iowa Caucus Results Riddled With Errors and Inconsistencies

The results released by the Iowa Democratic Party on Wednesday were riddled with inconsistencies and other flaws. According to a New York Times analysis, more than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, that were missing data or that were not possible under the complex rules of the Iowa caucuses.

NBC: NBC News review of Iowa caucus vote finds potential errors, inconsistencies

Numbers don’t add up. The Decision Desk said it identified at least 77 precincts, or 4.5 percent, where the total votes for what is known as “reallocated candidate preference” is greater than the total votes for “initial candidate preference” — a difference that makes no sense.

AP: Amid irregularities, AP unable to declare winner in Iowa

However, there is evidence the party has not accurately tabulated some of its results, including those released late Thursday that the party reported as complete. The AP’s tabulation of the party’s results are at 99% of precincts reporting, with data missing from one of 1,765 precincts, among other issues.

Daniel Nichanian, Editor of The Appeal

https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/1225820114899128320

Update from Daniel, he now says:

The IDP & DNC should state that the exact SDE results are unreliable, & cannot be used to allocate national delegates. There is no “right” result to be discovered here. It’d be a mirage of certainty or a performance of accuracy, like when polls pile on decimals. Some reported results are verifiably incorrect but also uncorrectable. Turnout #s don’t match. Too late to ask viable groups to not realign.But this does NOT allow IDP to leave up correctable nonsense. 31 is not superior to 50; precincts can’t will themselves extra delegates.

Second Update from Daniel:

Daniel Nichanian, Editor of The Appeal https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/1226660649956147201

He‘s listed 7 major errors at this moment and is continuing to do so. Honestly you may want to just go directly to his feed because he is actively finding more issues, with a cadre of respected journalists assistance, as I type this. You can view the thread with detailed reporting and links to the results at the IDP site. The errors reported by all these respected reporters and outlets are still there. You can verify this yourself. I did.

If this is all confusing, and you’re not a numbers person, that’s precisely why it’s so easy to manufacture a media narrative. The problem is precisely that people who are not paying as much attention are able to just say “Pete won” as a fact when there is no reason beyond esoteric rules for the election to be called on SDEs. They can back this up by linking to mainstream ”credible” reporting.

It’s not right to say he “won” when it’s currently in doubt, obvious issues have not been fixed, and the only thing we know for sure is that he’s thousands behind in the popular vote.

Bernie obsessive people seem crazy, and are getting a little crazy because that’s a natural reaction to being told obviously wrong things are right. It drives you crazy! And it’s making us get into stupid arguments with friends who support Pete. It’s bad for Pete too!

It’s just wrong. I may think all this means a greater chance Bernie will win (Biden got bodied) and agree with the horse race analysis, but I’m not ecstatic because this bodes extremely ill for our democracy if people are literally reporting the wrong facts on our elections. If we can’t stay on top of this, how the hell are we going to deal with Trump?

Check out this example, look at the votes ABC is reporting in a widely shared link:

Pete | 26% | 56,402 Votes Sanders | 26% | 56,244 Votes

Iowa Caucus results, live on ABC as of 2/8/2020 9:11 pm (Last updated February 7, 2020, 12:40 PM)

These have NOTHING to do with reality. Those are more voters than turned out for anyone. Seriously, this like is the “google translate back and forth from random languages” method of reporting politics.

The New York Times reports, based on the Iowa Democratic Party:

Pete | 37,557 Votes First Alignment | 43,195 Votes in second Alignment Sanders | 43,671 Votes First Alignment | 45,826 Votes in second alignment

Via New York Times, screenshot from 2/8/2020 9:50pm

ABC literally shows Pete ahead in the popular vote. With numbers well above who turned out for any candidate.

It literally says Pete got 56,402 votes which is 12,731 votes more than Sanders got in the first round: 43,671. Since the actual Sanders win is a 6,084 vote advantage, reporting numbers like this drastically confuses readers.

Update: The IDP has released new results, with most of the same errors, in time to declare Pete the victor for around the third time. ABC’s site now says Pete got 56,429 votes, again, more people than voted for anyone.

Iowa Caucus results live on ABC as of 2/9/2020 8:45 pm, using updated but still wrong SDE totals.

I just need to stress this. Sanders’ win in the popular vote is not small, nor is it under any doubt. It is accepted by all parties.

Again, the Sanders popular vote lead is 35 times the amount of lead being reported for Pete by SDEs. It is twice as many votes as Steyer got total. It is 6 times as many votes than Bloomberg, Gabbard, Bennet, Patrick, and Delaney got combined.

You’d think that was news! But it was almost completely obscured in the coverage, and now everyone except the Sanders camp seems to be in a hurry to forget it.

The small text on ABC under there says they got their fake numbers by using “State delegate equivalents, multiplied by 100” — the sometimes used older process we now know to be wildly inaccurate. Google (when you type results into search) does something similar as I illustrated above. Some articles are updated now, but many many secondary reporting articles reports Pete as leading in votes, and many newscasters have said so. CNN introduced him as the victor live on TV, right as he walked on stage at a town hall, while their own reporters disputed the results.

This is incredibly misleading. We should be united in demanding fair reporting of our media, regardless of your position on the candidates. Otherwise we won’t know where to organize to beat trump and we won’t be prepared to handle his own disinformation in November. We have a history of regularly invading countries when their results look this bad.

You can decide for yourself if winning in the popular vote means “you win”, but if you think it’s not a problem that people are being told the wrong vote totals — not just a handful of people but millions of people who read sites like ABC and listen to cable news — if you think that’s not a problem, than we are on fundamentally different sides. Either you have truth and democracy, or… you don’t.

Note: As I re-edit this and get it ready to post on Medium, it’s now being reported that they aren’t even actually showing all the results at “100%”

Daniel Nichanian, editor at The Appeal, on twitter.

If you’re a Democrat, remember, it’s not that Pete didn’t win, it’s that this looks so bad that Republicans can point to this to say the Democrats steal elections, etc, and all kinds of other nonsense. They will convince many, because this literally clearly does not make sense.

It’s easiest to put a lie between truth, and it’s true that the media is reporting errors and it’s true that Sanders won in the popular vote but many establishment figures say he lost — these can be used to drive deep deep wedges into our party unless we all unite on basic facts.

As it is right now, because I’ve been responding to comments too quickly to try and stem the tide of disinformation, I’m literally banned on the most popular political messaging board on the planet.

I’m not saying it’s happening in this instance, but as a tech worker, I need you to know that it’s not so hard for bad actors to create giant arrays of accounts to astroturf wrong information, and then for real people to run into trouble on social media sites when they try to respond. If we can’t push back on social media and the mainstream media refuses to carefully report elections… well, if we don’t deal with this now, while it’s just inner party conflict, we’re going to be fucked later. To put it gently.

Me, being banned from pushing back on disinformation

Even if you’re not a Democrat, I can’t imagine this feels good when you realize how off this all is.

Update 2/9/2020 8:00pm: IDP has released new results, but they’re still full of errors. It’s the party’s legal opinion that the errors are “legal record” and cannot be changed. This seems to indicate there would be no recourse is someone simply decided they wanted their precinct to get a couple extra delegates (which happened numerically) regardless of the rules everyone agreed to. If the rules are such that anyone cheating can’t be caught and no obvious errors cannot be fixed, I honestly don’t know what to do about that. As of the moment AP has not declared a winner.

Update 2/9/2020 8:30pm: The Sanders campaign has asked for a recanvass.

Update 2/10/2020: NYT followup reporting — How the Iowa Caucuses Became an Epic Fiasco for Democrats. The following refers to the latest “corrected” SDE calculations.