【Tayuan】

UPDATE: Feb. 4,Tayuan 2020, 12:41 p.m. EST On Tuesday afternoon, the Nevada Democratic Party announced it would no longer use the same app that was used in Iowa. Our original story has been updated to reflect this news as well as include Shadow's statement.

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Nevada is doing its damndest to avoid a repeat of the app meltdown that brought Iowa's caucus reporting to a halt Monday night.

CNN reported that the app created by Shadow, Inc. (yes, really) that threw the Iowa caucuses into disarray would be used for Nevada's Feb. 22 caucus. But by Tuesday afternoon, the Nevada Democratic Party announced it was no longer planning on using the app.

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The party is "currently evaluating the best path forward" including a handful of back-up plans, though there's no word on what those plans are.

The Intercept'sLee Fang reported that the Iowa Democratic Party shelled out more than $63,000 to Shadow. The Nevada Democratic Party reportedly paid $58,000 to the same company.

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SEE ALSO: Iowa caucus results delayed thanks to 'inconsistencies' with voting app

So what exactly happened? Pieces of the story are still trickling out but, so far, here's what we've pieced together.

Precinct chairs were supposed to use the app to deliver caucus results directly to the Democratic Party. Reports surfaced as early as Monday afternoon, hours before the caucus even began, that there might be issues with the app, concerns that were clearly borne out Monday night.

When those problems forced precinct captains to call results in to the party's state headquarters, phone lines got tied up with some captains on hold for hours. One precinct captain told CNN that when they were finally able to upload a screenshot of results within the app, the app recorded different tallies than had been reported on the screenshot.

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By early Tuesday morning, those issues were coming in to focus. The Associated Press reported that "coding issues" within the app were to blame for what went down and says those issues have now been fixed.

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Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price said in a statement Tuesday, "We have every indication that our systems were secure and there was not a cyber security intrusion."

Price continued, "As part of our investigation, we determined with certainty that the underlying data collected via the app was sound. While the app was recording data accurately, it was reporting out only partial data. We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed. The application’s reporting issue did not impact the ability of precinct chairs to report data accurately."

Not helping matters? The fact that the Democratic Party didn't properly test the app on a large scale before Monday night, according to the New York Times, which, well, facepalm. Sources told the Timesthat the app was created in only the last two months, which dovetails with what The Intercept's Fang reported.

By lunch time Tuesday, the party announced most results from Iowa would finally be released by 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday afternoon.

SEE ALSO: Apple News' 2020 election hub shows promise despite a few missteps

Before Nevada announced it would ditch the troubled app, at least one candidate's team had already made the argument against using it.

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Later Tuesday, while the country awaited the results, Shadow's Twitter account sent out a multi-part statement.

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Among other things, Shadow claimed that there were no issues with any of the actual data and that the results were unaffected. The issue, instead, was in transmitting the results to the party.

While Nevada looks like it will side-step the disaster that hit Iowa, a whole lot of head-shaking remains. After all, you'd think a major political party would really have taken the step of testing the app and working out its bugs beforeit was put in to use. At least Iowa's loss is Nevada's gain.

Or maybe this just paves the way for a differentmeltdown in Nevada because, well, what else should we expect in 2020?

Topics Cybersecurity Politics