Dear DNC and State Party Organizations,
No matter how you feel about what happened in 2016, whether or not the criticisms that were faced were in fact completely warranted, somewhat warranted or not warranted at all you have entered the 2020 campaign season with at least a patina of distrust. It is clear your organizations realized this after 2016, hence the Unity and Reform effort. You are to be applauded for engaging in that effort in fact.
Obviously, however, you still have a lot of work to do. Here is a brief list of things that happened in Iowa that no rational person should have ever considered OK, particularly if facing a credibility issue. The fact that these things were not considered problematic is alarming, and the decision-makers that allowed these things to occur should face significant consequences, if not simply losing their employment with the party operations.
- Do not hire a company founded and largely run by staff from one prior campaign effort. This is particularly true when members of that campaign, including the candidate themself, still have a very public grudge against one of the candidates in the current field. Those people may well be perfectly fine people, honest even, but, if you want to appear fair and transparent you can not hire them to tally the results of that election. You just can’t. Principally because, if something goes wrong, as it did in spectacular fashion Monday night, it looks shady as hell.
- Do not allow the company you hire to tally the votes to have contracts with participants in the election. The number one rule of any successful business is to retain existing customers. That is rule number 1. That means the supposed neutral arbiter you have hired to tally the results has a financial interest in certain participants doing well. Now, the company can be perfectly above board about the process they follow but they can NEVER claim to be a neutral party under those conditions. No intentional bad acts could occur. That does not matter if something goes wrong, as it did in spectacular fashion Monday night, it looks shady as hell.
- If you fuck up in a major way and withhold ANY reporting for an entire evening, do not release only partial data a full day later. Only release clearly complete data. This is not really a matter of corrupt intent, but you have campaigns shaping a narrative. When you release partial data that may or may not reflect the final outcome, it will likely fit one of the narratives created by a campaign out there. If the data matches the narrative being pushed by the client of the company hired to tally the votes, it looks shady as hell.
If you want to appear transparent and not appear potentially corrupt or clearly biased you just absolutely can not do the first two things. You just can’t do it. I am not sure how you folks did not know this going into this Iowa Caucus debacle, but hopefully, this is a lesson, one that should not have needed to have been given, learned.
Do better. We need you to.