Caucus debacle could have been avoided with planning

After a year of corn dogs, bus tours and campaigns pouring nearly $50 million into media buys, Iowans finally had a chance Monday evening to weigh in on this year’s crop of presidential contenders. And as of the following morning, the results had not yet been released.

Us Floridians know the feeling. Clearly, voting hiccups are not exclusive to Florida. And the apparent lack of planning and poor communication and transparency on the part of the Iowa Democratic Party underscores the importance of election contingency planning in an environment susceptible to challenges far more significant than a glitchy reporting app.

In 2016, voting systems in two Florida counties were hacked.

In 2018, multiple counties in the panhandle were forced to grapple with one of the strongest hurricanes in recorded history just days before the November election.

Election administration is no longer just about counting votes. It is also about having procedures in place to readily respond to the threats we face – and testing them in advance to ensure they are effective.

A communications plan in the event of a delay in the reporting of results.

Daily backups of voter registration logs. Sufficient generators in the event of a power outage.

Improved firewall technology on our voting systems.

When we question our elected officials about election preparedness, we must demand answers on election security, emergency management and crisis planning. Because every time we undergo a news cycle replete with headlines about snafus reporting election results, the damage extends far beyond a single election.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously noted “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The same can be said with respect to problems at the polls – in Des Moines, in Broward or anywhere else. Voter confidence continues to decline and nearly 100 million eligible voters didn’t vote in the 2016 presidential election, once again launching someone into the White House with the support of just north of a quarter of all eligible voters.

This cannot continue.

If we gave the same level of attention to the integrity of our elections systems as we did to the Iowa caucuses, perhaps some of this week’s challenges could have been prevented. After all, there are few processes more fundamental to the soul of our nation than the process by which we make our voices heard. We should treat it as such.