Monday's Iowa Caucus was far from smooth and a Denver-based mobile app is at the center of attention amid the chaos.
At nearly 1,700 sites across Iowa, caucusgoers gathered on Feb. 3 to show support for their preferred candidates in the first stop of the race for the Democratic nomination.
Results are traditionally revealed on Monday night, but issues with reporting caucus totals have caused a delay that has stretched into Wednesday.
The company many are blaming for the delay? Denver-based Shadow Inc.
The Iowa Democratic Party contracted Shadow to build an app to help compile results across the state's precincts. The company, which was founded last year, builds tools for Democratic candidates and progressive causes.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Shadow Inc. CEO Gerard Niemira said the issues weren't a result of the app breaking down, rather in the way it transmitted data to the Iowa Democratic Party.
In response to the criticism lobbed from across the country, Niemira released a statement on the company's website further explaining the issues.
"We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night's Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers," he wrote. "As the Iowa Democratic Party has confirmed, the underlying data and collection process via Shadow's mobile caucus app was sound and accurate, but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the IDP was not."
He went on to explain that the issues didn't impact the results data and the company would learn from this experience.
"The goal of the app was to ensure accuracy in a complex reporting process. We will apply the lessons learned in the future, and have already corrected the underlying technology issue. We take these issues very seriously, and are committed to improving and evolving to support the Democratic Party's goal of modernizing its election processes," Niemira wrote.
Following Monday's debacle, The Nevada Democratic Party said that it will not use Shadow to power its state caucuses later this month, despite already paying tens of thousands of dollars to the Democrat-affiliated technology company, according to a CNN report.
Shadow's exact presence in Denver is unclear, as the company states that it has offices in New York, Denver and Seattle. Currently, Shadow is hiring for four open positions on its website, each with the possibility of candidates working in Denver.
As of Wednesday morning, results are still trickling in without a clear Iowa Caucus winner declared. Stay tuned for updates.
