Avalanche of issues takes out Iowa plan for high-tech caucus
IOWA CITY, Iowa — What went wrong with the Iowa Democratic Party’s high-tech plan to speed up the reporting of caucus night results? Pretty much everything.
A little-known startup company was picked by party leaders to develop a mobile app for reporting unofficial results, with key details such as the name of the firm kept confidential. While security experts tested the program, many of the people who needed to use it at 1,678 precinct locations across Iowa had little to no training. And a “coding issue” within the app muddied the results, prompting party officials to halt reporting and move to a back-up system to verify the counts.
When it came time to launch the app on Monday night, there was widespread confusion and frustration. It’s similar to the sort of chaos election security experts had been warning about. But while much of the attention has been on foreign interference like Russia’s effort four years ago, the problems in Iowa highlighted how technical errors can be just as serious. It also underscored the risk of relying on voting technologies that election integrity advocates consider unreliable.
“If I were prone to Twitter, I would use the hashtag #IToldYouSo,” said University of Iowa computer science professor Douglas W. Jones, an election security expert. “It looks like the worst-case scenario happened.”
Jones, a voting security consultant and co-author of “Broken Ballots,” had warned before the caucuses that the Iowa Democratic Party’s plan to deploy the unproven app during the high-stakes event was risky and had been undermined by excessive secrecy and a lack of public confidence in its ability.
Back on stand, Weinstein accuser declares: ‘He
is my rapist’
NEW YORK — A day after breaking down in tears, a key accuser at Harvey Weinstein’s trial returned to the witness stand Tuesday and endured a final day of withering cross-examination focused on the complex nature of their relationship, defiantly telling jurors: “I want the jury to know that he is my rapist.”
The woman was back in a New York City courtroom for a third day as Weinstein’s lawyers finished an exhaustive review of friendly, sometimes flirtatious emails she sent the film producer after she says he raped her twice in 2013.
They also played a recording she made of herself telling a psychic in April 2014 that Weinstein “had tried to cross boundaries in my life but I don’t allow him to.”
Weinstein’s lawyers contend that evidence points to a consensual relationship and shows that the 34-year-old former actress was a manipulator who grin-and-bared her way through sexual encounters with Weinstein because she enjoyed the perks of knowing him.
“I know the history of my relationship with him,” she pushed back. “I know it was complicated and difficult. But that doesn’t change the fact that he raped me.”
Senate so far split neatly along party lines on impeachment
WASHINGTON — The Senate is so far cleaving neatly along party lines in advance of Wednesday’s virtually certain votes to acquit President Donald Trump on two impeachment charges, with just two or three undecided members even considering breaking with their party.
A leading GOP moderate, Susan Collins of Maine, announced she will vote to acquit Trump, leaving Utah Sen. Mitt Romney as the only potential GOP vote to convict Trump of abusing his office and stonewalling Congress.
Collins said “it was wrong” for Trump to ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, but that Trump’s conduct, however flawed, does not warrant “the extreme step of immediate removal from office.” Collins voted to acquit former President Bill Clinton at his trial in 1999 .
More typical of the GOP side was Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who again slammed the impeachment drive of House Democrats as “the most rushed, least fair and least thorough” in history and confirmed that he will vote to acquit Trump.
The trial is cruising to impeachment tallies that will fall short of even a majority of the GOP-held Senate, much less the two-thirds required to remove Trump from office and install Vice President Mike Pence.
From wire sources
Tesla stock is soaring. Madness or visionary investing?
DETROIT — Eight months after it seemed headed for the corporate junkyard, Tesla is now worth more than General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler combined, even though the Big Three together sell more cars and trucks in two weeks than Tesla does in a whole year.
In a reversal of fortune analysts find amazing if not nutty, the stock of the electric vehicle and solar panel maker has rocketed to nearly $900, up over 30% in just the past two days. It is now worth five times what it was in June, when there were whispers of bankruptcy surrounding the company founded by the erratic visionary Elon Musk.
Among the world’s automakers, Tesla, with a market value Tuesday just shy of $160 billion, ranks behind only Toyota, at $232 billion.
Many investors see it as justified for a company that is leading the world in electric vehicle sales amid an expected global transition from the internal combustion engine to batteries.
Others see the meteoric rise as just plain crazy for a company that’s never turned a full-year profit.
California may pause student fitness tests due to bullying
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to pause physical education tests for students for three years due to concerns over bullying and the test discriminating against disabled and non-binary students. The move also comes after annual test results show a growing percentage of students scoring not healthy.
H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the Department of Finance, said the state has received complaints that the current examination’s measurement of body mass index is discriminatory to non-binary students. A measurement calculated from weight and height, BMI screenings require students to select “male” or “female,” he said.
Annual state reports of the fitness test since the 2014-2015 school year show a steady decline in the share of students scoring healthy, according to a review by The Associated Press. Students’ scores have particularly dropped in the category of the fitness test that measures “aerobic capacity” — which can be tested in a one-mile run or by other methods. Other categories also test for flexibility and exercises like push-ups.
In the last five years, the percentage of fifth graders scoring healthy in the aerobic category has dropped by 3.3 percentage points. In seventh and ninth grades, the drops are 4.4 percentage points and 3.8 percentage points, respectively. Meanwhile, the percentage of students identified as “needing improvement” and having a “health risk” went up: by 3.3 percentage points among fifth graders, 4.4 for seventh graders and 3.8 among ninth graders.
The Department of Education did not immediately comment on those results.
