New Hampshire Worked. Iowa Didn’t. Here’s Why

The 2020 Democratic primary season got off to a rough start last week in Iowa, but initial results from New Hampshire provide several reasons for optimism about the health of elections in 2020.

To start with, New Hampshire actually provided initial results: 87% of precincts reported returns by the end of election night. At the same time last Monday, zero precincts had reported in Iowa. What’s more, there were few reports of problems at the polls. While some precincts experienced long lines, especially in areas experiencing a surge of new registrants, there were few if any reports of errors in vote totals or problems with election technology.

There were several reasons New Hampshire avoided the pitfalls of Iowa.

Importantly, New Hampshire’s primary was run by state and local election officials, while the Iowa Caucuses were run by the respective political parties. Election administration is an increasingly professionalized field requiring specialized training and equipment. Election officials at the state and local level have been working tirelessly since 2016 to prepare for 2020 elections and the field has made great strides towards modernizing and securing the vote. Political parties simply lack the necessary staff, expertise, and resources to execute an election properly.

New Hampshire was able to leverage these gains. New Hampshire voters were able to vote on the same certified and tested equipment that they are accustomed to using in all other local, state, and federal elections. Moreover, election officials tallied and reported the initial results as usual, which prevented unexpected technology issues.

In contrast, the Iowa Democratic Party couldn’t keep up with the demands of a modern election. The results reporting app utilized by the state party for the caucus was untested, unsecure, and deployed without the necessary training for local, volunteer precinct officials. And these issues were further compounded by new rules put in place to increase the transparency of the tallying process, which required additional data reporting after each round of voting. Despite these efforts, turnout in Iowa remained largely unchanged from 2016, while turnout in New Hampshire has already surpassed 2016 rates and may approach the historic rate set during the 2008 primary.

Avoiding the mistakes made in Iowa is important for voter confidence. New Hampshire—an early and much watched state each presidential primary season—was an important course correction going into 2020. Election officials should be actively managing expectations for the reporting of initial election results within an expected timeframe, as any deviation from the norm can be delegitimizing for the entire process.

While the Iowa situation was unique, what happened when the initial tallies were delayed was telling. It resulted in several media cycles focused on an “election meltdown” where multiple candidates were able to claim victory and sow distrust in the fairness of the process and the outcome. Accusations of fraud and cheating ran rampant across Twitter in the days after the Iowa Caucuses even though there is no evidence that vote totals were intentionally misrepresented or stolen.

We all need to quickly learn lessons from Iowa. The Democratic field now turns its attention to the Nevada Caucuses, another state where the parties run the presidential nominating contest. A key question will be whether the Nevada Democratic Party is able to react to the issues exposed in Iowa.  To that end, Nevada had initially planned to use the same app developed for Iowa to return Caucus results to the Nevada Democratic Party. After Iowa, the app was abandoned in favor of a new—and hopefully better—system, but with so little time before voting, the Nevada Democratic Party has its work cut out for it.

Voters are looking to early contests for signals about the credibility of elections in 2020. While some reforms, like replacing caucuses with primaries, are not feasible this election cycle, the early primaries are likely to have an impact on voter confidence. Fortunately, we aren’t expecting to see many meltdowns as bad as Iowa, especially where election officials are in charge.