Shadow Inc., the company behind the app currently destroying Iowa’s plans of remaining “First in the Nation” among presidential primary contests, is
looking
for a new customer service client success representative.
Monday night, excited election watchers gathered in front of their televisions with their
snacks
to await the returns in the Iowa Democratic presidential primary caucuses. And they waited. And tweeted. And waited. And eventually (I assume) went to bed. Then woke and waited some more.
That’s because an app commissioned by the Iowa Democratic Party and designed to tally and transmit the results experienced a glitch. Precinct captains and volunteers who’d never used the app were stuck in limbo. The Nevada Democratic Party had planned to use the app in their upcoming caucuses, but announced they would abandon that plan.
Folks, this is why you don’t ignore the software update.
Shadow’s job opening is an hourly contract position. Interested candidates should be “available nights and weekends as necessary.”
I bet.
The description appears on Shadow’s website, and the company tweeted about the job in January. On Tuesday it popped up on Daybook, a listing site for jobs in politics, policy and nonprofits.
Shadow (a perfectly good and normal name for a political consultancy firm) describes itself as “a technology company dedicated to building power within the progressive movement. Our tools and platforms enable campaigns and other progressive organizations to reach a wider audience of supporters and make sense of the data available to them.”
Some political observers are using the debacle as Exhibit C of why Iowa no longer deserves to go first in the quadrennial presidential nominating process. Iowa has come under scrutiny, particularly this cycle, for playing such an outsized role while no longer reflecting the demographics of a diverse Democratic Party. Iowa’s 18-and-older population is 91.6 percent white, according to the Pew Research Center.
The caucuses have also been criticized for an exclusionary and convoluted process, made even more complex by recent rule changes. Hard to imagine that argument being ignored after this recent snafu.
