Now there's a tight window to come up with an alternative before the February caucuses.
DES MOINES, Iowa — The Democratic National Committee will recommend scrapping state plans to offer virtual, telephone-based caucuses in 2020 due to security concerns, sources tell The Associated Press.
Iowa and Nevada created the virtual option to meet a DNC mandate that states open caucuses to more people, but two sources with knowledge of party leaders’ deliberations say there are concerns that the technology used for virtual caucuses could be subject to hacking. Iowa and Nevada’s Democratic Parties announced in July that they would allow voters to cast their caucus votes over the telephone in February 2020 instead of showing up at the traditional neighborhood caucus meetings. They were trying to meet a national party mandate to widen participation in the caucuses, especially evening shift-workers and people with disabilities, whom critics of the caucuses have long said are blocked from the process.
Iowans would have had six times to participate by phone, whereas Nevada would have offered two days of telephone-based voting. “There was, at least by my perception, a lot of uncertainty both from the standpoint of the Iowa officials and the standpoint of some of the technical people at the DNC that Iowa’s proposal did not offer appropriate and sufficient protection from hacking and other disruptions and other attempts to affect the outcome,” said Don Fowler, a member of the committee and former national party chairman under President Bill Clinton.
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