DES MOINES — Reports of Iowa precinct chairs struggling to use an app designed to help tally participation in the Democratic presidential caucuses on Monday fueled conspiracy theories on social media and raised questions about how smoothly the high-stakes nominating contest would unfold.
Just hours before the beginning of the contest, the first of the 2020 elections, the headquarters of the Iowa Democratic Party received multiple calls from precinct chairs around the state reporting problems with the new app the party is using to calculate, tabulate and report results for the caucuses.
The state party said nearly all of the calls were related to user-error problems, such as precincts in areas with bad cellphone service having problems downloading or logging into the app, or others simply asking about the app’s functionality. Though the issues could possibly cause results to be delayed, the party said that it would not ultimately affect the reporting of results.
Sean Bagniewski, the Democratic Party chairman in Polk County, the most populous county in Iowa, said that only 20 percent of his 177 chairs could get into the app, but he added that there were “no malfunctions.”
“We’re telling everyone to phone it in,” Mr. Bagniewski said, referring to the hotline the party has used for decades to report results.
Yet those issues appeared to trigger speculation on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms that the app had been hacked, or that it was malfunctioning in a way that would benefit a certain candidate.
“One of the risks of introducing apps like this, and new technology more generally, into elections, is that problems occur, as they inevitably do,” said Matt Blaze, a computer-science professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies election security. He added that while the problems could be malicious or just technical glitches, they added fuel to speculation that elections were not secure. “People might see this as evidence that the whole system is rigged and not vote at all. And that is the most tragic outcome.”
The rapid escalation of rumors and confusion across social media represents an early test for a Democratic Party still grappling with the effects of disinformation in elections as the party enters a critical stage of the 2020 primary race. Though the Democratic National Committee has devoted resources and has hired outside experts to help combat disinformation ahead of the 2020 election, multiple recent elections, including the Kentucky governor’s race in November, have been targeted by malicious campaigns.
Before the Iowa caucuses, officials at the D.N.C. and outside experts both cited disinformation as the greatest threat to the security of the caucuses. In the months leading up to caucus day, the D.N.C. held biweekly trainings and sessions with state officials on combating disinformation. This week, the national party sent multiple security officials to Iowa to monitor the threat.
On Monday, state party officials emphasized that there would be no delays with results because of reported problems with the app.
“The I.D.P. is working with any precinct chairs who want to use the optional tabulation application to make sure they are comfortable with it,” Mandy McClure, the communications director for the Iowa Democratic Party, said in a statement. “We’ve always been aware that many precinct chairs prefer to call in results via a secure hotline, and have systems in place so they can do so.”
Though a mobile app was used in the 2016 caucuses, the state party chose a new vendor and app for 2020 to submit results electronically. For months, the party has been holding in-person training sessions around the state to help precinct chairs get comfortable with the app.
But the Iowa Democratic Party, knowing that some of its precinct chairs have been running caucus locations for years based on a pen-and-paper system, kept open other lines for reporting, including the same phone-based hotline that has been used for years. The party also introduced a new preference card system for the caucuses that would create a rough paper trail.
The new app was designed to improve the speed and efficiency of reporting election results, and was tested by law enforcement and security officials. But details of the app, including the type of security it uses, its basic structure and even its name, were a closely held secret by Democratic officials, leading to rumors and confusion over how, exactly, the app functioned.
“The idea of keeping an app — particularly one that is going to be used by thousands of people at a public event — secret is really a fool’s errand,” Mr. Blaze said.
Serious attackers, Mr. Blaze said, would have no trouble finding or identifying an app that had been deployed to so large a group. Secrecy, he added, only prevented cybersecurity experts and outside parties who could help Democratic officials by scrutinizing the app and offering guidance on how to secure it.
Doubts over the app on social media began to surface last week, when news reports revealed that the app had been shared with precincts across Iowa. With little other information to go on, some candidates’ supporters began circulating rumors on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms falsely claiming that the app was a ruse to allow the Democratic Party to secretly boost its candidate of choice.
Tweets claiming that results from certain districts, or for certain candidates, would be erased from the app were quickly shared, despite being debunked.
Democratic officials have struggled to contain other viral claims of voter fraud in the Iowa caucuses.
A widely disputed tweet and video by the nonprofit conservative group Judicial Watch claimed that eight Iowa counties had more caucusgoers registered to vote than actual caucusgoers in their districts. The tweet and video were dismissed by Paul Pate, the Iowa secretary of state, who posted a link to the county-by-county voter registration guide.
“They are updated monthly and available online for everyone to see,” he wrote on Twitter.
Facebook said it would not remove the video, but referred it to fact checkers. Neither Twitter nor YouTube responded to a request for comment, but as of Monday evening the video was available on all three social media platforms and had been viewed tens of thousands of times.
Social media companies have largely taken the position that they will only remove content that tries to suppress voters, such as by giving a false date or location for voting.
On the ground in Iowa, state party officials were using Twitter and other social channels to call attention to potential disinformation and to ask the public for help in identifying it.
“Reminder to folks on caucus day: if you see ANY misleading information, we want to know about it,” Kevin Geiken, the executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party, wrote on Twitter. “Email disinfo@iowademocrats.org or reply to this thread and we’ll investigate ASAP!”
Nick Corasaniti reported from Des Moines, and Sheera Frenkel from San Francisco.