Iowa Caucus Mobile App Malfunction

Assignment: Research proposal on an Information Management topic relevant to the Public Administration field and applied the topic to a government or non-profit agency.
Content should address the impetus for engaging in an investigation, what the objectives are, hypotheses, research question, problem, and/or goal.
Research proposals must include the following:
• Cover Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction (2 pages)
• Literature Review (5 pages)
• Methodology (5 pages)
• Bibliography
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Proposal Topic: Iowa Caucus Mobile App Malfunction
The 2020 Iowa Caucus has become the tech failure crisis. The Caucus’ mobile app was supposed to simplify reporting, but instead ended up creating chaos and forced the Iowa Democratic Party to rely on paper ballot backups.
For years, a smartphone app that would allow voters cast their ballots from anywhere has been a goal for election officials. However, it has also been a nightmare for cyber experts, who argue that no technology is secure enough to trust with the very basis of American democracy. As thousands are set to use the app in this year’s elections, the task has now taken on new urgency – especially in light of the recent Caucus debacle wherein people now believe apps are ineffective for elections/voting and not that bad development processes contribute to mishaps.
While a return to punch cards and hanging chads is unlikely, there is growing unease about how far state and local governments should go in modernizing election infrastructure — from registration databases and electronic poll books to the voting machines themselves. Currently, some states to allow online voting through web portals, emails or digital faxes – and the Voatz app despite the security risks; however, they have restricted it to groups of people who cannot make it to the polls such as overseas military personnel.
Since 2018, Voatz has run several pilot projects and claims its technology has overcome the security problems through biometrics and other measures built into newer smartphones, as well as a back-end system that records and stores votes on a blockchain, the technology underpinning Bitcoin. It also says its platform creates a paper trail for election officials and the voters using the app. However, security experts have identified system flaws that reverse-engineer publicly available information, let attackers monitor votes being cast, change ballots or block them without users’ knowledge, and possibly even create a tainted paper trail, making a reliable audit impossible.
Now, critics point to the Iowa Caucus as an example. Although the issues were primarily attributed to technical issues, the fallout of paper tallies and the lack of a clear winner still hint at what could occur at a national scale.