A Wake-Up Call From Iowa
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2020
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Iowa caucuses on Monday were a mess. Only 71 percent of precincts were reporting by late Tuesday night. Rick Hasen says, we’re just lucky this disaster happened early on. That means that election officials in other states have time to get it right.
Guest: Rick Hasen, author of “Election Meltdown”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Rick. |
| 0:05.3 | Hello. |
| 0:06.1 | Thank you for making the time. I know that this is like... |
| 0:08.7 | Insane. |
| 0:13.0 | As I waited and waited for the results of the Iowa caucuses Monday night, the one person I wanted to talk to was this guy, Rick Hassan. |
| 0:22.2 | It wasn't supposed to be this way, you know. I mean, for months I've had on my Twitter |
| 0:26.6 | header, Election Meltdown February 4th, 2020, but I didn't mean it quite that literally. |
| 0:31.9 | You didn't mean it as a countdown, clock. |
| 0:35.9 | Election Meltdown is the name of Rick's new book. |
| 0:38.6 | It's about Election Day nightmares. |
| 0:41.5 | What happens that the electricity goes out at the polls? |
| 0:44.4 | What happens if the loser of an election refuses to concede? |
| 0:48.8 | He's pretty much thought of it all. |
| 0:50.8 | Every election, I wanted to be quiet, you know, because if people are calling me, there's a real problem. |
| 0:58.0 | But even Rick hadn't imagined this week's scenario. |
| 1:01.1 | A complicated process in Iowa that was made even more complicated by new rules, a troublesome smartphone app that seemed unable to tally up results, |
| 1:11.1 | and a state Democratic Party completely unprepared for what happened next. |
| 1:15.7 | Well, this may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. |
| 1:17.9 | I think I had a piece in 2008 and 2012 in Slate saying, |
| 1:20.9 | kill the caucuses because they keep having problems. |
| 1:23.9 | But this, you know, may have gone beyond things. |
| 1:26.4 | It does seem to be a situation of |
... |
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