Some posts, which were shared thousands
of times, accused former Clinton campaign
manager Robby Mook of creating the app.
In a tweet, Mook said he “did not have” anything
to do with building the caucus app. Mook did
not immediately return a request from The
Associated Press for comment.
Other online posts placed blamed the problem
on a new culprit: Democratic presidential
candidate Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend,
Indiana, mayor who unsuccessfully ran to be the
Democratic Party’s chairman three years ago.
Some social media users insisted he had pulled off
a scam to delay the results with the help of party
insiders. Others wrongly asserted that Buttigieg’s
campaign had developed the app used for the
Iowa caucuses. Other social media posts pointed
out that the founder of a nonprofit organization
that launched Shadow Inc. last year is married to a
senior adviser for Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign.
By Tuesday morning, #MayorCheat was trending
on Twitter, where it was mentioned more than
120,000 times by the afternoon.
The hashtag was first sent by verified Twitter
accounts, according to an analysis by Ben
Nimmo, a disinformation and security expert
for social media analysis firm Graphika. As
of Tuesday, there were no signs that foreign
accounts were promoting the hashtag, he added.
“This is Americans trolling Americans,” Nimmo
said. “That’s the really worrying thing in 2020.”
That misinformation is partly rooted in the
fact that Buttigieg’s campaign has paid Shadow
Inc., the company behind the Iowa caucus app,
for software.