Why they can't just do a https website with login is beyond me.

Why an App? We all know there's nothing in it but boilerplate.

By being an app, they can easily advise the user "download it in advance and register in advance" by that verify they have it installed. Then they can make sure the app will work to collect the data in case of wifi/mobile network issues so that the user enters the data on the caucus site and if that building for whatever reason has no network go outside to upload.

Making sure that average Joe preloads a webapp and to make sure it will be configured a day later isn't easy.

Properly syncing from the web app - as discussed in these threads - adds complexity though.

Why is downloading a native app easier for Average Joe than clicking a link to a web app that's served with appropriate Cache-Control headers and uses localStorage?

Cache-Control gets ignored when browser tabs are "paged out", especially on mobile. It's egregious on Mobile Safari, where effectively only two or three pages are "live" and the remainder have to be re-grabbed. No connection? No re-grab. The version fetched might be any version from any point in history, including your "does this work?" flight that you pushed (because of course you pushed one). There's also very little mechanism to tell ahead-of-time whether a network request will work - you'll have to essentially pre-flight all server communication, which is doable, but not easily accessible the way that a "save locally, upload in background once internet" would work as a native app.

As an alternative to having them download a separate app, have them download a browser that supports the stale-if-error Cache-Control directive. It's fair to ask people doing serious work not to use Mobile Safari.

It's also fair to ask them to keep checking the native or web app to make sure the data was sent, so one doesn't have to rely on web workers staying alive in the background. Just save to localStorage, catch network errors and keep retrying.

How haven’t PWA disappoint you

But these are precinct officials, who took the time to become volunteers in this. They should be able to spend 1/100 of the effort that would take them to file taxes and preload a webapp.

From my experience with volunteers in different non-tech areas I have doubts.

If they can't open a web page they also are incapable of doing the math required on the sheet before sending the results.

A large amount of the cost (perhaps most of it) isn't in building the software, it's in working out what they need.

Yes, a webapp will cost less. But if the vendor did this bad a job on an app they probably could do just as bad on a webapp.

Changing tech wouldn't have solved the problem for this vendor.

Absolutely yes. It's true of all organizations, but I've found that with non-profits especially, just figuring out the need you are trying to address is quite difficult.

It makes me think of all that uproar for some iPad app for the TSA that just randomly showed a left or right arrow to send tell people which line to get in. Surely easy to code. But I bet it was months or years of interviews to determine that's all they actually needed.

Would it matter? You've still got to build it, the cost would be (roughly) the same.

The added complexity of having to build an app and all the boilerplate can significantly increase the complexity from just a simple website.

And while an app not hard, a https website with login and post capability is on the _extremely simple_ territory. As long as precinct official are trustable, I don't see any reason why they have to use an app.

I guess for the wow factor? As the entire political process is essentially becoming.

I think the argument of $60k being not that much still stands, and you would still be left with a sub-par result regardless of whether its an app or a website.

Many caucus workers are more senior than the average citizen. I know lots of older folks who can go to a website if you text them the address, but who can't install an app. Many apps are apps instead of PWAs for no defensible reason.

They probably could have done it in google forms for free. It’s absurd how much they over complicated it.