Microsoft could be the star of the Iowa caucuses

Microsoft is seeking to avoid such confusion by providing an app, backed up by its cloud technology, that will be used to help report the caucus results.

Some users noted the system might simply be temporarily overwhelmed and suggested users wait a moment and then try again.

“It’s robust, it’s reliable, and most importantly – it’s accurate”, the company explained in video providing an overview of the system.

As the first votes of the 2016 presidential primary season are cast at the Iowa caucuses tonight, new Microsoft technology will be used to give up-to-the-minute updates as the results come in.

In partnership with Microsoft, InterKnowlogy has built a mobile reporting app that managers from each of Iowa’s 1,681 precincts will use to send reporting results (in Iowa Caucus terminology, the precincts don’t “vote”, they “report”) to Republican and Democratic party headquarters.

The new app and cloud platform will require precincts to double check their results before allowing an authorized and trained individual to report the results via the app. “This announcement represents the first-of-its-kind major technology component to caucus reporting”, he wrote. “The parties have the opportunity to review it, make sure it’s correct, have easy access to call back the precinct captains in making sure that everything’s correct with the information before it gets released out to the public”.

Microsoft is sponsoring the press center in Iowa for the caucuses, ensuring that their brand will be front-and-center during one of the biggest political events of the year.

The Microsoft apps will help almost 1,700 Iowa precincts report their vote counts through a simple smartphone interface.

The contests in both parties are expected to go down to the wire. Most prominent among this group is Bernie Sanders.

The results didn’t sit well with the Sanders camp, whose representatives pointed to hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions from company employees to the Clinton campaign, and described the use of the app a conflict of interest.

In a statement to the network Microsoft said it “is providing technology and services exclusively to administer and facilitate a neutral, accurate, efficient reporting system”.

“You’d have to ask yourself why they’d want to give something like that away for free”, Sanders campaign coordinator Pete D’Alessandro told MSNBC. But the Sanders campaign has created its own backup reporting system, as has the Hillary Clinton campaign.