This is probably not how the Democratic Party wanted to begin its presidential primary process. The freak-out over the delayed results out of the Iowa caucuses Monday night has revealed just what a wire-and-string effort collecting and tabulating the vote can be, and how little it takes to raise doubts about the integrity of the election process.

With nine months until Election Day, we need to learn from Iowa — and fast. If something like this happens in November, the fallout is going to be far, far worse. And it may well happen, given continued concerns about vulnerabilities in our election security system (even though there has been considerable progress recently). Election administrators, journalists and political parties need to be prepared. They should be developing plans as of yesterday.

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Similarly, because news coverage has to fill the extended wait time with drama, narratives of delay can quickly spiral into narratives of confusion and chaos. As Stanford University law professor Nathaniel Persily noted on Twitter, “elections can be ‘hacked’ by undermining confidence in results even when voting technology works fine.” That is, once a narrative of bedlam spreads, it can be hard to pull back.