The statewide debut of an election results website was marked by growing pains, including the deletion of tallies from Tuesday’s watershed presidential contest that forced the system to be temporarily shut down. This was the first time all 169 Connecticut municipalities were required to use the system, which cost the state between $350,000 and $450,000 as part of a broader technology upgrade. Participation had been voluntary for the presidential primary in April, and for the August primaries. From Bridgeport to Danbury to Greenwich, local registrars of voters reported multiple kinks in the system, from lost data to network crashes, and then being unable to log back in to complete their work. The registrars say that having a centralized website is more efficient than the past practice of faxing in the results to the state and waiting up to two days for the information to be posted. But the execution, they say, was a mess.
“It was a nightmare,” said Mary Ann Doran, Danbury’s Republican registrar of voters. “I’m not the computer geek, but I had our IT guy here with eight computer geeks. Our IT guy was pulling his hair out.”
As of 4 p.m. Thursday, Danbury was among 11 cities and towns listed on the state website that had not reported election results. City officials say they made several attempts to submit the data since Tuesday, but were having trouble saving and then got kicked off the system. “If this were the registrars’ fault, we’d be on the carpet,” Doran said.
Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s office acknowledged Thursday that there is room for improvement, but gave generally positive reviews to the Connecticut Election Management System. “Secretary Merrill said, obviously, some things could be fixed, but overall the system worked very well,” said Patrick Gallahue, a spokesman for Merrill. “It got results to the public faster and more efficiently.”
Full Article: Glitches plague state election results website – Connecticut Post.